Following weeks of heated discussion, two student protests and hordes of phone calls and e-mails, the Granite Board of Education decided not to close any schools after all.
The board at the stroke of midnight Wednesday morning overturned its decision of less than an hour before to close Hill View Elementary School. That's after it already voted to keep open Granite High, and rebuild fire-ravaged Wasatch Junior High — the other two schools that would have closed under an advisory committee's recommendation.
But weeks, and perhaps even days, before, the board was entertaining the idea of mothballing as many as five schools.
So how did it go from there, to closing none?
Several say it came down to community response, and courage — or lack thereof. And now, the district might have to get creative to balance its budget.
"We're all kind of scratching our heads on where they think the money's going to come from," Taylorsville resident Aimee Newton said.
The 69,000-student district says it has 8,700 empty seats, costing taxpayers $3 million to sustain. Its options committee, made up of community and school workers, ultimately recommended adjusting boundaries and closing schools — at one point, up to eight — to maximize efficiency and educational programs and keep kids together from elementary through high school.
The board approved three options for October public comment.
But the idea of closing schools riled some residents, who fought to keep them open.
Olympus and Skyline residents formed the Friends for Education Coalition. The group reached out to communities districtwide. Its "Sustainable Education Option," which sought to keep all schools open and rebuild Granite and Granger high schools, was cited in community discussions, by student protesters, and some 1,100 people responding to district surveys on the matter.
"The influence of Friends for Education ...that's what did it," board member Carole Cannon said of the board's decision. "The other thing that happened, is, . . . a lot of support (emerged) for neighborhood schools."
Holladay city wrote a letter to the board supporting the idea, as did a reported 11 legislators. South Salt Lake city officials fought for Granite High, even suggesting talks to help rebuild the century-old school.
"I have not been convinced (of school closures), I'm sorry, by the numbers. I see school parking lots full, I see enormous class sizes. . . . I see neighborhoods, my own and others . . . with young families moving in," Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, told the board Tuesday night. "If neighborhood schools close, neighborhoods die."
The board on Tuesday essentially embraced the Sustainable Education Option. While its debate focused on the options committee's final recommendation to close Granite High, Wasatch Junior and Hill View Elementary, it voted that proposal down, one piece at a time.
"I was surprised when the options came out from the options committee, the only (schools) on the table were Granite and Wasatch and Hill View. I think we had expected to see some of the others that had been on there before, as in the earlier options," board President Patricia Sandstrom said. "But no one brought them up. I was surprised."
The board did vote to close Hill View. But during a break just before midnight, board members wondered, "What did we just do?" Cannon said. "We just sacrificed a school for $300,000 (in annual operation cost savings)?"
So it reversed itself. "We can't let (Hill View) be the scapegoat to say, 'We did something,' " Sandstrom said.
Woodstock PTA President Sheila Ostler agrees the board had little choice after it voted to keep Granite High School open. "If you don't close a high school or a junior high, to make it worth (the cost savings), you have to close five or six elementary schools. And they couldn't do that."
The board did, however, vote to adjust boundaries to improve school feeder patterns. And it set up a plan to maintain small elementary schools, including studying schools for closure if the school dips below 300 and proficiency on state tests drops by 2.5 percent or more. All are subject to final action Nov. 29.
Dan Lofgren, who often spoke on behalf of Friends for Education, believes the board came to recognize community implications of closing schools and mustered the guts to do the right thing.
"Given the setting, the bold choice, the courageous choice, was to do what they did," Lofgren said. "And the educational opportunities for an awful lot of children were made better."
But that's where several disagree.
"I think that it's irresponsible to not close schools when we so clearly can't maintain them and offer the kids the best," board member Julene Jolley said. "I quite frankly think . . . people with some power and loud, loud voices got to our board members and turned them around. And it's hard to weigh the facts when someone's screaming their message in their ear."
Ostler believes some schools needed to close, and said Cottonwood was gearing up to embrace Granite students.
"We are so happy our little school (Woodstock) stayed open. So we feel victorious," Ostler said. "But as a district, I feel like it's an empty victory. (Four board members) didn't do . . . what's best for the kids of the Granite School District."
Evergreen parent Julia Tillou said the board might have thought schools on the table for closure would not help achieve district goals. But she also wonders if the action will come back to haunt them.
"While I admire their willingness to halt the closure process if they believed they would be making a mistake, I think the mandate to balance the budget will force the board to revisit school closures in the not-too-distant future."
For the past five years, the district has taken measures, from increasing class size to raising taxes, to make ends meet.
But Wasatch PTA President Jamileh Jameson says residents plan to heed the board's call to seek more school funding from the Legislature.
"I know we're all committed to that," Jameson said.
But Rep. Kory Holdaway, R-Taylorsville, on Tuesday cautioned the board against hitting up lawmakers when the board could have acted to address its own budget concerns.
Adds Granger resident Phil Conder: "I think it's the height of hypocrisy for the board to reject every cost-cutting (measure) recommended by the committee, but then ask everybody to go petition for more money from the Legislature."
Jolley believes if the Legislature doesn't come through with a 4.5 percent per-student funding hike, the district could be looking at program or teacher benefit cuts.
But some of her colleagues say there are other ways to raise money.
Cannon believes the district could look for grants.
Sandstrom suggested the board might one day seek a bond and didn't know if a tax increase was in the future. If either are needed, she said she hopes residents would back them.
"Three million dollars, yes, that's a lot of money. Yes, I don't know where the cuts will be made," Sandstrom said. "We'll take a look . . . and we'll make it work."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com