Morningside Speaks: The Truth About Area 5’s Feedback to the PAC

Granite School District’s Area 5 Study drew over 1,000 public comments before the PAC’s recommendations were even announced. Parents and community members wrote pages of testimony explaining what their schools mean, how programs are working, and what the consequences of closure would be.

Over 190 of the comments were from Morningside parents — the second largest concentration of feedback in the entire survey. Their message was clear: Morningside is not a failing school to be restructured — it is a thriving school to be protected.

What the Numbers Show

When you look at the raw comments, the strength of community voices is unmistakable. Here’s the breakdown of the number of comments from each boundary school — based on responses to “Which school(s) do you represent or have students at?”:

  • Driggs: 380
  • Morningside: 190
  • Eastwood: 138
  • Upland Terrace: 123
  • Oakridge: 76
  • Cottonwood: 39
  • Crestview: 18
  • Penn: 18
  • Rosecrest: 8

And yet, the district’s official “summary” never once mentions these relative numbers. By stripping away the scale of parent advocacy, the report makes it seem as though all schools were defended equally — erasing the overwhelming chorus of families who spoke up for specific schools.

The data tell a clear story: parents rallied most strongly around Driggs, Morningside, and Eastwood — the very schools that will be most affected by the PAC’s proposal. Eastwood is slated to be uprooted entirely. Morningside is being torn in three different directions. Despite drawing ten times the community support that Cottonwood did, Driggs’ boundary is being carved up in order to “help” Cottonwood.

The schools that parents defended the loudest are the very ones the plan would harm the most. This inversion — where the schools most strongly defended are targeted most aggressively — reveals how little weight the PAC has given to the public’s feedback.

What Parents Actually Said

Across hundreds of comments, parents consistently highlighted:

  • Program Excellence and Innovation
    • Morningside offers a rare combination of French Dual Immersion, Advanced Learning (ALC), and a strong traditional track — all under one roof. Parents described how these programs enrich learning and foster collaboration across differences.
  • Special Education Leadership
    • Families praised Morningside’s special education team as one of the most effective in the district. Teachers collaborate seamlessly with general education staff, ensuring students with IEPs and 504s thrive. Parents fear these gains will be lost if programs are scattered.
  • Continuity of Language Pathways
    • Morningside anchors the only east-bench French DLI track that extends through Churchill Jr. High and Skyline High. Disrupting this continuity would jeopardize years of investment by families and teachers.
  • Community Stability
    • Families emphasized that Morningside is a hub of stability for children — particularly those facing challenges such as dyslexia, autism, or social anxiety. Breaking that support system would be harmful.
  • Equity Across the District
    • Many noted that dismantling successful programs punishes schools that are working. Instead of eliminating Morningside’s model, Granite could learn from it to strengthen other schools.
  • Long-Term Outcomes
    • Parents pointed to research: students who don’t receive proper reading interventions in elementary school are far less likely to graduate. Morningside already does this well — closing it risks higher dropout rates and poorer long-term outcomes.

How the District Reframed It

The official summary did not present this reality. Instead, it:

  • Repackaged strong opposition into vague statements like “Families celebrated their sense of community.”
  • Inflated a handful of comments about program relocation into the appearance of widespread support for moving programs.
  • Minimized serious distrust of the process into neutral phrases like “concerns about transparency.”

While it’s true that a handful of parents shared negative experiences at Morningside — and we want to be clear that no child should ever feel unsupported at school — those comments were the exception, not the rule. The overwhelming majority of parents praised Morningside as a place where children of all abilities thrive.

The PAC’s public narrative is that Morningside “has to close” because they believe three traditional classrooms work best — a narrative echoed in recent coverage by the Salt Lake Tribune. Yet they have provided no evidence to support this claim, and the feedback from Morningside parents overwhelmingly contradicts it.

