by Scott McLeod

Community Collaborations Director

United Way of Salt Lake, Salt Lake Community Action Program, Community Education Partnership, and the community of West Valley are excited to announce the creation of our newest Community Learning Center at Granger Elementary School!

Granger Elementary is an important addition to the CLCs operating in our community due to its unique profile and demographics.  Granger is the largest elementary school in the Granite School District, with over 860 students.  Among those 860 students, 79% qualify for free and reduced lunch, 79% percent are ethnic minority, and 75% do not speak English as their primary language.

Community Learning Centers are an important part of UWSL’s Cradle to Career initiative.  Rather than thinking of CLCs as a program offered to children and their families, Community Learning Centers are an approach to fostering learning and for improving outcomes for an entire community.  What distinguishes CLCs from other schools, even those offering afterschool programs, is the degree to which everything that happens at the school is integrated.  This means that daytime curriculum, school faculty and staff, afterschool programs and staff, and services from Community Based Organizations are all coordinated to leverage their overall impact.

For example, one component of the Granger CLC is integrating Utah Partners for Health’s Mobile Health Clinic into the fabric of what community members can receive at Granger Elementary.  When a student’s academic performance is lagging due to health problems, or a family member’s health problems, this can be immediately addressed on-site at little to no cost to the family.  Other services integrated into the CLC landscape are afterschool programming, adult education and language classes, free tax assistance, financial literacy, youth mentoring, free immunizations, health insurance enrollment, early education & pre-K, and much more!

If you’d like to learn more about the Granger Community Learning Center, or even take a tour of the side, don’t hesitate to contact United Way of Salt Lake.  We’d love to tell you more about our work and the great things happening at all our CLCs!