Senior Kohler Rauzi wasn’t sure at first whether to attend Wasatch High School or the new Deer Creek High School, but the new school offered an opportunity impossible to pass up.

“There are no traditions, no stories that everyone tells, no expectations and no culture. But we get to create all of that,” he said at Deer Creek High School’s ribbon cutting ceremony and open house on Wednesday. 

The $169 million school is ready to welcome students on Aug. 18. Only a few finishing touches to the theater are left to do.

Former Wasatch School District Superintendent Paul Sweat noted at the ceremony that the building will soon turn into a “living organism” where students will build their futures. 

The first signs of life could be seen at the open house. Aspiring athletes mimed making shots on the basketball court. 

Students wandered into health sciences teacher Jordanne Davidson’s classroom for a demonstration of the new Anatomage table — used to dissect digitized cadavers — and left the room either green in the face or with a gleam in their eyes. 

Meanwhile, members of the student government were hard at work enlisting elementary schoolers to their cause, asking them to pledge to be a Deer Creek Riverhawk instead of a Wasatch Wasp when they grow up.

Rauzi, the student government’s vice president, wants to create a culture in which every student feels seen. He believes the easiest way to do that is by starting conversations. 

Rauzi started his high school experience somewhat isolated from his peers.

“When I was a freshman, I spent a lot of time in the front office, not because I was in trouble, but because my best friends were the ladies who worked there,” he said.

Eventually, a few seniors who frequented the office took him under their wings. Rauzi forged friendships with them that lasted even after they had graduated.

“They probably have no idea how much those simple conversations meant to me,” he said.

Now a senior himself, Rauzi hopes to start those conversations with other students. He’s done the math: If each of the student government’s 28 members befriended 47 of their peers, then every student at Deer Creek High School would have someone in their corner.

Ensuring that every teen gets care and attention is why the Wasatch County School District set out to build its second high school in the first place. 

Deer Creek High School Principal Justin Kelly, formerly principal of Wasatch High School, said, “It was sad to me at graduation that a student would come across the stage, and I would think, ‘I don’t know their name, and I can’t remember seeing them very much.’”

With more than 2,700 students enrolled at Wasatch High School last year, forgetting a few students’ names is inevitable. This upcoming academic year, that population has been halved, with the high schools’ enrollment numbers within only two students of each other, according to Superintendent Garrick Peterson.

Peterson added that at-risk students will be especially impacted by the second high school.

“We’re going to be able to have kids coming to school, and their names are going to be known better. Their struggles are going to be known better. We’re going to be able to react to them better,” he said. “If we can make a difference for just a few of those kids and change their lives forever and start to change their stories, there’s power to that.”

With smaller class and club sizes, students at Wasatch High School and Deer Creek High School have been eager this year to try new things, said school board member Breanne Dedrickson.

“I know kids in my own neighborhood who wouldn’t have gone out for student government before, but they thought, ‘Man, there’s extra spots. I don’t know if anyone’s going to try it at Deer Creek. I’m going to try it.’ And they got involved for the first time in something they never tried before,” she said. “That’s what this is about.”

Student government adviser Jessica Firth explained that the students have been planning the high school’s first year since May. They’ve designed merchandise, planned a spirit week and come up with cheers for football games that tease, “You wish you were a Riverhawk!”

Members of the student government hope there’s more to their relationship with Wasatch High School than a friendly rivalry on the football field.

“They were our people just a few months ago,” Firth said. “We have goals to do service projects with the Wasatch student government and keep connections so that we’re not just rivals, but we’re also collaborators.”

The motto the students came up with, “Together we soar,” was in line with the Riverhawk mascot.

“We don’t want anybody to feel like they’re doing this alone,” Firth said. 

Wasatch County has come a long way since its first Wasatch High School, a 20-by-40-foot building built in 1908, as former Superintendent Sweat pointed out. The school district has since moved the high school to new buildings twice — first in 1964, then again in 2009 — to meet the needs of the community. The opening of the Deer Creek High School continues the trend of cultivating the Heber Valley’s greatest resource: its children. 

To Sweat, the two high schools embody a quote from philosopher and educator John Dewey: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

The post Wasatch County’s second high school opens appeared first on Park Record.

Any notions of Heber Valley’s agricultural industry being on its last legs are quickly shattered with a tour of Wasatch High School’s 1-acre farm.

