SANDY, UTAH (ABC 4 News) - A big controversy is brewing in the Canyon’s School District over changes in middle school boundaries and buildings.
A school board meeting Tuesday night is expected to be heated as parent’s voice their anger about the closure of Crescent View Middle School in Sandy, and the rebuilding of it in Draper. Parents say it breaks up neighborhood children, and will force bussing to Mount Jordan Middle School four miles away.
Nancy Chappell has two children at Crescent View. She says she, and other parents in her neighborhood, feel misled. They claim the bond they recently voted for funded a new high school and renovation of Crescent View. "The Canyons School District has completely changed what the original bond was that we voted for. If I had known they were going to close our junior high I would not have voted for the bond.”
Others say the idea just doesn't make a lot of sense to them. Jessica Breur says she can’t understand why the district would build a new school, at more cost, and bus kids farther away. Breur says they need their neighborhood school. "Now we are being told that a new junior high will be built, great honestly, but that ours will be closed, and there are hundreds of middle school students from here and they will be bussing them further away from our community."
The Canyons School District says most of the 1,400 students that attend Crescent View live in south Draper where the new Crescent View School will be located. Jennifer Toomer-Cook, District Spokesperson, says all of the boundaries for every school were carefully studied, with several objectives in mind. "How can we make cleaner feeder systems, how can we make it so we can we make it so we can reconfigure grades in 2013 and bring all of the 9th graders into the high school, and how can we make it so these boundaries are viable for the next couple of decades so we don't have to do this every five years.”
Toomer-Cook also says there is precedent for what the district is attempting to do with the Crescent View change. Midvale Elementary is also being rebuilt at a new location. She says while some parents who live in walking distance are upset, there are others who are thrilled to get a new school.
Questions remain about how the new Crescent View will be funded.
