The May 28, 2013, report of the Facilities Advisory Committee to the board states that boundary realignment should be considered to address issues of crowding and under utilization of buildings: “We have some schools with empty classrooms and others that are requesting more and more portables. Boundary realignment doesn’t cost money, but could fix some of the overcrowding problems. We should re-assess boundaries from Canyon Crest all the way to Provo Peaks to help to ease some of the overloaded classrooms at Edgemont and Rock Canyon and Wasatch. It would then provide students for the other schools that do have empty classrooms.” There is no evidence on the district website that this recommendation was taken.

Realignment and possibly school closure should also be considered to eliminate unnecessary busing. Students from the River Bottoms are bused into Canyon Crest to keep open a school that doesn’t have a neighborhood to support it; students from West Provo are bused three miles to Spring Creek to keep open a school that doesn’t have a neighborhood to support it; and Franklin Elementary School is fragmented into non-contiguous attendance areas.

Sometimes the district thinks future growth will solve its building and boundary problems, but the district has been notoriously bad at predicting growth. Spring Creek was built under the illusion that future growth would fill it, but it didn’t, and now students have to be bused in to fill it.

Boundary realignment and school closure are politically painful processes. In the last bond election, the district promised to get rid of portables at Westridge, but it never did because it couldn’t face the political pressure of realignment.

Traditionally, Provo residents favor neighborhood schools, and every time the subject of school closure comes up, they say, “Don’t close our school. We want a neighborhood school.” What they don’t realize is that a small school is not a neighborhood school. The district cannot afford to operate small schools, so when a school becomes too small, either boundaries are redrawn and students from other areas are assigned to the school (in which case the students that are so assigned don’t have a neighborhood school) or large numbers of choice students are accepted into the school. Either way, the school no longer feels like a neighborhood school.

Voting to rebuild schools in their present locations will ensure that busing and inefficient utilization of space continue and taxpayer dollars continue to be wasted. I urge you to tell your school board representatives to show the political leadership necessary to realign boundaries and possibly close schools before they ask taxpayers to make financial sacrifices.

– Sandy Packard, former Provo School Board member, Elk Ridge