Two adolescent goats curiously poke their heads through fences in a secluded barn. Greenery sprouts everywhere, both outdoors and in the greenhouse: mint and rose hips, watermelon beginnings and plump cherry tomatoes that students pluck for a sneaky snack while they work.

The labor is constant. Even in the July heat, a handful of students kneel on the ground, weeding the landscape instead of taking refuge in the air-conditioned indoors.

Tending to the farm is the students’ summer job, and they’re compensated well for it — $13 an hour, matched by $13 an hour set aside in a scholarship fund.

Agriculture teacher Matthew Zierenberg launched the farm, Ideal Farms, five years ago as a way to give his students hands-on experience and summer employees with a gateway to university.

“A lot of kids that come and work are not your typical … generational-wealth kids,” he said. “When we hire kids, we look for the kids (for whom) there’s a real need.”

The employees’ salaries and scholarships are funded entirely from revenue generated by Ideal Farms, which sells its wares to local vendors, including the Utah Department of Natural Resources. 

The farm has generated about $400,000 in its five years of operation, according to Zierenberg. Anything that does not pay for student employees rolls back into the farm’s continued operation. 

Zierenberg’s local advocacy for agriculture has not gone unnoticed. This month, the National Future Farmers of America Organization named Zierenberg a national teacher ambassador for the upcoming school year. While most states have multiple ambassadors — as many as six, in Texas’ case — Zierenberg is the sole ambassador in Utah. 

Zierenberg will provide training and resources to fellow agriculture teachers, assisting them in establishing work-based learning programs and tweaking national curricula to be relevant to Utah’s unique agricultural industry.

“Agriculture’s not just corn and animals. Agriculture is all the timber and the rangeland and the ranching that we do here, wildland firefighting, keeping our forests healthy, prescribed burns and all that kind of stuff,” he said. 

Zierenberg will also continue as an advocate for agricultural education in Utah.

“We see a lot of pressure from our Legislature right now. They’re looking to cut certain programs, and the summer ag is always right there on that (chopping block),” he said. “Luckily, we’ve kept it, but we want to make that a lot stronger and show this is hugely beneficial to our students as they go on to their future careers. But it’s also helping them to give back and build an economy right here in our state, right now.”

Recent graduate Trey Torres worked in the summer agriculture program all four of his years at Wasatch High School. The money he has earned will help fund his entomology studies, as soon as he can pin down which university to attend.

If Torres’ passion for insects was not apparent by his T-shirt reading, “Easily Distracted By Ants,” it shines through in his voice as he talks about the ant colonies he keeps in his room. 

“The first thing I remember, I ate a roly poly. That was I think where it started,” he said, half joking. 

In taking various agriculture classes and working on the farm in the summer, Torres has earned valuable skills — time management, teamwork and leadership — that will stay with him as he pursues his creepy-crawly career.

Seventeen-year-old Zadie Mitchell said something similar about her experience growing tomatoes.

“We had tomatoes at the beginning, but they really weren’t good, so we had to start over and plant different kinds and learn how to problem solve,” she said. “I think that’s a really useful skill in the future because you’re always going to run into problems.”

For Zierenberg, the appeal of teaching agriculture is instilling grit and critical thinking in students. 

He has been a teacher for 17 years, entirely at Wasatch High School. He’s currently one of five agriculture teachers in the Wasatch County School District. He began by teaching biology, physics and chemistry, later teaching an agricultural biology class. Within a few years, he’d transitioned completely to the agriculture program. 

Zierenberg found the constant hands-on learning a welcome change from the sparse, controlled labs in other science classes. Running a farm is also an excellent way to keep students off their phones, both because they’re engaged and their hands are too dirty to touch their screens.

“Meeting the kids with something that’s real is the key, and that’s what agriculture does,” he said. “They feed the goats. They’re like, ‘Oh, I have to keep this thing alive. This is real. I actually have to do this. If not, the thing dies.’ You don’t get more real than that.”

Growing plants and raising animals are also excellent Trojan horses for Zierenberg to sneak science concepts into his students’ minds.

“(In growing apples,) we talk about the roots, the shoots, the gibberellins, all the stuff that goes into raising a tree and raising healthy plants,” he said. “We bring all that science into it. But they see it as, ‘I’m learning to make apple sauce!’”

The high school’s agriculture program also teaches students about sustainability. 

