Salt Lake School District would have to undertake a major building program if it decides to combine its three high schools into two, a report prepared for the School Board states.
The report concludes that combining the three high schools into two and moving ninth-graders back into the five intermediate schools would cause serious overcrowding in the district's secondary schools.To prevent the problems of overcrowding - reduction of elective courses, confusion in the halls, more student discipline infractions - would require the district to construct major additions to the two remaining high schools and to increase the intermediate schools from five to six, the report said.
The report, prepared by consultant John Reed Call, is part of the board's ongoing seismic study of how to improve the ability of the schools to withstand a moderate to severe earthquake.
A 1989 seismic study by a panel of experts estimated it will cost the district $20 million to $50 million over the next 20 years to retrofit or replace all school buildings to make them safer.
The board has turned its attention first to the city's three aging, multilevel high schools, which the seismic study predicted could become death traps for thousands of students in a major earthquake unless they were modified.
Before making any decisions on the buildings, the board is exploring the various high school size options. No decisions have been made.
Two weeks ago, the board received a report on one super-sized high school of 5,000 students. Tuesday, board members also interviewed Lloyd McCleary, a University of Utah education professor and former superintendent of Township High School in Evanston, Ill., when it had a 5,400-student enrollment.
The board will also study the three-high-school option Sept. 4.
Call, retired Granite superintendent, told School Board members that they can't solve space problems in the high schools by simply adding portable classrooms. That would increase total classrooms but would not add laboratories or space for other specialized uses, he said.
When Granite's Granger High School was overcrowded, the report noted, it was forced to eliminate any elective physical education classes and had to limit home economics and industrial arts classes to seniors only.
Call suggested that the district hire a demographics consultant to project enrollment in the next decade to determine building needs. It was a recommendation that board members said they favor.
In looking at the shift of ninth-graders from the high schools to intermediate schools, Call said he considered the possibility of reactivating Highland Park Elementary School as a junior high but rejected it. The school was originally built as Southeast Junior High but later converted to an elementary school.
He said using that building as a junior high would only transfer the space shortage from the intermediate schools to the elementary schools and would require significant boundary changes.