About 150 parents, children and teachers rallied at Granite School District offices Tuesday evening, urging the Board of Education to close schools.

All Communities Together, a group of residents from Taylorsville, Granger, Magna, Holladay and West Valley City, came armed with a 2,045-signature petition urging the Granite Board of Education to close one high school, one junior high and one elementary school.

The petition asks for some $3 million in resulting savings to benefit students and teachers districtwide. It is supported by a letter from the Taylorsville City Council and mayor and another signed by about a half-dozen legislators — including Executive Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley — urging the board to "practice fiscal responsibility and follow the recommendations of the district options committee."

"We don't have the luxury to have neighborhood schools for everyone," said Evergreen Junior High parent Julia Tillou, citing a history of district budgetary woes expected to continue next fiscal year. "At this point, hard choices have to be made. The schools do have to be closed in order for you to balance your budget. . . . You can't run a school district, you can't be doing what's best (for) students if you don't have money to pay teachers and for programs."

Meanwhile, the Friends for Education Coalition also is working to ensure the board stays the course it mapped out two weeks ago, when it voted to keep schools open.

"Three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at," said South Salt Lake City Councilman Bill Anderson, instrumental in the fight to save Granite High. "But it's less than 1 percent of the district's total operating budget. . . . If we focus solely on the dollar side of this, we are missing the other part of the (educational) value equation, which is the results we get."

Board President Patricia Sandstrom, who received the petition at the rally with board member Hank Bertoch, believes the vote will be revisited at the board's meeting next Tuesday, where the matter is to receive final action.

"The way I plan to handle it is, ask for a motion to accept the recommendation as a second reading . . . then work on it," Sandstrom said, noting the vote included several boundary changes, too. "They'll amend it any (way) they want to amend it."

Last spring, the district reported spending $3 million to maintain 8,700 empty seats valleywide. A committee of school workers and residents suggested closing several schools, nearly all on the east side to help streamline spending, improve educational equity and keep kids together as they move from elementary to high school.

The committee's recommendations received fierce opposition from the Friends for Education Coalition, created by Olympus and Skyline residents and backed by the city of Holladay and several area legislators. The group celebrates neighborhood schools. It contends empty seats were a problem district-wide, that east side neighborhoods are regenerating and that closing schools would devastate communities.

The board earlier this month voted to keep all schools open but change boundaries of at least 37 of them.

The lack of school closures also angered the Granite Education Association teachers union, which has threatened to no longer help the board with tough decisions during annual contract negotiations.

The district reports it has no legal room to raise property taxes for school operational costs.

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