Granite High students speak up for their 'home'

Granite High School students are letting their voices be heard — loudly — about the potential closure of their school.

"If we do go out, we're going out with a bang," said Granite High student body president Arisbee Romero, 17.

Hundreds of teens gathered on the northwest corner of the Granite High campus, 3305 S. 500 East, to chant, cheer and display their protest signs as passersby honked and waved.

A public hearing to collect comments on the proposal to close Granite High begins at 7 tonight at the Granite School District office, 2500 S. State Street.

The Granite district must cut $28 million from its 2009-2010 budget. The district has already slashed $25 million but still needs to pare $3.4 million from the budget.

Closing Granite High would save $1.3 million in annual operation costs.

Granite High is a magnet program with 12 teachers instructing 295 students from all over the district.

Seventy-five percent of Granite High students are on free or reduced lunch; 53 percent are minority students; 37 percent are English-language learners; and 33 percent don't have parents or siblings who graduated from high school. There is a 47 percent student mobility rate, according to data collected by the school.

Protest signs Tuesday said: "Go Granite! Another 100 Years!" and "Granite is not just a school. It is also a home."

Other signs touted drawings of a farmer, the school's mascot. The students held up red and blue letters spelling "GO GRANITE!"

The teens built a human pyramid, shook their signs and painted each other's faces with a red or blue "G."

Lina Hall, 17, Granite High's junior vice president who helped make the protest signs, said she and her classmates have been learning about the civil-rights marches in their history classes. "We wanted to do something similar," she said.

Others went a more peppy direction.

Dressed as a farmer, junior Chelsea Lucero, 16, hopped around waving red and white pompoms. The school doesn't have sports teams, so there are no official cheerleaders. "It's up to us to convince the school board," she said.

Teachers distributed white T-shirts that read: "Rock Solid, For Another 100 Years." They were left over from the school's centennial celebration.