“…they are not 3 schools within one school, but truly one unified, strong school”

The gap between parent voices and the district’s narrative could not be clearer. In a comment dated 2/17/2025, one Morningside parent wrote:

“It would be truly devastating to our community to close Morningside Elementary. Morningside Elementary flawlessly provides a remarkable education to a wide variety of learners through the ALC program, French Dual Immersion Program, and the Traditional program. Morningside staff and leadership have worked tirelessly and successfully over the years to ensure that students in the various programs have many opportunities (recess, PE, PTA parties, lunch, etc..) to interact and form relationships, ensuring that they are not 3 schools within one school, but truly one unified, strong school. ”

Yet district representative Luke Allen used the same phrase — “schools within a school” — to argue the exact opposite point when he was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune on 9/22/25:

“While the building has a high utilization rate (87%), the ‘schools within the school’ aren’t serving students effectively. For instance, there are few teachers at the school, which give families limited options.”

The statement about teachers is objectively untrue — Morningside is fully staffed. This rephrasing is not just spin — it is a distortion. A parent used the phrase “schools within a school” to show how Morningside has overcome silos and built one cohesive, unified community. The district repeated the same words, but twisted them into evidence for closure.

Specific Suggestions in the District’s Summary with No Basis in Actual Comments

  1. “Expand access to gifted services through cluster classrooms for intermediate learners.” (re: Morningside)
    • ✅ Appears in the district’s summary.
    • ❌ Not a single comment included this idea. This idea was inserted by the PAC, not from parent voices.
    • The wording itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of gifted education. Gifted services are not interchangeable with “advanced clusters.” They are specialized, research-based interventions designed for students with atypical learning needs.
  2. “Relocate programs such as Magnet or DLI from Morningside to Eastwood to better utilize space and increase enrollment.” (re: Eastwood)
    • ✅ The summary says parents suggested moving ALC or DLI to Eastwood.
    • ❌ In reality, nearly every French DLI comment stressed continuity at Morningside → Churchill → Skyline. The few mentions of “moving” ALC or DLI were attempts by other schools to siphon students from Morningside to save their own schools.
  3. “Consider designating it [Morningside] as a hub for specialized programs (e.g., ALC, French Dual Immersion), allowing neighborhood students to attend closer schools like Crestview or Driggs.”
    • ✅ The summary frames this as a suggestion from Crestview residents.
    • ❌ In fact, the few comments from Crestview residents that mentioned the ALC or DLI programs at Morningside were from parents whose children attend these programs and were full of praise for Morningside. Furthermore, Morningside parents overwhelmingly opposed splitting up Morningside programs.
  4. “If closure becomes inevitable, work with the community to repurpose the site for public good.” (re: Oakridge)
    • ✅ The summary presents this as though the Oakridge community supported the idea.
    • ❌ In the raw feedback, when parents mentioned school buildings, it was about keeping them open as schools, and questioning the viability of repurposing them for other uses.

The “2025 Feedback Summary of Area 5 Study” is not an honest record of parent and community feedback.

See for Yourself

This is not just our interpretation – it is easy to verify. Links to both the raw comments (redacted with names removed) and the “Summary” are posted on the 2025 PAC page. Or click here for direct links to the documents:

Why This Matters for the Board

Board members outside Area 5 should be aware:

  • The district’s leadership already has a credibility problem.* Now, together with the PAC, they are advancing closures the community overwhelmingly opposes.
  • This is about more than one school — it’s about whether Granite listens to families at all. If over 1,000 public comments can be rewritten into support for an unpopular plan, what message does that send about parent voice?

Why Morningside Matters to Granite

Protecting Morningside benefits the entire district:

  • A proven model of cohesion: Students from multiple programs learn together, showing what true integration looks like.
  • A pipeline of excellence: French DLI continuity builds global competencies Granite should be proud of.
  • A leader in special education: Parents report better outcomes at Morningside than at other schools, making it a case study in how to serve diverse learners.
  • A stable, high-functioning community: Stability for children translates to stronger academic outcomes, lower turnover, and more family investment in Granite schools.

A Call for Honest Leadership

The board has a choice:

  • Accept a distorted narrative that clears the path for closures, or
  • Insist on an honest accounting of what parents actually said.

Morningside parents are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for truth in representation and fairness in decision-making.

To our board members across Granite: you have the opportunity to show that you stand with families, not with spin. Protect Morningside — and in doing so, protect the principle that public voice matters in public education.