Zierenberg’s students in the agricultural track of the high school’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies are installing solar panels on the farm to fuel its entire electrical output. The walls of the goats’ barn are lined with recycled Plexiglass instead of plywood. And the greenhouse uses a closed-loop aquaponic system. The students look after goldfish and koi, whose waste becomes fertilizer for plants. In return, the plants clean the water pumped back into the fish’s tank.

“It’s basically an ecosystem just running right here. We take the benefit of fish waste and put it into growing lettuce and tomatoes,” Zierenberg said.

Students learn how to take care of the environment through the projects they participate in through the agriculture program. 

They’ve sold thousands of willows to the Division of Wildlife Resources to plant along rivers to regenerate stream banks eroded by overgrazing or wildfires. They’ve raised thousands of chukar partridges for Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife to sustainably hunt. 

Not all of Ideal Farms’ projects make a profit. Students are currently growing trees to replace native plants destroyed by construction at the new Deer Creek High School. They also donate lettuce and tomatoes to local food banks every year. 

While agriculture has certainly shrunk in the Heber Valley, Zierenberg is consistently surprised by the popularity of the high school’s program. 

“Some of them, they come from legacy farm families here in the valley. So their grandparents owned a dairy. I mean, we had 40 dairies in this valley at one time,” he said. “Their parents skipped a generation, and we just see this resurgence … that interest in learning about where their families come from.”

The waitlist for Wasatch High School’s agriculture program is constant, Zierenberg said. The program will expand to accommodate more students when Deer Creek High School opens next month.

Zierenberg said it’s hands-on learning that draws in most students, even those with nothing more than a passing interest in agriculture. He said he hopes that even his students who do not go into the industry remember the National Future Farmers of America Organization’s motto as they cultivate their futures: “Learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live and living to serve.”

The post Wasatch High School teacher stands out as Utah’s lone ambassador of agricultural education appeared first on Park Record.

The Wasatch County School District could increase its general fund by $11 million for the upcoming fiscal year, without raising property taxes.

The general fund includes expenditures for supplies, textbooks, equipment and professional development, but the biggest piece of the pie is salaries and benefits, which make up about $122 million of the nearly $136 million total. 

All categories of general fund will see some increase in fiscal year 2027.

Some new costs include the school district’s addition of a childcare facility in Deer Creek High School for school district employees to use and increased spending on early literacy programs. The majority of the spending increase, $10 million, will go to salaries and benefits, including 4% raises for employees.

“We have nearly 1,200 employees now. Obviously, our most valuable and most costly resource is our people,” said Business Administrator Jason Watt. “The board has prioritized this in recent years as a way to attract and retain high-quality educators.”

The increase also accounts for new hires at Deer Creek High School, which opens in August. 

While most staffing occurred by divvying up existing Wasatch High School staff between the two schools, some roles necessitated hiring externally. For example, it would be impractical to divide one theater teacher between two high schools. 

Watt said the school district hired eight teachers, as well as custodial and maintenance staff, secretaries, an instructional coach, a librarian, an athletic director, a Hispanic liaison, school resource officers and a nurse.

With the new high school also comes increased spending on transportation, maintenance and utilities. None of that will necessitate an increase in property taxes, which make up about two-thirds of the school district’s budget.

“We have been budgeting for this year for some time,” Watt said. “We are really pleased that we are able to cover those additional costs with existing revenues and will not be approaching the public for additional revenues through the truth in taxation process.”

While general fund expenditures are increasing since the previous fiscal year, the school district will spend less money overall this upcoming fiscal year. The school district spent over $250 million in fiscal year 2026, and estimates spending about $193 million in fiscal year 2027.

The primary reason for that decrease is a reduction in capital project spending. The district spent $111 million last fiscal year — largely to construct Deer Creek High School — and will spend $41 million in the upcoming year.

The school board held a public hearing on June 16, during which two school district employees made comments in support of the budget.

Wasatch High School Assistant Principal Drew Camps Wofford expressed her excitement about Deer Creek High School and the new childcare program while holding her toddler, Scout.

“As a parent, (I’m) super stoked to have kids … in a district where you know that they’re doing the right things to take care of our kids while I’m taking care of other people,” she said.

Wasatch High School agricultural science teacher Kody Clyde thanked the school board for its “continued support and confidence in teachers.”

“I can promise that the teachers will continue to take care of the community’s greatest resource, which is, of course, the students. You will continue to see an increase in student academic performance. I can also assure you that Wasatch will continue to be the best district in the state,” he said. “I personally would like to thank you for my job. I feel so lucky to have the greatest career in the greatest community.”

