Once hailed as the “high school of the future” by a prominent education policy journal, Salt Lake City’s Innovations Early College High School is now on the brink of closure.
That looming possibility drew about a dozen parents, students and teachers to Tuesday’s Salt Lake City School District board meeting, where they urged board members to spare what they described as a unique school.
The speciality high school offers students free concurrent and early-college enrollment at the nearby Salt Lake Community College campus on State Street, while also allowing children to work at their own pace and set their own schedules.
That personalization is what many parents told board members made the biggest difference in their children’s academic performance.
But district officials point to declining enrollment as the reason for considering shuttering the school. On Aug. 5, the board voted unanimously to move forward with a closure study, a step in Utah’s school closure process that could lead to its closure as soon as the 2026–27 school year.
Innovations opened in 2012 and its enrollment has declined “significantly” from 429 in the 2016-17 school year to just 95 this fall, according to a report shared during an Oct. 7 regular board meeting.
Tim Phillips, a parent and member of Innovations’ School Community Council, said he believes the district engineered the enrollment drop. He said that about two years ago, district officials told Innovations staff they wanted to focus on students who were taking college-credit courses and would begin “exiting” those who weren’t.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tim Phillips, the father of a student attending Innovations Early College High School, speaks as the Board of Education of the Salt Lake City School District holds a public hearing to discuss the potential school closure of Innovations Early College High School on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.
“We expressed concern [that] if we’re exiting kids, that’s less money coming in,” Phillips said.
He said they were assured there was nothing to worry about.
“And now … the district is wanting to close it,” Phillips said.
District officials told The Salt Lake Tribune in a statement that while they had not given the school a directive to “exit” students, the district believed Innovations had strayed from its original purpose, which was to “provide students with early college opportunities, allowing students to earn both high school and college credit through flexible, personalized schedules.”
To remedy that, officials began working with families to explore whether other schools would better support students not taking college courses, said district spokesperson Jason Olsen.
“Supporting students to ensure that they graduate from high school became, by necessity, a large focus for the school,” Olsen said. “Sometimes, that meant students were better served in other school settings.”
(Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City's Innovations Early College High School, seen here in 2018.
Turnover and past financial mismanagement
In its early years, Innovations was considered “cutting edge,” as the journal Education Next put it in 2016, because students controlled their own schedules, classes and lessons. The approach drew both top performers and students who struggled in traditional school settings.
However, Innovations has not been without its challenges, including significant principal turnover – the school saw three principals in the 2017-18 school year alone – and allegations of financial mismanagement by one of those former principals, Ken Grover.
Grover exaggerated student achievement and graduation rates while spending large sums on candy, gift cards, accessories and other student incentives, according to a 2018 investigation by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project, published in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune.
The principal turnover created an “ebb and flow” that has hurt students, Mike Harman, an education specialist for the district, told board members Tuesday evening
“I think we’ve let Innovations, the academic part of the high school, suffer because of that,” said Harman, a Poplar Grove resident.
Despite the ups and downs, 17-year-old Lizzie Phillips, a senior at Innovations and Tim Phillips’ daughter, said she has “enjoyed” her four years and earned enough college credits to get a head start in her freshman year of college.
“It’s sad to see it go,” Lizzie said. “My family has been involved with it for a long time, so it means something to me.”
In recent years, however, she said she has noticed fewer and fewer classmates.
“It’s pretty rough,” Lizzie said, adding that she is unsure why enrollment has dropped. “I think there’s a variety of answers to that. … Depends on the person.”
The board plans to take a final vote on the issue during its Dec. 2 regular board meeting, according to the district’s website.
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