Heather Santos and Teresa Anderson-Myers were at their weekly watercolor class in April when they learned Salt Lake City School District was cutting its community education program after 54 years.
Santos said she was devastated.
“We had grown to look forward to our Monday night ritual of getting together and spending time together,” she said. “But also taking watercolor was something we had talked about for a really long time before we finally made space in our lives to do it.”
Now, the marketing consultant and software engineer are working to keep lifelong learning opportunities in their community.
Santos and Anderson-Myers have launched SLC Pursuit Co. Starting in fall 2026, the nonprofit will offer affordable adult educational courses in Salt Lake City. This time around, the pair said they’re making changes to keep the program sustainable.
Salt Lake City School District’s decision to end its community education program was financially driven, according to district spokesperson Yándary Chatwin. A statement on the program website says it was outside of the district’s PreK through 12th-grade mission, and “using resources that could be directed towards the classroom.”
Santos said they knew right off the bat they couldn’t run things the same way as before. Without the district’s infrastructure, their new nonprofit had to figure out how to run the program from scratch. That includes securing access to classrooms.
The district ran community education classes at Highland, West and East high schools. Anderson-Myers said most of the SLC Pursuit Co. courses will still be at East, in rooms rented from the school district.
That will influence what courses they can offer, according to Santos. They won’t have access to rooms with special equipment needed for classes like woodworking, silversmithing and pottery, which Santos said previously had the highest enrollment.
Renting classrooms also comes with a price tag. Anderson-Myers said they want the program to be affordable, but it has to bring in enough to be self-sustaining. After considering financial scenarios with different instructor compensation, enrollment numbers and class pricing, they decided to raise the cost of some courses for now.
“We're really hoping that the community will still come show up and take these classes,” Anderson-Myers said. “They are still affordable compared to market rates.”
They’ll have to figure out some things as they go, Santos said. And while starting the new program has introduced challenges, they’re also finding ways to grow and putting more effort into marketing.
“We think we can use that to our benefit and ideally grow the program, which is another thing that will make it sustainable,” Santos said.
Along with new classes like intro to beekeeping, intro to Tarot and a gluten-free kitchen workshop, they also want to try out new course formats.
“We think there's an opportunity to do workshops,” Santos said. “We think there's an opportunity to add weekend classes. We think there's an opportunity to do events or lecture series.”
Registration for the fall session opened July 20. Anderson-Myers said dozens of people signed up for classes within the first day.
