Our Hope for the School District to Relocate to the Triangle Parcel is Dead

A few months back we wrote a plea for the Park City School District to consider making a school campus on the east side of highway 40. We felt they should move the entire Kearns campus there, which would allow Park City to redo their entry corridor as they saw fit. People wrote us with great ideas about how the space vacated on Kearns could become artist in residence housing, open space, low income housing, condos…all sorts of things.

We noted the Triangle Parcel, a piece of land owned by Park City and Summit County (where you’ll often see alpacas), wasn’t in our district boundaries, but that it made so much sense for our schools that they should work out a deal with South Summit School District. The new campus could be made with expandability and shared services in mind. It could be designed with a transportation plan integrated into its design. Our students, teachers, and parents could have the best of everything — with 21st century education, placed at the forefront.

At tonight’s Master Planning School Board Meeting, School Board member Moe Hickey effectively said they would not be looking outside our school district boundaries to put a new school (i.e, the Triangle Parcel). Of course he said that people “keep talking about it” but they need to know it’s probably not going to happen. What do ordinary citizens know? Not much we guess.

So, while we are a little disheartened, we understand it. However, we hope those people in position to influence outcomes such as these understand it too. When they rebuild Treasure Mountain on Kearns Boulevard, and also move 9th grade into the High School, causing 400 extra cars on Kearns… all the while knowing that Park City Heights is coming online and adding 200 homes, which will further increase the traffic jam on 248, we will remember who made those decisions.

We’ll do our best to help everyone remember.

Perhaps we’re bitter. No, we’re definitely bitter. We thought this was a great opportunity to enable both our students and faculty to operate in a world class facility that could help regain the prominence our school district saw in the 2000’s.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen. We wish them luck…but only because it’s our students’ futures at stake.