In a classroom down the hall at North Star Elementary, Elizabeth Grant stood by a circle of first and second graders who were sitting on the floor playing hot potato with a stuffed brown dinosaur toy.
Grant, Salt Lake City School District’s new superintendent, leaned over to the teacher leading the game, telling her that she wanted to join in. “Can you make sure I get out?” Grant whispered as she prepared to enter the circle.
And sure enough, when the music stopped, Grant held the stuffed dinosaur — the hot potato.
“You’re out!” one of the kids shouted. “All right, you win,” Grant told the students, acting defeated with a rueful smile.
These interactions, she later told reporters, are why it’s a privilege to be back in Salt Lake City and its school district — one where she not only was a principal early in her education career, but also grew up in.
“Seeing the children and the responsibility that we owe them and their families to do right by them in our work, that’s what really comes home,” she said, “when you’re here and seeing the work going on.”
On Thursday, Grant made her first public appearance as the district’s new superintendent, visiting students of varying grade levels at a district summer learning program in the Rose Park school.
Grant’s two-year contract began on July 1, but her first day was Monday. She will receive an annual salary of $255,000 a year, plus cost-of-living adjustments and possible other increases.
In May, the Salt Lake City school board announced Grant as its next superintendent after months of a search that broke tradition, by not allowing the public to meet with top candidates or know who they were. Grant’s hiring follows significant turnover in leadership; she will be the district’s fifth superintendent in three years, counting interims.
When Grant was last with the district, she had served as the principal of Lowell Elementary — which closed in 2004 — and a stint as assistant principal at Edison Elementary.
At the May board meeting, President Nate Salazar said members hired Grant due to her “depth of knowledge, the breadth of her experience and her demonstrated leadership at multiple levels,” along with her previous time with the district.
“She has the knowledge of best practices in school districts across the country,” Salazar said, ”but she also knows who we are in Salt Lake City because she is one of us.”
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Elizabeth Grant, Salt Lake City School District's new superintendent discusses her new role at North Star Elementary School, Thursday, July 6, 2023.
Grant previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education as its chief of staff and senior policy advisor, according to her LinkedIn profile. Most recently, she was an associate professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
She comes into her new role as the district is under scrutiny on issues such as declining enrollment and potential elementary school closures. The school board district also is weighing whether to ask its taxpayers for money to rebuild Highland and West High schools, as well as potentially building a fourth high school on the west side of the city.
Grant’s challenges and goals
Parents and community members around Salt Lake City have raised the drop in enrollment with Grant, she said, and she’s recognized that this means the need to close some schools.
“There are some difficulties with schools that are too big, there are also some difficulties with schools that are too small,” Grant said. “We’re looking at that carefully, trying to gather information from the community to talk to parents, neighborhoods … and the board will be moving forward with those decisions in the coming weeks and months.”
At a June board meeting, the district announced that options for school closures will be presented to board members sometime this month.
Grant also pointed to district challenges surrounding social, emotional learning, especially as the world is coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“None of us have quite reckoned with the costs yet and what that means for us,” she said. “But it’s part of our curriculum, it’s part of teaching and learning to think about students’ well-being and teachers’ well-being.”
She hopes to lead the state in areas such as opportunity, equity and student academic accomplishments, she said, which also will make the district a more appealing place to work. “I believe this is going to be the preferred place to work for talented teachers and leaders,” she said.
Salt Lake City schools have seen its last two superintendents resign amid controversy with the board — Timothy Gadson III in October and Lexi Cunningham in 2020. Grant said that while the district is “going to have a history,” her goal is to look towards the future.
“One of the first things I’m going to do over the next few months is to go out to the community to talk with people,” she said. “My goal is to listen to them and learn; to learn about what their perspectives are on schooling, what’s working well for our children, what we ought to be doing better.”
And when it comes to dealing with cultural and political issues that have surrounded districts around the country, Grant said that’s where community conversations are also important.
“Education has long sat in the middle of community currents and political currents, and it will continue to do so,” Grant said. “I think the remedy for uncivil discourse is more conversation.”
‘Someone who cared deeply about the kids’
From the time when Michael Feuer met Grant over a decade ago, he saw that she was someone who always worked towards improving the education for youth.
“I recognized that she was someone who cared deeply about the kids and everything she was doing as an education policy researcher,” said Feuer, the dean of George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
When it came to education policy, Grant was unique, Feuer said, especially since she had spent time in the classroom as a teacher and in leadership roles. He said this made her work focused on how empirical data and studies relate to real-world classroom situations that parents, teachers and students can find useful.
“Everything that Liz worked on at [George Washington] had that kind of very special flavor of somebody who had her experience in the classroom,” he said. “[She] knew how to engage with teachers and students and principals and district level officials in the District of Columbia, which is not necessarily the easiest environment to work in.”
For example, Grant spearheaded an initiative at the university that would have allowed the school to advise D.C. Public Schools with education research.
While the city council decided to go “in a slightly different direction,” Feuer said, it’s work like this that will help Grant thrive as a superintendent.
“Liz helped us develop some very innovative ideas for engaging people who were passionate about the possibility of a career in education,” Feuer said. “Giving them the kinds of tools and the opportunities to really become accomplished, professional decision makers and leaders, I think that adds up to something that will be very useful in Salt Lake.”
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) North Star Elementary School fifth and sixth graders build a structure during a summer STEM class, Thursday, July 6, 2023.
And potential partnerships here excite Grant — not just with local colleges and universities, but also nonprofit organizations.
“One of the reasons Salt Lake has so much promise is because we’re surrounded by so many incredible institutions and people doing remarkable things,” she said. “We’re looking for the right pathways for opportunity for our students, and we can’t do that alone.”
When Grant first walked into the library at North Star, she was met by Lisa Cena, a librarian subbing at North Star, who told Grant that she had her respect and support. Hearing that was a privilege and an honor, she said.
Grant added that she’s been able to meet other district staff — like those in the bus fleet, auxiliary services and IT departments — and that “it is remarkable when you think of all these people engaged in the enterprise of learning...how much they give to this and how excited they are in being in the process of education.”
But for Grant, her focus is all about what’s going on in the classrooms, because “that’s where the magic happens,” she said. “We attend to people’s concerns and issues outside of the classroom,” Grant said, “but all of it is focused on what’s in the classroom.”
