So, recently the Salt Lake City School Board announced the closure of four city elementary schools (Hawthorne, Bennion, Mary W. Jackson and Riley), which will not only have lasting effects on the kids enrolled in those schools, but each of the surrounding neighborhoods themselves.
What happens now at these locations? A smart mayor and City Council should designate these public lands off-limits for anything other than public services on them. Things like community centers, continuing education classes, day care centers, clinics, voter precincts, etc. If the buildings are old, unsafe, or too expensive to maintain and must be torn down, then I look forward to new public parks, plazas, community gardens, or dog parks to be added to each neighborhood.
The shortage of school-age children in the city is cyclical, so while elementary schools may not be needed for the next 20 years or more in these locations, the need will definitely return in one or two more generations. If we don’t save and preserve these spaces with the intent that schools will be needed and built on them again in the future, we are doing the city and all of us a huge disservice.
This mayor, school board, and City Council needs to prove that this whole exercise wasn’t just a cynical land grab and giveaway to their well-connected developer cronies to foist more cheap, ugly, high-density garbage on our neighborhoods, and demonstrate they actually have vision and foresight about what this city will need not just tomorrow, but 50 or more years from now.
Steve Bunker, Salt Lake City
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