The school year hasn’t yet started for Salt Lake City students, but district leaders are already weighing some major changes.
That includes potentially closing a high school, shuttering a magnet program and converting Nibley Park School — a K-8 school — into a K-6.
The Salt Lake City School District’s board of education unanimously voted Aug. 5 to study potentially closing Innovations Early College High School as early as the 2026-27 school year.
The speciality high school offers students free concurrent and early-college enrollment at the nearby Salt Lake Community College campus on State Street.
But fewer students are enrolling, said Brian Conley, the district’s director of boundary and planning, at the Aug. 5 board meeting.
The main goal of the study is to assess whether the school “continues to fulfill its original mission of offering a unique instructional model,” Conley said. “We suspect it’s not meeting its original intent.”
Innovations’ overall enrollment has dipped, Conley said, with district officials estimating it could soon drop below 120 students.
Of those, even fewer are taking on-campus SLCC concurrent enrollment courses. According to district data, just 17 took those courses during the 2024-25 school year.
Conley noted that the high school operates separately from the district’s Career and Technical Center, which shares the State Street building. That will eventually relocate to the former Riley Elementary School, following the board’s June vote to convert the building into a new center.
Riley was one of four elementary schools that the district closed last year.
“I am supportive of the study,” board member Ashley Anderson said of Innovations last week. “That’s how we learn what we should do.”
The board also voted Aug. 5 to study closing Washington Elementary School’s Magnet Gifted and Talented program. That comes after the board last year voted not to renew the three-year pilot program, which is currently in its final year.
If the board ultimately agrees to shutter the program, this year’s sixth graders will be its last participants, according to board documents.
Nibley Park School could be restructured
Nibley Park School is also being studied — for potential conversion into a K-6 elementary school as soon as the 2026–27 school year.
The school is one of the only two K-8 schools in the district, along with Open Classroom, which is a district-sponsored charter.
The reason it could be restructured? Low enrollment in seventh and eighth grades, which has led to “reduced” course offerings and age-appropriate electives for the students that remain, according to board documents.
That low enrollment, it seems, stems from seventh and eighth graders instead opting to attend Hillside Middle School, or open enrolling at other middle schools, Conley said.
“Many of the students do choose to attend a traditional middle school rather than remain at Nibley,” Conley said. “Bottom line … students were not receiving equitable learning opportunities compared to peers in other middle-grade settings.”
The board didn’t take a vote ahead of the Nibley Park study because grade-level reconfigurations don’t require any formal board action, district spokesperson Yándary Chatwin said.
Studies for all three proposals will take place through November, during which time the district will host information sessions at each school that stands to be impacted.
Public comment will open up during the school board’s regular meeting Oct. 21. A public hearing is planned for the Nov. 3 board meeting.
A vote on all three proposals could be happen as early as the Nov. 18 meeting, according to the district’s website.