Who We Are – Park City Roots

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Formally the Eileen G. Bailey Memorial Scholarship Fund

In the spring of 2006” Back to our Roots”, formally known as as the Eileen G Bailey Memorial Scholarship Fund was born out of the efforts of Tommy Tanzer, Joanne Bloom, Sydney Reed, Jana Cole, Betsy Bacon, and Teri Wiss to honor the life and career of Eileen Bailey, their esteemed colleague and the matriarch of a four generation Utah teaching family. These long term Parkites and 30 of their students including Dan Morgan, Erin Proctor Price, Brodie Pollard, Kerrie Meier, Brian Worley, Temple Smith, Whitney Olch, Brett and Krysti Peretti, Greg Blackbourn, Michael Spencer, Michael Conville, Craig Rodman, Melissa Wartena Bott and Lincoln and Bronson Calder, together launched a fundraising and public relations campaign that has flourished, expanded and assisted 527 Park City High School students. Those B2OR efforts provided those students with tutoring, mentoring, college prep and scholarship acquisition over these 20 years. Their work has assisted these students with over $670,000 in funding. Best of all, they are still operating and preparing to focus their assistance on the many first generation PCHS graduating students that are in need of guidance and support to finish their post secondary and college education with the funds they will need to complete their educational journeys.

100% of all funds donated to Back to Our Roots go directly to the students

At the core of their mission is a commitment and promise that 100% of all funds donated to B2OR go directly to the students. There are no monies going to administrative or legal costs, mailing, advertising, public relations, tax preparation or record keeping. All those cost are born by the founders and volunteers of this Program. Together, along with many of the original founders and paid employees, they continue to honor the commitments that were made to the first generation students and their families.

In the last 14 months, while battling many legal challenges, Back to our Roots has had a record setting fundraising season. From an array of past and present donors, B2OR has raised $90,000, with future commitments of $75,000 per year, if it can deliver in 2026 on their first gen scholarship mission. They have solidified a cooperative relationships with the Park City high school first gen team and college counselors. The feedback from the graduating senior class of students and their teachers, mentors and counselors has been very encouraging. There are more students applying than ever (35 college bound and 13 trade school bound) with the expectations that everyone that qualifies will receive from $1600 to $1850 to begin their post secondary school career. Because of the fantastic job the PCHS teachers and counselors have done preparing these students, there are many more students applying to out of state and overseas educational institutions and B2OR has committed to put additional financial resources to insure that these courageous students can chase their dreams. The plans are to help these students all the way through college and into their future careers.

The Dream

The B2OR leadership has also begun an effort to start an endowment for the purposes of assisting students, who complete their educational journeys and graduate from post secondary schools (including from trade schools) with grant writing and fundraising to assist them in paying off their student loan debt. This is a dream and a bold endeavor, but no more or less than the dreams that they’ve made come true so far.

If you look at the journey of Tommy Tanzer and this B2OR vision, it is no less of a dream than what has already occurred. Starting as a 3rd grade teacher in 1979, along with Eileen Bailey and his wife, Joanne Bloom, Tommy began his teaching career at Marsac Elementary School. Marsac was later turned into the Park City Government office building and the school moved to Parley’s Park Elementary in the Silver Creek area in 1982. That year Tommy was asked to be one of the Park City Education Association’s contract negotiators by legendary teacher Don Johnson, who later went on to a have a 10 plus year career as the school superintendent of the Middlebrook School District, a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin. Along with other famous Park City teachers Bob Burns( PCHS), Maureen Traeger (Parley’s Park Elementary School) being mentored by historically renowned educators Dr. Brian Schiller, Jack Dozier and David “the sage” Chaplin, that PCEA team went on to negotiated a state wide high 9% increase in teacher wages with additional contract benefits previously unheard of in Utah. The state average that year was 2%. In 1983 that team followed up by securing a record setting 23% salary increase that included the same increases for principals, teacher’s aids, cooks, custodians, and secretaries. Park City went from the lowest to the highest paid school district in the state. During the 1984 school year, Tommy and his team pushed the salaries for all the employees up another 11% for a total of 43% over the 3 years. The master contract terms were also completed as were many benefits that made Park City School District a very attractive place to teach and work. The state average pay increases in all other Utah districts was approximately 9% for all 3 years combined. Tommy, then, left a teaching career (where he won the Teacher of the Year at the elementary level twice in his 6 year career) and decided to take his talents as a negotiator into the field of sports. He started his own company and represented Hall of Fame Coach Frank Layden and later Chicago Cubs Manager Joe Maddon before focusing on a career negotiating for Major League Baseball players. Over a 23 year period, he negotiated over a half of a billion dollars In contracts for over 120 players and managers. Upon selling his company T. Tanzer Sorts Consultants, Inc. in 2005, he continued on as a contract consultant to Octagon Sports Ltd. for another 16 years. A year later in 2006 he founded Back to our Roots, the Eileen Bailey Memorial Scholarship Fund. B2OR is entering it’s 21st year helping students and educators in Park City and Summit County achieve their goals.

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