As east-side cities decide whether to break away from Granite School District, a question arises: What's in it for South Salt Lake's Granite High?

The community was furious when the Granite Board of Education nearly shut down South Salt Lake's only high school in 2005. It was a fight that led city officials to plunge into the debate on school district splits. But two years later, the future of the high school still remains uncertain, even if it ends up in a new east-side district.

So what's the best move?

If you ask Granite School District, it's to stick together.

But the proposal to break away is more about having a voice than keeping schools open, say those leading the charge. And one South Salt Lake City councilman thinks his diverse, low-income community's voice would be louder and clearer in a district of about 15,000, instead of 68,000, students.

"I don't know that we have a good choice. Either way, we have some risks," South Salt Lake City Councilman Bill Anderson said. But "I watch the district slowly continue to drift to the west side in terms of its representative imbalance, where I know the people, the most adamant people, are about closing Granite High School. That's just not a comforting alternative."

South Salt Lake, Millcreek Township and Holladay are looking into creating their own school district and will decide whether to put the measure to voters in the next couple of weeks.

The group is a mix of the low-income and diversity of South Salt Lake with more white-bread, well-off communities of the east bench.

Strange bedfellows?

Maybe not.

Certainly, Millcreek and Holladay didn't need South Salt Lake's population to tally 65,000 residents required to form a new district. Millcreek has 60,400 residents; Holladay has 25,900, reports Nicole Dunn, intergovernmental relations specialist for Salt Lake County and member of the new district steering committee.

South Salt Lake has 22,160 residents.

Split backers on the east bench say they want South Salt Lake's diversity in a new district. The communities also share a history: In 2005, they linked arms to save Granite High, Canyon Rim and Meadow Moor elementary schools from closure. Only Granite survived — sort of.

The Granite Board of Education dissolved the school's boundaries, and made it a school students must opt into. The school would have academies, such as for performing arts. It also would become a multicampus, "umbrella" program, with alternative Central High School down the street, a "newcomers program" for refugees and a young parent program in West Valley.

But after one year of its new mission, Granite High School is a skeleton of what it once was. Academies didn't come. About 300 kids opted in — the rest were bused away to other schools whose boundaries they were drawn into. The "small learning community" ended up costing the district more than $3,100 per student in fixed costs. By comparison, the district spends $1,200 per student at the much larger Skyline High, which would be a sister school in the new district. On top of that, Granite this past year only graduated 68 percent of its seniors, much lower than the 78 percent at Hunter and 92 percent at Skyline.