This website exists to help the Park Lane community take action to preserve our school. We ask every concerned community member to email the Canyons School Board before their decision is made in early November. Please also attend the Community Meeting hosted by Park Lane on October 28 from 6-8, where you can tell the board in person why you believe Park Lane should stay open!
Every voice has an impact.
The Boundary Study proposal has created a rift between Granite and Park Lane communities. Whatever the final decision, Park Lane is committed to consolidating with kindness and building a cohesive community in which we can all take pride.
Simply put: Keeping Granite open would require more buses than if Park Lane housed the new combined school. According to the district’s presentation slides from the September 2 board meeting, keeping Granite open would require three more buses than would be required if Park Lane stayed open and housed the combined school. If the Raintree neighborhood stays with the larger Granite community as they are now proposing, it would require FOUR additional buses to house the new school at Granite. At $48,000 annual cost per bus, that is a difference of almost $200k per year on bussing costs.
Fixing the Park Lane parking lot would be a one-time investment, but the costs of bussing if Park Lane closes will be a recurring expense. Year after year, the district would be spending taxpayer money to bus 300+ kids to Granite when there is a perfectly good school building in our own backyard, a building that’s actually newer, larger, and in better condition! In five years, the district will have spent almost one million dollars unnecessarily bussing our kids. Granite already busses most of their students. Diverting the buses five minutes down the hill seems like a simpler- and cheaper- option.
If the goal is cost reduction, then saving Park Lane is the better solution long-term.
In January of 2024, the Canyons board released the results of an independent demographics study conducted by Applied Economics, LLC. This study revealed that between 2020 and 2030, Granite Elementary boundary would decrease by 49 kids, while the Park Lane boundary would only decrease by 6 kids. Park Lane simply has more affordable homes for families. In the past seven years, Granite’s enrollment has fallen at twice the rate of Park Lane’s.
The study also included the “service rate” of each area, that is the percentage of students enrolled in the district’s schools. For the Granite Elementary area, the service rate is 60.9%. For the Park Lane area, the service rate is 87.9%. This means that nearly 9 in 10 students in the Park Lane area attend Canyons District public schools, while the Granite area is much more likely to enroll in private school, homeschool, or utilize other non-traditional schooling options.
Clearly, the Park Lane neighborhood is invested in public education. Let’s continue this long-standing tradition of pride in public schools by keeping Park Lane open.
The median home price in the Salt Lake Valley is $630,000. In the Park Lane boundary, 42% of homes are in that price range or below. Only 8% of homes in Granite’s boundary are in that price range or below.
A staggering 58% of homes in Granite’s boundary have recently sold for over one million dollars. It’s a simple fact that families with young, school-aged children are more likely to move into Park Lane’s neighborhood.
Park Lane currently has higher enrollment than Granite, and as we move forward as one school, this neighborhood will continue to have higher enrollment numbers. It just makes sense to keep the school centered in this community at the Park Lane building, where families still have the option of walking and biking to school.
Park Lane is located in the heart of its community, an easy walk or bike ride for almost all Park Lane students, which minimizes the need for parent drop-off. Granite, which lacks consistent sidewalks on all sides, is geographically isolated from most of its neighborhoods and already relies heavily on bussing. In fact, over 50 Granite students live within walking distance from Park Lane and have access to sidewalks to safely do so. Moving Park Lane students to Granite will eliminate the ability for almost all students to walk or bike to school and will increase vehicle congestion.
Park Lane is home to a thriving Special Education program called Accommodated Core Curriculum (ACC). This program currently serves ~40 students. What really makes this program shine is its unique focus on helping ACC students integrate into Regular Education classes. ACC teachers work closely with Regular Ed teachers to make this happen and help these students succeed. Under the District's proposal, the ACC program would be uprooted to a new school, including an unfamiliar building, new administration, and new regular education peers. This significant and unnecessary disruption would place immense hardship on these ACC students and their families, causing trauma and regression in the academic and social progress that these students have worked so hard for over many years.
Granite Elementary hosts a cherished Essential Elements Classroom (EEC) program, serving ~40 students with significant cognitive disabilities. Like our ACC students, EEC kids are a vulnerable population that should also be considered as the district considers school closure/consolidation. Given that the data points to Park Lane Elementary as being the most financially sound location, due to its centrality to the vast majority of students, it makes the most sense to keep the ACC students at Park Lane Elementary, while relocating the EEC program to a school that can nurture them long-term. If the right school is not chosen when our schools recombine, there is a significant chance that one (or more) of these Special Ed programs will need to be rehoused again in the near future.
