Every morning at 4 a.m., Sarah Martin’s alarm wails as she rolls out of bed. Coming all the way from Tooele, she preps for school and dreads the near 45-minute drive to her grandmother’s house in Rose Park.
From there, her grandmother drives her to Highland, completing the nearly hour-long drive and hopefully making it on time to first period.
By the time she gets to class, she has likely been up three hours longer than her classmates. She is already exhausted.
But Martin says the challenging morning is worth the payoff of attending Highland.
“It’s a great school; I’m glad my parents chose for me to go to Highland instead of East, West, or even Tooele High,” Martin said.
Her parents are bus drivers for the Salt Lake City School District, which heavily influenced her decision to stay at Highland, even after their long move to Tooele this past July.
Due to shrinking enrollment numbers, people like Martin are vital to maintaining large class sizes and teaching positions at Highland. Martin is one of 717 Highland students who live out of the boundaries, yet none of them endure the same journey to school that she does. Nearly 50 students come from cities 30-45 minutes away. Places like Taylorsville, Farmington, Magna, Riverton, and Kearns are just some of the areas from which Highland draws students.
Students are choosing Highland for a variety of reasons. For Highland junior Nellie Campbell, the academics played the biggest role.
“I’m in East’s boundaries, and I went to Clayton (middle school),” Campbell said. “But when it was time to decide where to go to high school, East was on academic probation […] and they also didn’t have the (IB) programs that I wanted to do.”
Like Campbell, Highland often finds students – specifically freshmen – coming most commonly from previous schools in Granite School District and East boundaries. Most students come to Highland for different programs that are not always offered at the school closest to their home. In addition, social factors often weigh heavily in a student’s decision to attend Highland.
One unique program drawing students to Highland is International Baccalaureate (IB). Early open enrollment applications showed 40 freshman students interested in Highland primarily for the IB program. When calculated, this results in nearly 9% of the 460-student freshman class applying to Highland hoping to participate in IB.
In recent years, Highland, along with the rest of SLCSD, has seen a profound decrease in student enrollment numbers. As of 2019, Highland had 2009 students enrolled compared to the near 1,950 students enrolled this year. At first, this may seem like a positive thing that prompts smaller class sizes and allows closer one-on-one teaching for students; but Highland depends on large-class sizes.
The state legislature determines a per-student funding requirement for schools in Utah. For this reason, Highland’s out-of-boundary students are essential to keeping the budget large enough to sustain teaching positions and class opportunities for students. Without them, Highland would have fewer than 1,250 students, which doesn’t meet the requirements that Highland staff members need.
“We’re having more and more classrooms, especially in our honors levels, that are upwards of 40-42 (students),” Highland principal Jeremy Chatterton said.
Chatterton then explains the need for a perfect balance of large-class sizes while also sustaining the extra teacher help that honors students regularly require. In Chatterton’s opinion, Highland currently has the perfect number of students — averaging about 500 students per grade level and ensuring that students can get the academic help that they need.
Due to the legislative imposed funding system, out-of-boundary students affect the number of teachers Highland is able to afford. A large reduction in out-of-boundary students would mean reduced funding, ultimately impacting available teaching positions.
“Having less students means that we will have less teachers,” Chatterton said.
This year, Highland has 88 teachers, which averages 22.15 students per teacher. A reduction in the student population would mean Highland isn’t able to maintain the employment of qualified teachers, who teach classes with low enrollment. For example, student participation in classes such as woodshop is slowly decreasing. Further decrease in student enrollment could lead to classes, like woods, to be eliminated altogether.
Out-of-boundary students have led Highland to academic victory and aided in budgeting factors.
“Our test scores are definitely the highest in the district. By a lot,” Chatterton said. “And we’re proud of that.”
As the population in the district continues to shrink, the school with continue to rely on students from outside the boundaries to keep classes filled and teachers employed.
