Walking around Park City School District’s Kearns Campus on Friday morning, interim Superintendent Caleb Fine took a moment to examine the leaves slowly dying in brilliant red and gold fashion all along the surrounding mountains.“Look at this, are you kidding me? This is where we live and work? We are blessed,” he said. Then, with a smile, he added, “The only thing that maybe is wrong with this job is I haven’t had time to hike yet. Kind of busy.”Fine is a mountain biker. His favorite place is Park City Mountain Resort, and while he also trail runs, he said the harder impact on his legs jolts him with a rough reminder of his college basketball days.Fine was born in Minnesota and moved with his family to Park City when he was 8 years old. He spoke of the school district as integral a part of him and his home community as the surrounding mountains.“Park City School District soon became home. Becoming a miner soon became home,” he said.As a young local, he started a lawn-care business with his brother, attended Park City School District schools, played for the district’s athletic teams, and participated in the academic programs the community has to offer.He graduated from Park City High School in 2004.From there, he set off on a track one might not anticipate given his current position and career trajectory.“After going to college for business, selling my brother and I’s lawn company in 2008, I felt like I was on a business track,” he said. “My uncle, Uncle Gary, has an incredibly successful health-care wellness company in the Chicago area, and I thought, OK, next step was to go work for him and hopefully be him and run the company.”Before he could pursue that, however, his uncle told him to get a master’s degree to avoid any concerns about nepotism. Having been fairly successful academically, Fine wasn’t concerned with that requirement. He aimed to join a program at University of Utah.“I was an attractive candidate to them as a small-business owner, and pretty energetic and excited about the opportunities that were in front of me,” Fine said.All he had to do was meet the minimum score on the Graduate Management Admission Test, the first adaptive test he’d ever taken. Though he was a few years removed from classes that covered some of the test’s algebraic material, he thought he had done fairly well. That was until he finished the exam and instantaneously received his score.“I will never forget the score popped up and it was below their minimum threshold,” Fine said. He drove home in tears. He was supposed to be the successful business owner on track to become an even more successful business owner. The ones and zeroes of the online GMAT had derailed him.Around then, he had an opportunity to travel to South Africa for a few months and work in an orphanage and school for kids who lost their parents to the AIDS pandemic. “I said, ‘I guess that’s the plan for now,’” Fine said.While he could have taken another shot at the GMAT, his first attempt had him rattled and considering what was really important. In South Africa, he fell in love with the kids. He found he had a “heart string” for the that kind of work, not just business.“Sometimes, you don’t know what you want, and you’re fortunate to be in circumstances and leverage those,” he said. When he came home in 2009 and, having played four years of college basketball, was hired as the district’s head boys’ basketball coach. “They asked me what I could teach, and I told them I have a business finance degree, and sure enough Utah just started incorporating a financial literacy curriculum, which is still my favorite course,” he said.After seven years of teaching, and with a growing family, he said he started to itch to redeploy his leadership skills. He applied for and got a position as assistant principal under former district leader Bob O’Connor.“That kind of started my educational leadership journey,” Fine said. “I got to work with Bob O’Connor, who is an incredible mentor and role model for me. He tragically passed away after a battle with ALS, but during that time I got to work with Roger Arbabi when he came in, who also is just a mentor and a leader and I learned so much from him. And then Dr. Jill Gildea, another mentor, another leader in our district, asked me to be the principal at Treasure Mountain Junior High.”Now, Fine’s three kids are 4, 6 and 8. He said his second greatest privilege is serving the district wherever they need him. His first is being a dad and husband, of course.“We’re at Parley’s, and loving it,” he said. “I think every parent wants to know that their kid is known, cared, valued because we want our kids to be happy within reason, we want our kids to be kind. … We want them to be productive citizens.”Fine is not sure how long he’ll be interim superintendent. While he said it could possibly be about nine months, he was sure to specify that the term is up to the Board of Education. No matter how long he has, however, he’s excited to do his part in helping the district heal from past issues that spawned from administration miscommunications and student-to-student harassment and grow into a more welcoming place for all.“I think our district is on track,” he said. “It’s my job to build upon a foundation and continue to move us forward. It’s an interim role, it’s not a forever role, but our district can count on me to be consistent: consistently positive, consistently kind, consistently caring, and that’s what I plan to do.”Even with his optimism for the district’s current direction, Fine is no stranger to nor denier of turbulent times and events the district has faced in past years, drawing criticism and concern from the community, state and federal government.“I’ve said this, and I truly believe it: We’re in a season of healing,” Fine said. “There’s a lot of trauma within and outside of the district, and a lot of opinions. And I believe that in this (interim period), if our community can come together in a way that we have not been able to do in the past little bit, we’re going to be winning. We’re going to be winning for kids.”He said he believes the acceptable number of hate speech incidents is zero, and while that might not be realistic, he believes that means constant and proactive efforts. He’s excited about the district’s current building project and its add-on schools. And he said that while he knows there will be hard things to deal with and hard conversations, he believes the best path to healing is through remaining optimistic and positive. “I’m going to work closely with all of the cabinet members that I am witnessing do incredible work and try to support them every way possible, both strategically and through encouragement, and I am going to be out and about in schools,” Fine said. Looking back to his basketball coaching days — some of which were relatively recent, as he was an interim head varsity coach last year — Fine identified two lessons that he learned.“We have to keep learning,” he said. “I was a different coach, and in many respects, I found myself to be a better coach even in the short period of time I was the interim. … My coaching has taught me that I’m going to need to lean on a lot of people. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t need to pretend that I have all the answers. I need to help seek out the best answers and make the best decisions.”He’s also learned the power of positive coaching, something he’s discovered since he was an energetic, excited 23 year old guiding student athletes.“My heart was in the right place, but I think I could have been more positive with the kids,” he said. “People flourish on positivity and accountability. And if you do both of those things, people are going to be successful.”Considering he went from an interim head basketball coach to an interim superintendent in such a short time, he also jokingly wondered what kind of interim he’ll be next year.“We’ll see where they need me to sub in the future,” he said.   The post Interim schools superintendent ready to help with ‘season of healing’ appeared first on Park Record.