Simply put, Special Ed students will be best served if Canyons School District uses data to drive decisions rather than favoring one Special Ed population over another.
The Canyons School Board has stated that they are committed to strengthening Eastmont Middle School and Jordan High School. Both of these schools face low student enrollment as many families choose to permit students to neighboring schools instead. This is largely due to both real and perceived challenges that these schools face.
The Park Lane community has significant ties to Eastmont and Jordan and is crucial to building up these schools. The Jordan High Cross Country team participates in Park Lane’s annual Fun Run and are idolized by our students. Park Lane families provide a tremendous amount of parental support at both Eastmont and Jordan that is essential to keeping those schools viable. Despite the significant challenges these schools face, such as building conditions and lack of advanced class programs, Park Lane families are committed to investing in those schools and fight to make them better for everyone.
By closing Park Lane and sending our students up to Granite Elementary, which currently feeds into both Albion and Brighton boundaries, more and more Park Lane families will permit into Albion, Brighton, and other schools. Under the current proposal, most students in the current Granite boundaries will continue to feed into Albion/Brighton, while all Park Lane students remain in the Eastmont/Jordan boundaries.
This split feeder system is a huge issue and will lead to a divided school if Granite and Park Lane combine. As Park Lane students befriend Granite students who are going to Albion, they will have even more reason to permit into Albion and then Brighton. This would be a disaster for both Eastmont and for Jordan High.
Park Lane’s parking lot is the school district’s most cited reason for closing the school. Due to the slope of the entrance/exit, buses driven by less experienced drivers (usually substitute drivers) occasionally scrape the ground when entering/exiting the lot. For ten years, the Park Lane School Community Council (SCC) has been asking the district to fix the lot and has been passed over for more urgent district needs. In Park Lane’s SCC minutes from May 2017 it states, “Parking Lot is on the district’s 5-year plan to be redone.” It’s a bitter irony that this inaction might now close our beloved school.
When interviewed, school district bus drivers stated that the Granite parking lot is significantly more dangerous to students than Park Lane’s. While Park Lane’s entrance/exit needs regrading, the separate bus and parent areas reduce risk. Granite’s parking lot, though flat, merges parent drivers, special ed buses, and regular ed buses. This results in chaos and puts kids in danger. Adding over 300 Park Lane students to this mix will undoubtedly worsen this situation.
Getting to Granite can be tough in the winter. On powder days, both Mount Jordan Road and 9400 South experience significant canyon-bound traffic. During snow storms, cars slide down the hill to the left of Mount Jordan (on 9800 S just below the cemetery) and crashes have resulted. Roads around Park Lane are wide, straight, consistently plowed, and safely lined with sidewalks.
Satellite photo of Granite Elementary. Busses (yellow) and cars (red) merge as they exit the lot.
Moreover, Park Lane has room to expand. There’s a large, mostly unused black top area behind the school that could be repurposed as a bus drop-off. Fixing the Park Lane lot would be a one-time investment, but the costs of bussing if Park Lane closes will be a recurring expense. Year after year, the district would be spending taxpayer money to bus 300+ kids to Granite when there is a perfectly good school building in our own backyard, a building that’s actually newer, larger, and in better condition!
Satellite photo of Park Lane Elementary Parking Lot. Buses (yellow) and cars (red) are separate from each other during pick up and drop off, increasing student safety. The area in blue is the unused black top area that could be fenced off as another ADA accessible entrance.
The following data is from the State of Utah Report Card. Clearly, the three nearby schools being considered for closure in this boundary study are all very high-performing schools, but when objectively looking at the numbers, Park Lane outscores Granite and Willow Canyon in every area for the last three years (the only years available on the Utah State Report Card website).
High-performing schools are like a living organism, with multiple elements factoring into their health. It takes excellent teachers, effective leadership, a strong community, and dedicated families all working together to support and motivate the student body. Park Lane has perfected the recipe for this “secret sauce.” We are happy and excited to welcome many more students to our school, but significant disruptions to Park Lane- like the closure of the building and a move to bussing instead of prioritizing walkability- may damage the delicate balance of this dynamic community.
Instead, district leaders should bring students here. We will integrate them into our exceptional school and create a new, high-achieving, community-centered school.
Important Update: Boundary Changes, School Consolidations/Closures As you are aware, Canyons School District is reviewing elementary school-boundary changes and consolidation/closures to respond to declining elementary enrollment and lay the groundwork […]