The State School Board recently swatted down a recommendation from the State Charter School Board for the expansion of Pinnacle Canyon Academy, the first rejection of a charter board action since it was established last summer.
Pinnacle Canyon, a K-8 charter in Helper, Carbon County, is in its fifth year of operation and had applied to the charter board late last year to expand to K-12.
The action sparked bitter opposition from Carbon School District, whose leaders said competing with another high school in the already shrinking district would result in the loss of even more school programs.
Carbon officials reported that since Pinnacle was founded, the school district has lost 29 teachers and hundreds of students.
After visiting the school and meeting with Pinnacle leaders, the charter board approved of the expansion (after an initial denial), and made the recommendation to the state school board last month.
For their part, Carbon School District sent materials to state board members illustrating the negative impact the expansion would have on the district, among other issues.
Amid those materials were Pinnacle's lower test scores, accusations that some teachers were not qualified and alleged administrative wrongdoing.
"It's all absolutely not true and the decision was unfair," said Jenny Gagon, one of Pinnacle's administrators. "We were not given an opportunity to refute any of those accusations."
Many school board members, however, were primarily concerned with hurting the district by taking money away from the already "bare-necessity" schools.
"In too many of the public policy decisions being made in Utah today we are swinging so far to meet individual needs that we are risking irreparable harm to public education as a whole," said Debra Roberts, state board member. "I would think that (Pinnacle) would do well in meeting some individual needs . . . and in an ideal world of adequate resources, I could support that.
"But we do not live in an ideal world, and this is one time when the needs of the individual do not outweigh the needs of the whole."
E-mail: terickson@desnews.com