Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- An interdisciplinary committee proposed board seat allocation for the new Central School District in Utah County.
- The proposal focuses on community cohesion, prioritizing city boundaries over population size.
- The Utah County Commission will hold a public hearing before making a final decision.
LEHI — Utah County voted in favor of Proposition 11 in November, setting in motion the creation of what is now called Utah's Central School District.
The move split the cities of Alpine, American Fork, Cedar Hills, Highland, Lehi and the portion of Draper that sits in Utah County from the Alpine School District in favor of forming a new district.
Now, an interdisciplinary committee has submitted a proposal to the Utah County Commission for how the board seats for Central School District could be divvied up.
"Even though we are following boundary lines of schools, it is for where the boards will represent ... for the elections that are coming up in 2025 for the seven new board seats for this district," Lehi City Councilwoman Heather Newall said.
The map was developed through a collaborative process that included a committee of two representatives from the interlocal cities (Lehi, Cedar Hills), a chair, a county employee, an Alpine School District board member and two residents from within the new district (Highland, American Fork).
"It was just going through and figuring out how we could best allocate these seats to be able to represent the communities, and then we're giving this map back to the County Commission, and they will be the ones who are going to hold the public hearing and then make the final vote to approve," Newall said.
Newall added that in creating the map of the board seats, the committee took into account a common gripe among citizens that, in part, led to the dissolution of Alpine School District: the desire for more representation and better local control.
A key aspect of the argument for Proposition 11 when voters were mulling it over was Alpine's current size. As the largest district in the state at the time, a voter information pamphlet sent out by the Utah County Clerk's Election Division argued that its size "makes it difficult to align educational priorities."
So far, Newall said constituents she's heard from are feeling good about how they'd be represented through the proposed map.
"I've received a lot of positive feedback from this. Really, what we're hearing aligns with how people were feeling that led to the splitting of Alpine School District. They were looking to be better represented," Newall said. "Talking to people about, 'What does that mean to them (and) how do they feel most represented?' Overwhelmingly, people feel most represented by somebody who is from their city."
In the current makeup of the Alpine School District, American Fork is represented by three different board members.
"There's just not that community cohesion. We really aim to keep our cities together," Newall said, adding that the committee chose to keep American Fork and Highland as a whole, two cities likely to be divided if the committee just looked at population.
Instead, the committee prioritized city boundaries and where population adjustments were needed; they relied on school boundaries to keep communities together.
"Our 10% flexibility on population numbers accounted for both growth and community cohesion. Based on community feedback, we recognize that residents feel more connected to their board members through shared neighborhoods and schools rather than just the number of people they represent, "Newall said. "We also accounted for areas where students may attend our schools, even if they are not currently within our district's boundary. Whether through out-of-area requests, district annexation or Utah law provisions, we wanted to ensure these families would feel connected and represented."
In the proposed map, no board seat would be responsible for more than one junior high or middle school and one high school, allowing board members to stay "closely connected" to the schools they serve.
"We took lots of different feedback from lots of different people and different stakeholders to come up with this map and it seems, overall, that people are pretty happy," Newall said.
The next steps for the map to become official now rest with the Utah County Commission, which will hold a public hearing before ultimately casting the final decision.
The Utah County Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment from KSL.com on when and where the public hearing would be held.
An interactive version of the recommended school board map can be found here.
