All four greenhouses in the district are on the west side, as are six of nine TV studios (but that may reflect that three-quarters of Granite students live on the west side). All district high schools (except Kearns) have a swimming pool (and Kearns has a community pool across the street).

In Jordan, two of three junior high swimming pools are on the east side, as are two of three greenhouses. The district has one applied technology center on each side of the valley.

Jordan district schools often team with recreation centers or other agencies for swimming pools, which keeps costs down and offers more access on both sides of the valley, Newbold said.

More west-side students are bused for lack of nearby neighborhood schools. They sometimes even go long distances to east-side schools, which are so vacant that maybe they should never have been built in the first place.

Jordan: Busted;

Granite: Mixed findings.

Jordan reports that mostly east-side students are being bused. Only 1,322 students are bused to west-side schools and 14,032 are bused to east-side schools.

In Jordan, the busing is more south to north than east-west, although west-side Heartland Elementary students are being bused to the recently closed Cottonwood Heights Elementary while their school is rebuilt.

Four bus routes in east-side Draper have one-way trips that are longer than an hour to pick up and deliver students and are up to 19 miles long. One kindergarten bus route to Crescent Elementary in Sandy takes an average of 81 minutes to cover 15 miles. One for Draper Elementary takes an average of 79 minutes one way to cover 19 miles, data show.

Newbold said children living in the mountaintop Sun Crest neighborhood are bused north to Sunrise Elementary, Mount Jordan Middle and Jordan High, all in Sandy. "That's a long way," he said.

Draper residents don't like busing students outside city limits — there's no middle or high school there. Jordan Board of Education member Sherril Taylor has made that known as the board divvies up nearly $200 million in remaining building bond money. Locals feel they were promised a middle school, though the district says all proposals were tentative.

In Granite, about one of every seven east-siders are bused, versus about one of every eight west-siders.

But five east-side schools have significant numbers of west-side students bused to them. For example, 219 students within the boundaries of Arcadia Elementary School in Taylorsville are bused across the valley to Bonneville Junior High in Holladay. Another 196 from the same area are bused to the east-side Cottonwood High School.