HOLLADAY — Pleas from residents wanting to save Cottonwood High School proved monumental as the Holladay City Council voted 4-2 Thursday to allow residents to vote for a new school district but with an island of residents remaining in Granite School District.
It's unknown whether such a plan is legal. The law allowing existing districts to be split says a new district cannot land-lock portions of the former district.
Council member Lynn Pace pitched the substitute motion as a way to prevent the beloved school from closing down.
"We can preserve Cottonwood High School and still allow the vote on small districts," said Pace, who chairs the small school district committee studying the split issue. "We may live in cities, but we label ourselves by high schools. The closure of any high school is unacceptable. ... I'm not willing to risk Cottonwood High School. That's the whole point of this proposal."
That motion, if now approved by South Salt Lake and Salt Lake County, means a portion of east Murray that is in Granite School District would remain in Granite.
The sliver includes Cottonwood High and Twin Peaks and Woodstock elementaries. Murray voted in July to fold that area into its existing district if the split is approved by voters in November.
The vote falls in line with what Murray residents want. Murray city hosted numerous community meetings to determine what option residents wanted. Most opted to stay with Granite.
Under that scenario, however, the Murray superintendent says Cottonwood High School will most likely close. Only 350 students living in east Murray attend Cottonwood, so they would instead attend Murray High School and Cottonwood would then be sold, leased or used to house Murray's Hillcrest Junior High, which needs to be rebuilt.
In the past few weeks, a strong group of east-side leaders and district officials has banded together to stop the division because of Cottonwood's potential closure.
Resident Jan McConkey said closing Cottonwood would be "terrorizing" a community. "One of our sister communities is in trouble," she said at Thursday's Holladay meeting. "It destroys a community to close a high school."
Council members Hugo Diedrich and Patricia Pignaelli cast the two dissenting votes. They both want to hold off on a vote until 2008.
"To act on a proposal so radical tonight would be absolutely irresponsible," Diedrich said. "I think it's worth looking at, but not to vote on it tonight."
He thinks more time should be spent studying the issue. His biggest concern, however, is only allowing the east-side residents to vote. Some west-side residents who believe the split would negatively affect them have threatened legal action.
If the proposed new district is approved, Holladay, South Salt Lake and Millcreek Township would create their own district.
"This is as close to a rigged election as it can be," Deidrich said. "To me, it's not American and it's frustrating."
Most residents who voiced their opinion at Holladay's public hearing also said a vote should be delayed.
"We did this a few years ago. There's an opening in the law and let's jump on it, no matter what, because we can. I agree we need to do something about Granite School District, but the kids' education and the financial impacts are unknown," said Jim Palmer.
A feasibility study shows a new district could work and would just be 1 percent over budget. Some have argued the study misses the mark.
Palmer, however, argues the council cannot base its decision on the study.
"This thing is seriously flawed. If we can't make heads or tails of it, we can't expect the voters to."
Holladay's decision comes as a new study by the University of Utah, commissioned by Holladay, South Salt Lake and Salt Lake County, has been circulating among public officials. That study looked at different ways school districts are run nationwide.
It concluded that size doesn't mean better participation by local governments. Having a bigger voice in school district operations was one of the main reasons South Salt Lake and Holladay got involved in the small school district debate.
E-mail: astowell@desnews.com