The following message was sent to all Granite School District employees on Thursday, December 19, at 10 a.m.

Hello All!

I went to bed last night planning a holiday greeting to send out this morning. When the phone rang at 4:00 AM, my thoughts turned another direction.

I left the house much earlier than usual, chipped ice off my windshield, dropped my two elementary kids off at school (the high school kids were long gone already) and drove at a crawl the rest of the way to work. We have two schools with power out, the one with exterior windows we’ll be able to keep open half a day – following a late start – so they don’t have to make it up in April. The other, without exterior windows, we’re getting the word out to close now.

I do want to express my thanks to the transportation fleet, the grounds crews – and all those who don’t usually wield shovels or drive snow plows – who’ve jumped to help provide a warm, safe, supervised, warm-meal day to the children in this community we serve. My thanks absolutely include our teachers who really do the hardest work in our whole organization day in and day out.

As we’ve approached this holiday season, my thoughts have turned to family and Christmases past, including thoughts about my dad who battled cancer, ultimately losing the fight nearly 14 years ago. Paradoxically, he took every opportunity to say that for him, an advantage of cancer was that “it gives the chance to say the things you were too dumb to say before you got sick.” With that counsel, although hopefully not that situation, I encourage all of us (including me), to take the opportunity in the next couple of weeks to initiate repair of bridges in our personal lives and affirmatively let our loved ones know that they are, in fact, our loved ones.

In my own home we celebrate Christmas, so from my home to yours, I wish you a Merry Christmas! I also know many of us approach this season differently and to you, I wish heartfelt Happy Holidays! I’m proud to work with so many great people who dedicate their professional lives, and much of their personal lives, to building our community’s future by serving children directly and indirectly both in our schools and in support of our schools.

I thank all of you!

Martin