Eastwood community members urged Granite School District officials on Tuesday to reconsider a planning-and-boundaries (PAC) recommendation to close Eastwood Elementary and send students to Oak Ridge, presenting data and a set of alternative boundary options and program moves they said would preserve Eastwood and address the study’s goals.

The meeting, organized by the Eastwood Community Council and attended by district staff, featured community presentations about Eastwood’s academic standing, program strengths and safety concerns, followed by a response from Steve Hogan, director of planning and boundaries for Granite School District.

Why it matters: Eastwood parents said closing the school would displace high-performing students, risk additional attrition to charter and private schools, and force families and young children onto walking routes they described as unsafe. The community proposed moving the Area Learning Center (ALC) program to Eastwood, shifting portions of Morningside and William Penn boundaries, and placing the district’s French DLI (dual language immersion) program at Oak Ridge as a package intended to keep programs intact while improving utilization across several schools.

Community case and evidence

Megan Medina, an Eastwood Community Council member who opened the meeting, said the evening’s purpose was “to foster meaningful collaboration between Granite School District, the Board of Education, and the Eastwood community as we continue the conversation around the PAC study.”

Brian Stout, Eastwood Community Council chair, summarized the district timeline: on Sept. 2 the district presented a recommendation to close Eastwood at the end of the school year and send the students to Oak Ridge. Stout and multiple presenters repeated that Eastwood is a high‑performing school with strong attendance, strong teacher retention and special designations—material they argued the PAC process underweighted.

Tara Litter, speaking for the Eastwood community council and reading teacher statements, said Eastwood is “one of the top schools in the state” and highlighted that the school holds a Gold STEM designation. Litter said she and community members spoke directly with the Utah STEM Action Center and were told that the Gold STEM designation “does not, cannot, and will not transfer” to a new school site, a point the presenters used to argue that moving Eastwood students to Oak Ridge would not preserve that programmatic distinction.

Parents and community presenters also raised technical concerns about the PAC analysis: they said the district’s online capacity figures changed after the Sept. 2 recommendation (they noted an update posted Sept. 29), and questioned reliance on an 2017 Facility Condition Index (FCI) score the community called outdated. A parent who reviewed district enrollment figures said Eastwood had lost 34 students over seven years (about 2% per year), while Oak Ridge experienced a larger seven‑year decline—190 students—plus an acute loss of 34 in the last year; presenters warned that moving students from a low‑attrition school into a higher‑attrition environment could accelerate net enrollment losses.

Safety and transportation concerns were raised repeatedly. Parents described walking-route tests and a community walk in which about 130 people tested possible paths to Oak Ridge and reported several segments they called unsafe, including blind curves and missing sidewalks on Jupiter and Wasatch Boulevards. The community said Oak Ridge’s campus layout would require additional buses: presenters cited 136 bus‑eligible Eastwood boundary students, a bus capacity of 84, and an estimated cost of about $220,000 per bus per year—meaning two or three buses would be required and could eliminate any projected operating savings from a closure.

Community alternative proposal

The Eastwood group offered an explicit alternative: relocate Morningside’s ALC program to Eastwood, transfer a northern portion of Morningside’s traditional enrollment into Eastwood (they argued many of those students already attend Eastwood), send another portion of William Penn’s boundary to Rosecrest, and move the French DLI program to Oak Ridge to align with Churchill Junior High’s language pathway. Presenters said that combination would raise Eastwood’s projected enrollment to roughly the low‑to‑mid 400s, reduce split feeder patterns into different junior highs, and create a competitive, program‑rich option that could retain out‑of‑boundary families.

District response and next steps

Steve Hogan, director of planning and boundaries, responded that PAC is a recommending body and that the board—as the elected governing body—will make any final decision. Hogan acknowledged the quality of Eastwood’s programs and said many of the district’s slides and data are snapshots that can vary year to year. He said the district uses multiple inputs—enrollment trends, capacity models and transportation eligibility rules—and that some claimed data (for example, attrition drivers or precise sidewalk remediation costs) are not always available in the complete form the community requests because external actors (charters, state agencies, counties) control parts of that data.

Hogan told the meeting that staff would re‑run numbers and consider the community’s alternative proposals. He and the superintendent said the PAC recommendation will go to the Board of Education; the district expects the board’s first reading on the timeline the district posted (district staff cited upcoming board meetings as part of the public schedule and said they would communicate any substantive changes). Hogan also clarified that many facilities and security investments are funded from different grant sources and that a previous county grant for driveway improvements was withdrawn when the community did not adopt one of three engineering options the county offered.

No formal action or vote occurred at the meeting; the PAC recommendation remains a recommendation to the board. District staff said they will present any amended recommendation or significant changes to stakeholders if they occur before the board’s consideration.

What remained unresolved

Community members pressed the district for more specific data: the detailed traffic and safety studies referenced in the PAC materials, up‑to‑date capacity worksheets used to compute adjusted capacities, the age and applicability of the 2017 FCI scores, and a clearer forecast of long‑term enrollment if the closure were implemented. Parents also sought commitments on how special education students and program continuity would be handled if the plan moved forward; district staff said those services would be assessed individually and that special‑education placements are constrained by classification and space requirements.

The meeting closed with mutual calls for continued collaboration. Community presenters repeatedly offered to work with district staff on a plan they described as student‑centered and data driven; district leaders said they would review the community’s proposals and run additional scenarios before the board reviews PAC’s recommendation.