I'm not suggesting that school boards and public processes are perfect. Far from it. It's part of the reason we're at this juncture. There needs to be more opportunities for interaction when school patrons, school board members and top administrators aren't engaged in battle. I'm not talking about the opportunity to make brief statements at school board meetings. (I recall one parent prefacing her remarks to a school board saying, "I feel like I have to talk to you in sound bites." Not good.) What if school board members had a greater presence at school community council meetings and school functions? Just maybe, constituents could attend a school board meeting once in a while to develop a greater understanding how the process works.

As I gaze into the crystal ball given me when I joined the editorial board of the Deseret Morning News, I wonder if we're looking at this issue all wrong. Instead of carving east-west, why not create a brand new school district on the far west side of the Salt Lake Valley, where hundreds of thousands of Utahns will reside in the coming years?

Presently, Jordan and Granite districts are among the largest school districts in the nation. Can these districts handle future growth? Will the public perceive that it has some say-so as to how the schools are run in what could potentially become super-sized school districts?

Or is that really the issue at hand? It seems to me what this is really about is that some people no longer take a broad societal view of public education. It means that "All means all" has been supplanted by "It's all about me." That's not just short-sighted, it's sad.

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Marjorie Cortez, who lives in Millcreek Township and whose children attend public schools, is a Deseret Morning News editorial writer. E-mail: marjorie@desnews.com.