Parents of Eastwood Elementary students protest school’s proposed closure

SALT LAKE CITY — Parents and kids from Eastwood Elementary held a protest of the school’s recommended closure.

Nastasya Mangone feels like the school district is just moving too fast.

“I think they need to slow down this study. I think they need to really re-examine and take a step back because we’ve even since the decision was made of uncovered so many discrepancies, misleading information,” Mangone said. “They need to slow down this process, and really take a step back and look at what all of the data is there.”

Jen Tomchak agreed.

“The board’s initial response was to wait until the dust settled from other recent closures so that they could study the impact. That was a wise response,” Tomchak said. “As was made apparent at last night’s meeting, there has been no effort to study whether shutting down schools will do anything to achieve the stated goal of improving resources for teachers.”

Seth Osburn said Eastwood is an award-winning school, so he can’t understand why the district would close the school.

“The scores of the children… they’re top 10 in the state. And so it’s like there’s a reason why we’re so lucky to have these our kids go to the school and to receive this education and the fact that they’re wanting to close it down.” 

His wife, McKell Osburn, said they’re worried about class sizes if the district shuts down Eastwood and combines it with Oakridge Elementary, like the recommendation calls for.

“I think the importance of having small classrooms and smaller schools is huge for kids, and if they want to just keep combining schools and making these elementary schools huge, and their argument is so that there’s more programs for the kids. But we don’t need extra programs, we just need our kids to be able to have more one-on-one with teachers,” she said.

The protest took place ahead of a boundary study meeting put on by the Granite School District at Skyline High School.

Steve Hogan is the director of the Population Analysis Committee (PAC).  He said there are many factors that go into a decision to close a school, but one of the biggest is declining enrollment.

“Granite District has found that declining student enrollment creates a scarcity of resources and opportunities for students and teachers. And conversely, optimizing student involvement turns that around. There’s a sweet spot,” Hogan said. “There’s an economy of scale at work in schools like a lot of organizations that we have found that is best for education.”

But he said the physical condition of the building is also a factor, as is the location of the school. Hogan said the district has had to close 10 schools in the last seven years, and that it’s never an easy decision.

During the public comment and question portion of the meeting, Tomchak brought up concerns about the safety of the kids as they walk from their neighborhoods to Oakridge Elementary.

“There’s a canyon that separates the two schools. Any kids walking from North Cove to South Cove will have to go down and then back up with an elevation gain of 250 ft and about half a mile,” Tomchak said. “It’s a 45 minute walk based on Google Maps which is based on adults. So that’s probably an hour plus walk for kids.”

The meeting lasted nearly five hours and got heated at times with residents shouting at district officials. At one point, District Superintendent Ben Horsley had to ask people to refrain from directing derogatory comments at individual people. He also took a few minutes to explain the financial challenges facing the district.

“Our most recent tax increase was to maintain funding levels due to about $7 million in funding cuts that directly impacted Grant School District. It’s actually going to be upwards of $15 million over the next three years,” Horsely said. “We continue to see an effort from frankly the legislature to continue to strip funds from public education and push them towards other means and efforts. And so we have increased property taxes.”

In addition to closing Eastwood, the PAC is recommending that Morningside Elementary be closed and then reopened as a French Dual Immersion school. If the recommendations are followed, the traditional students who would be displaced by the closure of Morningside would instead go to Driggs Elementary.

Throughout the meeting, Hogan emphasized that these are only proposals and that the decision on closures hasn’t been made yet. He said the proposal will undergo a first reading on Nov. 18. And then the School Board would take final action on any decisions Dec. 2.

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