The Alpine School District is set to be split into thirds, and there are a lot of questions about what the future will hold for staff and teachers.
“There's a lot of anxiety out there with our employees,” said Michael Gowans, president of the Alpine Education Association teachers union and teacher at Westlake High School.
In November, Utah County voters backed proposals to break up Alpine. The three new districts are scheduled to begin operations by July 2027.
The biggest concern Gowans said he’s been hearing is whether salary and benefits will change in the new administrations.
State code guarantees that if a school employee is transferred to a new district because of a split, their salary can not be lowered in the first year.
“Every district has the ability to change everything after that first year. And so that’s the main issue that our employees have,” Gowans said. “What are our benefits and what is our salary going to be later on?”
Republican Sen. Keith Grover has drafted a bill for the 2025 legislative session that deals with school district splits. Among other things, it would extend the salary protection to two years.
According to Utah code, the new districts will also have to initially adopt all of the personnel policies and practices that Alpine had, including salary schedules. They will also need to honor employees’ accumulated leave, tenure and accrued seniority.
A spokesperson for the Alpine School District directed KUER to their website focused on the changes. There, they say the new districts will similarly have to adopt Alpine’s policies related to retirement incentives and eligibility in the first year.
“Contracted employees have due process rights in policy that guarantees their base salary will not be reduced without due process. Future earnings in the new school districts will be negotiated by those new school districts.”
School employees will be transferred to whichever new district their school is located in. However, Gowans said district-level staff who serve across new boundaries face uncertainty.
The district said the process of addressing these issues is ongoing.
“We have worked on and will continue to work on legislation to establish protections and protocols for the transition of non school-based employees. More information will follow.”
Gowans said there’s also a lot of concerns about what this will mean for retirees and their benefits.
He anticipates many questions will remain unanswered for some time since they’re still in the early stages.
“Our superintendent and our district administrators, their goal is to make sure that nobody is harmed and everybody is kept whole, but they can't guarantee that right now,” Gowans said.
In a recent video message to employees, Alpine Superintendent Shane Farnsworth promised to keep staff updated about how the split will impact them, but added that most details still need to be worked out.
“As a senior leadership team, we are committed to doing all we can to make sure our valued employees maintain their benefits and enjoy the resources and support they currently experience,” Farnsworth said.
While the communities go through this process of splitting up, Farnsworth promised employees will keep their same benefits.
On its web page addressing the split, Alpine School District is inviting employee questions. The district also says state statute about school district reconfigurations will likely be altered during the upcoming legislative session.
When Sen. Grover presented his proposed legislation to the interim education committee on Nov. 20, he said he wanted the bill to be heard during the first week of the session so that it could be signed into law quickly.
“There are a lot of questions and a lot of issues that we need to look at to make sure that those districts are able to split off and form with the least amount of pain,” Grover said.
In the next step of the process, Utah County and city officials will establish boundaries for the new districts’ school board seats by April 2025. Board members will be elected the following November.
