When I campaigned for the Canyons School District school board in 2008, I went door-to-door in all of my neighborhoods. I asked the community and church leaders of these communities what was their greatest educational concern.

Over and over again I heard "a third, a third, a third" -- a third of their children were going to private or charter schools, a third remained in the local traditional public neighborhood schools, and a third went to neighboring school districts. They were concerned that with this choice their neighborhoods and communities were being fragmented and divided.

Also, families were being divided. One father lamented that he had one daughter attending the neighborhood elementary school with her sister going to another elementary school offering an honors program. He asked, "Can't we have the honors program in all of our neighborhood schools and reunite my family?"

There are two competing values -- choice and the desire of parents to have their neighborhood schools. Charter schools and traditional public schools now compete for the same dollars, resulting in two underfunded systems. What is more American than freedom of choice? While choice is essential in our political and economic systems, I have concluded that the school choice movement in education is contributing to the serious fragmentation of our society and undermining the traditional ties of public neighborhood schools -- a vital institution in our democratic society.

What are the origins of charter schools or the school choice movement? In 1954, the U. S. Supreme Court issued its historic decision against school segregation, Brown v. Board of Education. Some school districts in the South responded to the court's pressure to desegregate by adopting "freedom of choice" policies.

Under "freedom of choice," students could enroll in any public school they wanted. They encouraged the creation of private schools to accommodate white students who did not want to attend an integrated school. These "schools of choice" were also known as "segregation academies."

Do we need traditional neighborhood public schools? I believe we do. Diane Ravich, research professor of education at New York University and former U.S. assistant secretary of education, writes in her book, Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education:

"The neighborhood school is the place where parents meet to share concerns about their children and the place where they learn the practice of democracy. They create a sense of community among strangers. As we lose neighborhood public schools, we lose the one local institution where people congregate and mobilize to solve local problems, where individuals learn to speak up and engage in democratic give-and-take with their neighbors."

Ravich maintains that "neighborhood schools are often the anchors of their communities, a steady presence that helps to cement the bonds of community among neighbors. Most are places with a history, laden with traditions and memories that help individuals resist fragmentation in their lives. Their graduates return and want to see their old classrooms, they want to see the trophy cases and the old photographs, to hear the echoes in the gymnasium and walk on the playing fields. To close these schools serves no purpose other than to destroy those memories, to sever the building from the culture of its neighbors and to erode a sense of community that was decades in the making."

An example of this in Canyons School District is Sandy Elementary located at the top of historic Sandy. Now attended by the daughters of our board president, Tracy Cowdell, four generations of Cowdells have proudly attended Sandy Elementary.

I attended a concert at Sandy Elementary and found the Cowdell family tradition repeated. Numerous patrons were third- and fourth-generation Sandy Elementary Sharks. Sandy Elementary was at the core of their sense of community and belonging.

As citizens we should have connection to the place we live and be prepared to work together with our neighbors on common problems. When neighbors have no common meeting ground found in the traditional neighborhood public schools, it is difficult for them to organize on behalf of their community.

Canyons School District is working to implement many innovative programs to improve the academic rigor and relevance of public education in our local neighborhood schools to bring our children back home.

is a member of the Canyons School District Board of Education. He lives in Cottonwood Heights. The opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of the Canyons School District Board of Education.