Overview

East High School is a public high school in the East Bench neighborhood of Salt Lake City, part of the Salt Lake City School District, serving grades nine through twelve in general and special education. Established in 1913, its colors are white, red, and navy, and its teams the Leopards. NCES lists it as a regular, open, non-charter school reachable at (801) 583-1661. Among its alumni is Russell M. Nelson, former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

NCES records 855 of 1,764 students as free-lunch eligible and 108 as reduced-price eligible -- roughly 55% of enrollment combined.

Wikipedia and NCES agree exactly here: 1,764 students, 83.53 teachers FTE, and a 21.12:1 ratio, both for 2024-25. Unlike the Sioux Falls and Portland profiles elsewhere in this directory, no range is needed.

One oddity worth noting: Wikipedia's infobox gives the school's location as "1800 S XV3 Salt Lake City" -- a string that is not a valid address -- while its own article text and NCES both give 840 South 1300 East. We use the corroborated address and flag the infobox as garbled rather than silently correcting it, since a reader consulting that infobox directly would be misled.

Academics

No school-specific Utah State Board of Education report-card data was located for this profile. Check USBE's school report cards directly for current results.

Neighborhood

East Bench sits on elevated ground on Salt Lake City's east side. One real-estate law firm's analysis attributes the area's relative safety partly to geography: elevated locations with winding access roads create natural barriers, higher-income demographics correlate with more security systems and property maintenance, and proximity to hiking trails increases legitimate foot traffic and therefore natural surveillance. That is an interpretive argument rather than a measured finding, and we present it as such.

Niche ranks East Bench #8 among Salt Lake City neighborhoods to live in, but its crime and safety grade for the neighborhood is listed as unavailable, and it has too few survey responses to display resident safety polling.

Crime & safety

East Bench splits sharply by crime category, and the split runs in a direction worth stating plainly.

Violent crime: B+. CrimeGrade places East Bench in the 69th percentile for violent-crime safety at 3.234 incidents per 1,000 residents, safer than the national average though less safe than the Utah state average. Victimization odds range from 1 in 255 in central areas to 1 in 413 in the southeast.

Overall crime: D+. The same provider places the neighborhood in the 28th percentile overall at 50.75 crimes per 1,000 residents, less safe than both the Utah and national averages, with victimization odds from 1 in 15 centrally to 1 in 24 in the west.

A neighborhood in the 69th percentile for violent crime and the 28th percentile overall is carrying its crime burden almost entirely in property offences. This is the mirror image of the Lawncrest, Philadelphia profile elsewhere in this directory, where an A- overall grade concealed a D for murder. Here a poor overall grade conceals a genuinely good violent-crime record. In both cases the single letter is the least informative number on the page.

Citywide, sources diverge as usual: CrimeGrade puts Salt Lake City at 47.93 crimes per 1,000, while NeighborhoodScout reports 62 per 1,000, calls it one of the top 100 most dangerous cities in the USA, and states more than 99% of Utah communities have a lower rate. DoorProfit gives the city a C average and names Federal Heights and the Avenues -- also on the east bench -- as consistently above that average, particularly for low property crime.

CrimeGrade's Salt Lake City page does something no other provider in this directory has done: it explains the denominator problem in its own words, and warns readers off its own map colours.

It notes that crime rates are measured per resident, so areas with heavy visitor traffic read high "because crime follows crowds, even where few people live." It specifically identifies the city's retail-heavy north side, its 1 major airport, and its 79 parks and recreational areas as places that "read as high-crime spots" precisely because few residents live beside them, and states plainly that "a red area does not always mean the neighborhood is unsafe for residents." It advises weighing both the per-capita rate and the total incident count.

This is the same structural flaw this directory has flagged repeatedly -- most sharply on the Cleveland profile, where two providers reported neighborhood populations differing by 67%, changing every per-1,000 figure derived from them. A provider stating the limitation directly is more trustworthy than one presenting block-level precision it cannot support, and we note it here as a point in CrimeGrade's favour even while continuing to treat its letter grades cautiously elsewhere.

The same caution applies to this school's own neighborhood: East Bench's D+ overall grade is driven by property crime in an area adjacent to the University of Utah and substantial recreational land, exactly the conditions CrimeGrade warns can inflate per-resident rates.

Our calculated rating

We don't publish a single proprietary score. No academic data was located, and the safety picture depends entirely on which crime category is examined -- 69th percentile for violent crime, 28th overall. See our ratings methodology.

Sources

  1. NCES Common Core of Data, East High (490087000486), 2024-25 school year (address, enrollment, classroom teachers FTE, ratio, locale, county, lunch eligibility, phone, charter status).
  2. Wikipedia, "East High School (Utah)" (founding year, principal, staffing, enrollment, ratio, colors, team name, alumni; garbled infobox address noted above).
  3. NCES and Wikipedia records for West High (490087000524) and Highland High School (district size comparison).
  4. CrimeGrade.org, East Bench overall crime page (D+ grade, 28th percentile, 50.75 per 1,000, victimization odds, state and national comparison).
  5. CrimeGrade.org, East Bench violent crime page (B+ grade, 69th percentile, 3.234 per 1,000, victimization odds).
  6. CrimeGrade.org, Salt Lake City overall page (citywide rate, cost of crime, and the methodological caveat on per-resident measurement quoted above).
  7. NeighborhoodScout, Salt Lake City crime rates and statistics (62 per 1,000, victimization odds, state comparison, national ranking).
  8. DoorProfit, Salt Lake City crime map (citywide C average; east bench neighborhoods named as above-average).
  9. Niche, East Bench crime and safety (neighborhood ranking; grade listed unavailable).
  10. Robert Law Group, "What Are the Safest Neighborhoods in Salt Lake City?" (interpretive argument on east bench geography and demographics).