There isn’t room in Stansbury Park’s elementary schools for more students, but parents aren’t pleased with a proposed plan to deal with the problem.
If adopted, the plan will result in boundary changes and send students from the Benson Gristmill and the Delagada areas of Stansbury Park to Copper Canyon Elementary in Tooele City.
But at a public hearing on the proposed plan Tuesday night at Stansbury High School, the Tooele County School Board heard a lot of opposition to the change.
The school district’s boundary committee, composed of district staff and parents, recommended the boundary change. They suggested the change should be effective until a new school is built in the Benson Gristmill area.
“There just isn’t room for all the students that live in the boundaries of Stansbury Park and Rose Springs elementary schools to attend those two schools,” said Scott Rogers, Tooele County School District superintendent.
Rose Springs and Stansbury Park Elementary schools had a combined enrollment of 1,665 students in the fall of 2014. That’s 240 more students than the ideal capacity for the schools, and more students are expected to enroll next year.
Students in the affected areas already ride a bus to Stansbury Park Elementary every day. The drive to Copper Canyon will add six miles, each way, to their bus ride.
Parents that live in the Benson Gristmill and Delgada areas expressed concerns Tuesday night about the extra time their children will be on a bus, and the separation of their children from the community where they live.
“This is dividing a great community,” said Brenda Spearman, a parent who lives in the Benson Gristmill area.
The bus ride on busy SR-36 worries Crystal Fowler, who also lives in the Benson Gristmill area.
“I am extremely nervous about busing my second grader on a freeway that has been very deadly these last couple of months at 60 miles an hour with no seat belt on a school bus,” she said. “We need to look at other options.”
Some parents, like Heather Gresham, said they moved to Stansbury Park for the schools.
“I came here from South Salt Lake for Stansbury Park schools,” she said. “I feel like my choice has been taken away from me. We moved here for the school and being bused to Tooele is not our first option.”
The parents that objected to the busing plan mentioned other options they prefer to solve the enrollment problem.
Spearman suggested that busing might not be needed if non-Stansbury students who attend Stansbury schools with an open enrollment waiver are returned to their home schools.
In addition, the school district should require that all students in Stansbury Park elementary schools be re-enrolled by their parents with proof of their current address.
This would eliminate “ghost” students who have moved outside the boundaries of the schools but whose parents continue to use their old address or a daycare provider’s address to enroll them, according to Spearman.
Other options mentioned by parents included year-round school, extended day school, busing sixth grade students to portables at Clarke Johnsen Junior High, or closing a school with low enrollment in Tooele and using the funds saved to build a school in Stansbury Park.
The school board’s current preference is to wait until 2017 to ask voters to approve a general obligation bond to build a new elementary school. The school would be built on land that was donated to the district in the Benson Gristmill Area, according to Maresa Manzione, school board president.
The school district has bonds that will be retired in 2017 making it possible to take out a new bond without raising property tax, she said.
If voters approve the bond in 2017, a new school could be built and open by the fall of 2019, according to Rogers.
But three years of busing is too long, according to some Stansbury residents.
Wade Hadlock, Stansbury resident, wants a new school sooner than 2019.
“I hate to see our community divided over the boundary issue,” he said. “There is one solution that would ease every concern I see here tonight and that would have been to have built a new school. But that didn’t happen. Building a new school will ease everybody’s concerns, so that is the direction we should go.”
Hadlock asked the school board to set aside capital money from the state for a new school and to bond for the new school before 2017.
Stansbury parents weren’t the only concerned citizens to show up at Tuesday night’s public hearing.
Parents from the Gleneagles subdivision were upset about the boundary committee’s recommendation to move their children from Overlake Elementary to Northlake Elementary.
“This isn’t a solution to anything,” said Elizabeth Andrews, who lives in Gleneagles. “You are shattering our community.”
Residents of Gleneagles consider their community to be part of Overlake. They identify socially and geographically with Overlake, according to Andrews.
The committee also recommended that students in the area described as “Middle Erda” be moved from Grantsville Elementary to Overlake Elementary.
Residents said they liked the new boundary, but they want stability for their students in the future.
“I just don’t want his to be a temporary fix,” said Mindy Gull of Erda.
The board will discuss and take action on the boundary committee report at their Feb. 10 meeting at 7 p.m. in the board room at the district office at 92 Lodestone Way in Ninigret Depot.