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Curtis Linton: Salt Lake City has what it takes to make great schools

Salt Lake City has not done a good job of guaranteeing an equitable education for everyone.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Crossing guard Bing Kerwood helps students cross the street safely at Bonneville Elementary on Tuesday, April 20, 2021. Salt Lake City School District has had 92% of its students return back to the classroom in person this spring, similar to other districts in the county.

 | May 9, 2022, 4:00 p.m.

It’s easy to celebrate how dynamic our beloved Salt Lake City has become. Best economy in the nation, world-class outdoor recreation, increasingly welcoming of all diversities and lifestyles, rapidly developing arts and entertainment scene, nationally renowned research university and every day a new “pioneer” moving here ready to join our fascinating and historic city.

But with all this growth and development, little is written about our students — the future lifeblood of this city.

Our “Small Lake City” has not done a good job of guaranteeing an equitable education for the ever-diversifying students it serves. If we are to assure that this really is the place, not just for us but also for our children and their children, then now is the time to commit our schools to provide equal opportunity for every student every day to achieve educational excellence.

When it comes to our schools, the future is already here. Salt Lake City School District finds itself at a pivotal moment: shrink and recess into a fear-driven mediocrity or reaffirm its formidable strengths to become a national model of urban educational excellence. This stark choice raises two fundamental questions for us to answer: 1. What does educational excellence look like in an urban school? And 2. What are the actions we need to collectively take to guarantee educational excellence for all our students?

Here in Salt Lake City, we are uniquely positioned to be the best urban school district in the nation — not too big and not too small, committed to the values of public education, pro-diversity, empowered by the state’s most experienced teacher work force, a generous business and political community — we have all the ingredients necessary to assure that excellence is achieved, but none of this is guaranteed.

The slow slide to educational mediocrity happens out of conscious view — as we tend to only notice that educational quality has been destroyed after our schools have hit crisis level, it is near impossible to lift them back up. We risk slipping down this slow slide if we as a community persist in our old arguments of Eastside/Westside zero-sum arguments that pit one part of our community against another. Let’s face it: No great city has ever stood tall on the crumbling shoulders of a poor education system.

If excellence in education is what we strive for, then we as a community need to empower Salt Lake City School District to take four key steps:

  • Embrace the district’s shrinking enrollment as an opportunity to align resources directly with individual student needs so that a student’s ZIP code is no longer code for educational excellence, or the lack thereof.
  • Unleash innovation in neighborhood schools so that the local educators who know the students best can engage students with rigorous firsthand learning, provide choice within the learning rather than just choice between schools, and create truly welcoming environments where every student is honored for their diverse identities and supported within their unique needs.
  • Shift focus from traditional credit-based graduation to true college and career readiness — as defined by Utah’s innovative Portrait of a Graduate — through district-wide concurrent college enrollment that empowers every student to attain at least their general ed certificate or a professional certification by the time they finish high school.
  • Invest in our teachers so that Salt Lake City becomes the district teachers want to work in by providing not only the best in pay and benefits, but a real investment in the career development of our educators through multi-year teacher apprenticeships, graduate study support, coaching, teaming, planning time, and no salary penalties when great teachers choose to stay in the classroom.

    • Educational excellence is within reach now and does not require significant financial investment. It just requires our collective will and courage — do we as a thriving city have what it takes to create a vibrant future for our students? If we are no longer to be a city divided east by west, brown versus white, Mormon, and non-Mormon, then we must embrace providing equal opportunity to each and every student, each and every day. Let us be great, Salt Lake City. Our students deserve it.


    Curtis Linton, a candidate for Salt Lake School Board District 3, is a nationally recognized expert in educational equity and proud parent raising two awesomely diverse children with his wife, Melody, in the Avenues. www.curtislinton.info curtis@curtislinton.info