After months of controversy, heat from state lawmakers and a lawsuit from parents, the Alpine School District is hitting the “pause button” on the possible closure of Lehi, Lindon and Windsor elementary schools.
The Alpine School District Board of Education voted on June 30 to close Sharon and Valley View elementaries. In previous discussions about closing the schools, the board had also discussed closing Lehi, Lindon and Windsor in 2024.
However, during the board’s July 11 meeting, the seven members voted to stop studying the potential closures without taking any action — meaning they wouldn’t take a final vote.
“Whatever we vote tonight is not the end, it cannot be the end. It has got to be a pause. A significant pause, but it’s got to only be a pause,” Board President Sara Hacken said during the meeting. “Because these needs are still there and there were reasons why we have ever talked about closing these schools, good reasons, lots of good reasons, and those reasons still exist.”
The vote was unanimous to stop the study of potentially closing Lehi Elementary. There was less of a consensus over the studies of Lindon and Windsor elementaries. The votes for both schools narrowly passed 4-3. Some on the board said there are problems in the district that need to be addressed and schools that need to be closed, and by stopping the studies they were just “kicking the can down the road.”
After the meeting, Board Vice President Julie King posted on her Facebook, “So here is the truth from my perspective — we don’t need to close five schools. We need to close 10.”
When exactly the board will revisit the issue is unclear. The district’s spokesperson did not respond to KUER’s request for comment.
Superintendent Shane Farnsworth said the rationale for delaying the closure of Lehi Elementary was because of population growth in that area of the district. He said the board could monitor the growth and wait to see if the board decides to build another school before shaking things up and closing Lehi Elementary. On Facebook, King estimated a new school will be built in the next few years.
The rationale for holding off on closing Lindon and Windsor was to wait until the district had completed another study looking at the accessibility and equitable distribution across the district of programs like Dual Language Immersion and Advanced Learning Lab. Farnsworth said the team doing that study will make recommendations to the district and it would be best to proceed with possible closures after they have that information.
Farnsworth did not specify when exactly the study would be completed. But once it is, and if the district decides to take up the discussion of school closures again, the district would have to repeat some of the steps it has already taken. According to state law, before a district can close a school it has to notify stakeholders 90 days before voting and allow opportunities for public comment.
Alicia Alba was one of the parents that signed onto a lawsuit against the district and she has a student at Rocky Mountain Elementary. While the board was not discussing closing that school, its boundaries would have been impacted by some of the potential closures.
Alba said they are withdrawing their lawsuit since the district is pausing the closures and is thankful for the board’s decision.
“At the end of it all, the lawsuit was effective. It did what it needed to do. It kept three schools open, protected ALL and DLI programs, made it so this will not stand as precedent, [and] got legislators involved in clarifying the law.”
In terms of closures, Alba would like to see the district hold off on making any decisions until it has figured out if they will be splitting. Alpine is the biggest in the state and the school board voted earlier this year to study reconfiguring the district and discussed potentially putting the issue on the November 2024 ballot.
Alba said it would “muddy the waters” if the district was trying to figure out school closures while also figuring out if the district would be divided. She said another reason for waiting is there may be more opportunity for local say if the district does divide into smaller districts.
“We’re going to have leaders who are closer to the decisions, to the people that are impacted by their decisions.”
