With Utah’s rising housing prices keeping families with young children from moving in — and with newer schools just a special permit and a short distance away — some schools on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley are shrinking.
As Lindsay Godsey walks her children to Spring Lane Elementary School in Holladay, she asks whether the crossing guard has seen any other kids on the crisp Tuesday morning. The crossing guard says she hasn’t — and adds that she usually doesn’t see many.
Enrollment also is dropping across the Salt Lake City and Murray school districts, with administrators in the capital city saying decreases there also appear tied to housing prices. Open enrollment can be a curse or a blessing for schools, especially ones that offer unique arts programs or dual language immersion. That’s illustrated by Spring Lane, which sits in the eastern side of the Granite School District, where leaders are considering possible consolidations among a slate of 15 elementary schools.
“If you’re not in the dual immersion program ... [at Spring Lane],” said Spring Lane parent Tristan Nielson, “it’s not a great place to be.” As other students get special permits to attend elsewhere — taking their per-pupil funding with them — the neighborhood school has less financial support and potentially fewer educator positions.
And in West Jordan, where schools in an area on the east side of the Jordan School District are seeing declining enrollment, leaders are hoping an arts magnet program at Majestic Elementary and an accelerated learning program at Westland Elementary may help reverse that trend, an administrator noted at a fall school board meeting.As Granite weighs closing elementary schools on the eastern side of the valley, the district is mulling the possibility of building new schools out west.
But for now, Jordan is a “tale of three districts,” Festin said. “We have a district of growth, we have a district of decline and a district of stability, all within our Jordan School District.” Within West Jordan, however, “we have some schools that are small, and getting smaller,” Festin said. “This is due entirely to demographics.”
”How families can afford housing right now is beyond me,” Festin said. “The townhouses there by Ridgeview Elementary School … were starting at $474,000. They’re now well over five.” High schools in Canyons enrolled 315 more students in that time frame. But to deal with the changes among younger students, its board of education voted earlier this month to approve a plan for equalizing enrollment at elementary schools in Midvale.
• In Salt Lake City School District, this fall’s enrollment of 19,833 is 3,200 fewer kids than five years ago. Continuing decreases in enrollment could mean the district will need to employ fewer teachers and eventually shut some schools. In November, planning consultant Caleb Olson told the board that district facilities staff had determined the “reasonable maximum” of portable classrooms to set up at crowded schools should be 10. Olson, a former assistant principal at Sunset Ridge Middle School, said the school had 13 portables one year — which was “not reasonable. It was a lot.”
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