The school board will meet June 29 at 6:30 p.m. to vote on adopting the budget. The meeting will include an opportunity for public comment.

The post Wasatch County School District to increase spending on salaries, benefits without tax increase appeared first on Park Record.

When Deer Creek High School Principal Justin Kelly graduated from Wasatch High School in 1991, there were 130 students in his graduating class. When he began teaching in Wasatch County School District nine years later, there were about 200 students per graduating class. Now, that number has ballooned to about 670.

“When kids become numbers, they tend to be in trouble more because they’re trying to find other ways to come out. And so, this opportunity to have two high schools in the valley is really going to change kids’ chances in life,” Kelly said before a tour of the nearly finished Deer Creek High School on Thursday.

The high school is on track to be completed by June 1, when students participating in fall sports will be able to start using the athletic facilities. The school district plans to host an open house toward the end of July.

The finishing touches include the auditorium and the gymnasiums, as well as carpet and tile installation throughout the school. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hasn’t begun construction of its seminary on the site, which it will build and pay for.

The construction of the high school should be “a couple million” dollars under its $169 million budget, according to the district’s business administrator, Jason Watt. 

Although the high school may have changed its name from Iron Horse in January 2025, the locomotive industry is still the inspiration for its architecture. That’s most evident in the commons area beyond the front entrance. 

Its raised, arched ceiling has windows letting in natural light, resembling a train station. The commons will feature a large analog clock to complete the aesthetic.

“We’re going to have to teach the kids how to tell time,” Kelly joked. 

The site served as the Heber Valley Railroad’s stockyard in the 1940s, hence the homage. The school district purchased the 52-acre property about six years ago. 

Kelly explained that a priority of the school district was preserving the property’s original state as much as possible.

For example, the school district has preserved a drainage ditch, which often fills with overflow from Lake Creek and Silver Creek, running through the middle of the property. 

The campus is split into two buildings on each side of the ditch, one housing the bulk of the classrooms and the other comprising the athletic wing. 

For the most part, Deer Creek and Wasatch high schools offer the same amenities, though there are some differences.

For example, Deer Creek High School will feature a veterinary science lab designed to allow animals ranging from sheep to horses to easily enter the space.

Wasatch High School currently offers a veterinary science course, but “it’s a little more redneck”  without a dedicated lab space, Kelly joked. 

Starting in August, all students taking the veterinary science course will do so at Deer Creek High School. 

The same can be said for Mountainland Technical College’s first campus in the Wasatch Back, which is being built on school district land next to Deer Creek High School and will also open in August.

Deer Creek will also include the district’s first child care center, and Wasatch High School will open a daycare around the same time, Kelly explained.

The daycares will accommodate employees’ children up to age 4. The district offers a preschool program for children aged 3 to 5.

High school students will be able to assist in the daycares for college credit through the district’s career and technical education programs.

Superintendent Garrick Peterson noted that having daycare will be a meaningful addition.

“There’s a great math teacher we lost two years ago. As soon as she heard this was coming in, she’s back,” he said. 

Deer Creek High School is only a handful of hires away from being fully staffed for the upcoming school year. 

Most of the teachers will come from Wasatch High School, but some will be external hires. For example, Wasatch High School’s sole drama teacher could not be expected to run Deer Creek’s theater program, too, Kelly explained.

Just as splitting teachers between high schools has gone smoothly, the splitting of students has exceeded expectations.

The district expected about 40% of Wasatch High School’s roughly 2,700 students to choose Deer Creek for the 2026-27 school year. But the split is much more even, with enrollment numbers between the two buildings within 20 students of each other as of Thursday, according to Kelly.

As principal, Kelly will have a unique challenge when Deer Creek High School opens in August: creating a school culture. 

There is some culture-building he can start on his own — such as purchasing “26” jerseys for each sports team in honor of the opening year and overseeing the installation of a pole on which a river hawk, the school’s mascot, would roost — but for the most part, he wants students to lead the process.

For example, students will decide the nickname of the main gymnasium and create the fight song instead of having those characteristics decided for them.

“Our community sacrificed to have a second high school, to build it,” Kelly said. “And I want them to take that opportunity and build (culture) so that when future generations come here, they can be proud of what they started.”

The post Deer Creek High School nears completion appeared first on Park Record.

