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Brandi Yanagui grew up on the west side and went to the smaller Salt Lake Center for Science Education 6-12 charter school on her side of town before she transferred to Salt Lake City School District’s Horizonte Instruction and Training Center campus her last year. It was a big change for her as she looked to finish up high school early.
Now, Yanagui — who’s in her second year of studying for her nursing degree at Salt Lake Community College and has a son with special needs who is in his second year of pre-K in the school district — said she regretted her move to an east-side, district-run high school where she was just one student of many.
She’s part of a group that has been pushing district leaders to build a high school on the west side.
“I’ve worked with a lot of the students in this neighborhood, tutored them,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot of their struggles and their fears of having to get to and from school or being in a school where they feel not welcome. And I think it’ll be in the best interest of the community and all the children that we have here to have a high school in their home, in their neighborhood.”
Kids from the west side of Salt Lake City make up more than half of the school district’s high school student body, but none of the district’s comprehensive high schools — West, East or Highland — is located west of the train tracks. The difference means students are forced to make long journeys across town to get to class.
Organizing for a new high school
Utah Community Advocate Network organizer Jorge Jimenez said community consternation over the lack of a west-side high school dates back to the closure of South High School in 1988. Even though that campus was on the east side of town, its location on State Street — the building is now SLCC’s South City campus — was much easier to get to than other schools farther up in the hills.
“Since then, there [have] been discussions about how the students from our communities don’t receive an education at the same level as their east-side counterparts, how they’re not getting the attention, the focus,” he said. “They’re treated [differently], and they’re not made to feel like they’re wanted at schools they attend now, Highland High or East High.”
Organizers had targeted this year’s school district bond for high school improvements as an opportunity to finally give the west-side idea some financial support. Even though the plans weren’t finalized, activists hoped the school district would include some wiggle room in the bond so that money from it could be used for the construction of a campus on the west side. District officials rejected the request.
School district spokesperson Yándary Chatwin said even though the west-side high school is not included in the bond before voters this year, the district is looking for creative ways to better support west-siders attending district campuses, especially for students from Glendale who have to trek over to East High in the city’s Yalecrest neighborhood.
“We do know that we need to do more to include communities across the boundaries of the school,” she said. “We’re continuing the conversations with community members on what we can be doing to support their families who are impacted by not having a high school in their neighborhood right now.”
Attending east-side high schools
Elsa Gonzalez has three girls who have spent most of their lives growing up in the Salt Lake City School District and attending west-side schools. She wants a west-side high school because she feels the current campuses don’t embrace the west-side students who go to them.
“My oldest daughter had a bad experience at East High School,” Gonzalez said in an interview, in Spanish. “When she was attending in 2019, she was a little low on her credits.”
So, Gonzalez tried to get her daughter help from administrators at the school and get her to graduation, but the assistance never materialized. Her daughter ended up leaving the school.
“They ignored her and, to me, that felt like it was racism because I went to get help and they didn’t give it to me,” Gonzalez said.
Community organizers say that communication between the east-side campuses and west-side parents is lacking. The long commutes make it hard for students to fully participate in their education, not least because the distance can restrict how west-siders engage in extracurricular activities.
What the bond could bring
Chatwin contended the bond will still support west-side kids, though, because they make up at least a part of the student body at each of the three traditional high schools. The bond, if passed, would fund the reconstruction of West and Highland and add a fieldhouse at East. It also includes sustainability upgrades at some west-side elementary and middle schools.
Chatwin said funding for a west-side high school wasn’t included in the bond because the district wasn’t as far along in planning for the campus as it was for the other projects. The district also released a report last spring that projected its overall student population will continue to decline.
SLCSD officials have also indicated they would need at least 30 contiguous acres of land to build a comprehensive high school on the west side. They don’t have that right now.
“There are definitely possibilities for that obstacle to be overcome,” Chatwin said. “I don’t have specifics I can share at the moment, but that’s likely a surmountable barrier.”
While the district says on its bond website that passing the initiative doesn’t preclude the construction of a west-side high school, community organizers are skeptical that a district that hasn’t bonded since 1999 would do so again soon after this year’s measure.
“So, the next steps are going to be pursuing the charter school route, speaking to the community about what kind of charter school they would like to have designed,” said Jimenez, the community organizer from the Utah Community Action Network. “... Moving forward, [it] is designing, implementing and building our own charter school, all with it being for the community, by the community, community-first and community-led.”