A stone’s throw away from the construction site of the Wasatch County School District’s new Deer Creek High School, Mountainland Technical College’s first Wasatch Back campus is receiving its final touches. 

Construction is about 18 months in. The roughly 98,000-square-foot campus still needs doors and windows installed, as well as cabinetry, flooring, and some drywall, before completion in June. The first day of school is August 17. 

The first Mountainland Technical College campus was established in 1989 and offered hands-on courses and apprenticeships in various trades, healthcare professions and service careers. Now, the public community college has five campuses in Utah County. A small selection of courses is also offered at Utah Valley University’s Wasatch Campus and in the Wasatch County, Park City and North and South Summit school districts. 

Mountainland Technical College serves Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties, but Vice President Joseph Demma said administrators have long considered the Wasatch Back to be “underserved.” 

That began to change when former Wasatch County School District Superintendent Paul Sweat approached college administrators in 2021 with a proposition: The school district would donate 2.5 acres of its land near Deer Creek High School, valued at $900,000, if Mountainland Technical College built a campus on the property. 

For college administrators, it was an easy decision.

The school district’s land donation made it easier to secure funding for the $65 million project from the state Legislature, which funds about 85% of all Mountainland Technical College operations, according to Demma. The other 15% is made up of student tuition and fees, as well as donations and grants. 

Demma said the organization wants to build similar campuses in the Park City and North and South Summit school districts.

“When districts come to the table with a donation like Wasatch did, it makes it much easier for us to go secure funding from the Legislature,” he said.

The Heber City campus will begin with 15 programs, and could expand to 38 in future semesters to better reflect what is offered at other Mountainland Technical College campuses. 

“Right out the gate, this community is going to have access to programs that they’ve had to drive down the canyon to get to,” Demma said. “Now, it’s in their backyard.”

Applications for the healthcare programs, which include dental, medical and nurse assisting, pharmacy technician and emergency medical technician, open Wednesday. Applications for the remaining programs open on April 29.

The length and cost vary, depending on the program.

The shortest program is the commercial driver’s license program, which teaches students to drive semitrucks in four to seven weeks. The students will be taught using both a driving simulator and a range outside. 

Demma said the commercial driver’s license program was added to the roster of programs in direct response to the local community’s interest in such a program.

“All of these programs that we built here have been intentional through exhaustive research, both on what the labor market demands are in the economy in this region, as well as the community’s interests. You have to marry those two. Otherwise, our programs don’t run,” he said.

The longest programs are the electrical and plumbing apprenticeships, which take about four years. Demma said the average length of a Mountainland Technical College program is about 18 months.

The most expensive program, cosmetology, costs almost $7,100. The cheapest, the certified nursing assistant program, costs $755. The cost per credit hour will be $125. 

Any courses that high school students attend are free, as required by the state Legislature. The only costs are for supplies and materials. Demma noted that the financial aid and scholarship office can help offset those costs if they are a barrier to enrollment. 

Across all campuses, Demma said, about 30% of students enrolled are high schoolers, and the rest are adults. He expects that percentage to be higher at the Heber City campus, given its proximity to Deer Creek High School. 

This will be the first campus so close to a high school, and Demma is confident the experiment, which he said was pulled off by contemporaries like Uintah Basin Technical College, will succeed.

Mountainland Technical College’s graduation rate is 82%, and its job placement rate is 89%. Demma said the quality of counseling contributes to those percentages. Admissions advisors, academic counselors, career placement and transfer specialists help guide each student from admission to well after graduation, free of charge even after graduation.

“We have some students who have graduated a couple of years back that come back and see our career services, whether it’s refreshing on interview skills or resume adjustments or networking. So, our relationship with our students, we hope, is evergreen,” Demma said.

Pathways after Mountainland Technical College are varied.

Some graduates go straight into their job field, while others seek additional education. Mountainland Technical College has agreements with Weber State University, Utah Valley University, Utah State University, Snow College and Salt Lake Community College that allow credits obtained at the technical college to directly transfer to degrees at those universities. 

Mountainland Technical College will begin hiring instructors for its Heber City campus this month. 

Vice President of Administrative Services Kirt Michaelis, who has overseen construction on the Heber City campus, expects the vast majority of instructors to be from Wasatch County.

“The opportunity to put more back into this economy is pretty exciting,” he said.

The college tends to look for industry rather than teaching experience.

“We don’t hire teachers. We hire industry professionals, but then we help teach them how to teach because not everybody who is a welder inherently knows how to build a curriculum or to run a classroom,” Demma said.

The advisory boards for each program are also made up of industry professionals volunteering their time to help guide curricula based on advancements they observe in their fields.

That has been especially helpful in technology courses. For example, IT has shifted from repair toward cybersecurity in recent years, Michaelis said.

“We’re always looking at the market. If there’s a change, we try to adapt and be ready for the market, because our goal isn’t just to get a student through school, but it’s to find them employment afterward. If our students aren’t getting employment, then we’re not doing our job,” he added. 

Mountainland Technical College’s technology programs will not be immediately available at the Heber City campus due to funding restraints, but Demma hopes to start them next year.

One of the more unusual programs that will be immediately available in August is cosmetology. The students will practice in a salon area rather than a traditional classroom. Much of their practice will be on actual customers, who can visit the college for a haircut, color, pedicure or manicure at a lower cost than a traditional barber or nail salon while financially supporting the program.

Students in the dental assisting program will also have the opportunity to work on people — mostly each other, but also on people without dental insurance who sign up to receive free dental care from students under the guidance of their instructor.

Meanwhile, students in the culinary arts program will operate out of a kitchen and get to make and serve food for fellow students and members of the public.

Every program has both a classroom and some sort of “lab” area where students will receive the bulk of their hands-on training. The classroom windows are designed so people walking the hallways can easily observe students performing hands-on work through windows, whether it be welding or repairing a diesel rig. Michaelis explained that Mountainland Technical College campuses are designed that way to generate excitement and interest in programs. 

Hands-on experience takes place both on and off campus. Many programs have an externship portion, requiring students to work in a professional environment. For example, nurse assistant students work in care facilities to learn how to take care of patients in long-term care.

“We definitely want them to understand what the job is before they’re going out there and participating in that,” Michaelis said.

One of Michaelis’ sons is currently undergoing an externship at Intermountain Healthcare as part of the medical assistant program. His other two sons graduated from Mountainland Technical College’s medical assistant and electrical apprenticeship programs. 

Mountainland Technical College administrators are certainly practitioners of what they preach. Demma said most of the communications team is made up of graduates from the college. 

For example, Communications Director Maile Richardson went through the nurse assistant program at the Provo campus during the COVID-19 pandemic. She previously had a bachelor’s degree in communications but was unsure whether she wanted to be in that field or in healthcare. Although she ended up in communications, she’ll carry the skills she learned in the nurse assistant program with her for the rest of her life.

“When I’m a mom, I’ll use those skills. When I happen upon an accident, I can use those skills. Both my brothers are police officers, and they both took our EMT program and are actively using those skills,” she said.

Michaelis added, “I think we’re all firm believers in the education we provide. It’s education that puts you to work immediately. And to me, that’s what we’re all about.”

The post Wasatch Back’s first Mountainland Technical College campus opening in August appeared first on Park Record.

Principal Jim Judd sat at a mobile desk in the hallway of Timpanogos Middle School on Thursday morning. It was covered with tiny figures of Highland cattle — the school’s mascot — dressed as skiers, pirates and knights.

Eighth grader Fern Richins casually shuffled up to Judd. 

“What’s up, boy?” was how she greeted the principal.

The pair engaged in a short conversation before Richins asked Judd for candy. Judd reached into his desk drawer and produced a Smarties lollipop, which he handed to her as she happily wandered off. 

Judd started giving out candy to students a few years ago. It’s a bit of a trade secret — maybe 50 of the school’s 1,000 students know about it.

“One of the things you have to be intentional about is interacting with kids who are never sent to the office,” he said.

That’s why he started the candy-giving tradition a few years ago. Students can email him with some justification of what they’ve done to earn a Smarties lollipop, and he’ll give it to them. His email inbox is cluttered with requests.

Judd often works from his mobile desk in the school’s hallways. Sometimes, the distracting interactions require that he finish his work in his actual office or after school, but he thinks it’s worth it to maintain connections with the students and staff. 

He knows many students on a first-name basis. On Thursday, several eighth graders told him that they were excited for him to remain their principal for another four years at Wasatch High School.

The day before, the school district announced Judd would be leaving Timpanogos Middle School to lead Wasatch High School as its next principal. Judd doesn’t begin until July 1, but he is already making some administrative decisions and spending time at both schools daily. 

Judd’s new role comes after the announcement that the high school’s current principal, Ryan Bishop, will leave to become the executive director of the Utah High School Activities Association on July 1.

Judd said the job offer came last month. With the opening of the new Deer Creek High School in August, the superintendent’s office wanted to ensure there “wasn’t some unknown person at the helm of this split,” Judd said.

“I’ve always felt like public administrators are just stewards of the community. And if the community feels like that’s where I can best serve the community, I’m happy to do it,” he said.

Judd has been the principal of Timpanogos Middle School for five years.

Judd got into education because he was “a really nerdy kid,” reading and watching nature documentaries on PBS every day. 

“I’m still a nerdy adult,” he said. “I’ve always just been the type of guy who’s learning something new and wanting to talk about it. My kids will tell you how comical it is.”

When Judd served a Samoan-speaking mission in Los Angeles for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he gained a passion for teaching. He realized he would rather teach science than be a scientist and landed his first gig as a teacher at the Jordan School District in 1996.

Part of the reason Judd and his wife jumped at the chance to live and work in Heber City in 2000 is that they both grew up in small towns.

“We were in Salt Lake just because that’s where we could get jobs. But it was always our goal to get to a more rural place,” he said.

He started as a science teacher at the now-closed Wasatch Mountain Junior High, working his way up to vice principal and principal. He has also served as principal at Rocky Mountain Middle School, as well as the director of HR and secondary education for the school district.

There are several accomplishments from Judd’s time at Timpanogos Middle School that he is most proud of. 

He applauded the entire staff for moving the needle of students’ academic performance. Timpanogos Middle School was named a model professional learning community — a school whose educators collaborate and share insights regularly to better support students — by education company Solution Tree in 2024.

Judd is also proud of Timpanogos Middle School’s improved relationships with the Hispanic community. He hired Yuri Jenson as a Spanish liaison four years ago to better connect with the middle school’s Hispanic students and parents. He did so when he realized 20% of the school’s students are Hispanic, but he had very little regular connection with those students’ parents.

“What I told (Jenson) is, ‘What I’m going to look at as a metric of success is that 20% of the phone calls I get each week are from that population. That’ll show me that the bridge is built,’” he said. 

Since hiring Jenson, he said that bar has been reached. 

Part of the issue, he said, is that some Hispanic parents did not go through the American public school system and cannot pull from their own experiences in the system while supporting their children. That’s why Jenson holds a monthly “training” teaching Hispanic parents how to support their children in the American public school system. 

Judd’s approach to fostering connections with parents is to be as visible in as many places as possible, including those trainings. As another example, Judd is present outside the middle school when students are dropped off every morning.

“It’s this idea of hospitality. Places that have good hospitality have someone out there seeing you, recognizing you and saying, ‘I’m excited you’re here,’” he said. “As I go about the community, on a regular basis, I’ll be at the store or in some business or something, and someone will say, ‘You’re the drop-off guy.’”

Judd’s approach to student discipline is to make the consequences clear before rules are broken — like lunch detention or community service — while treating students with grace.

In his 30 years in education, Judd has learned that every age group is a “unique beast.”

“I’m in a school with 1,000 kids going through puberty on any given day. That has some challenges,” he said.

Being the principal of Wasatch High School’s roughly 1,300 students will present a new set of challenges.

“They’re in bigger bodies, and they have more agency and more autonomy. And half of my school is going to drive,” he said. “But the beauty is, for the large majority of kids at Wasatch High School, I was their principal here. So, I know them. They know me. So, I think the transition for students is not going to be something I’m worried about.”

Wasatch High School will also be a different beast in that it’s “a big mechanism,” Judd said.

“It never ends. It doesn’t end when school’s out. It doesn’t end on the weekends,” he added. “I think there’s 22 sports that are going on throughout the year, … there’s theater, and there’s all the performing arts, … and high school dances and stuff that we just don’t do here.”

With the opening of the new Deer Creek High School, Judd’s approach is to ensure equitable access by offering the same courses and extracurricular activities at both schools. 

“We want to make sure that both high schools develop an identity and traditions that attach the kids to the school. And a lot of ways kids attach to a high school is some kind of extracurricular,” he said.

While Deer Creek High School will have the opportunity to create a school culture from the ground up next year, Wasatch High School will be building off its 118-year legacy. Judd’s not here to shake things up.

“Wasatch High School’s an established, well-respected organization in our community,” he said. “I’m not going in there thinking anything really needs to be done different.”

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