At a meeting held last month, the Alpine School District Board of Education approved the start of a boundary study to consider enrollment adjustments at seven elementary schools in Eagle Mountain and Cedar Fort.

The schools included in the study are: Black Ridge Elementary, Hidden Hollow Elementary, Desert Sky Elementary, Eagle Valley Elementary, Mountain Trails Elementary, Cedar Valley Elementary and a new elementary school, set to be built in Eagle Mountain’s city center area.

Parents and community members are encouraged to weigh in on three options presented in the study, two of which involve a closure of Cedar Valley Elementary, if one was to be approved.

Heather Wrigley, a parent who started a petition to keep the school open, feels that if Cedar Valley Elementary closed, it would disrupt children’s education and potentially put more strain on surrounding schools. 

“Every single elementary school that we would possibly be placed into is already over full by anywhere from 50% to 100%,” she said.  “So we’re overburdening our neighboring schools instead of utilizing the space that we have at our school.”

Wrigley also questions why such a decision is on the table while the district is in the midst of a reconfiguration.

“The new board is going to be expected to make their decision (based) off previous district data and the previous districts board vote knowing that the whole point of splitting the district was because the previous district didn’t have our best interests in mind,” she told the Daily Herald.

Cedar Valley Elementary sits in Cedar Fort and is roughly 10 miles from where the new elementary school will be built in neighboring Eagle Mountain.

If Cedar Valley remained open, data from the current Alpine School District projects a student enrollment of just around 106 students for the next three years. 

The Alpine School District says the new elementary school is intended to bring down student populations at nearby Desert Sky and some other schools in the area. Additionally, it believes it’ll accommodate families with young students in the new Firefly housing development. 

Even without a closure of Cedar Valley Elementary, the new school is projected to serve nearly 800 students in its first year, according to the district.

During its Aug. 5, meeting, board members recognized what the school means to its community.

“I just wanted to acknowledge that Cedar Valley is a unique small school serving a small but very important population,” board member Ada Wilson said. “They’ve been waiting for the time when a school would be built close enough for them to be consolidated.”

During that same meeting, board member Mark Clement also acknowledged the difficulty of a closure consideration, but he also believes it could be beneficial.

“I believe these students would be much better served by a larger school where they could have multiple classes per grade, teachers could collaborate with each other — I believe you’ll see student achievement increasing for those Cedar Valley students,” he said.

Save our school

At Tuesday night’s meeting, parents, community members and young students pleaded with board members to reconsider the potential closure of Cedar Valley Elementary.

Resident Monica Corey suggested the board consider adding growing areas in Eagle Mountain to the school’s boundary zone. She believes it’ll boost Cedar Valley Elementary’s dwindling enrollment while avoiding overcrowding at other nearby schools.

“Cedar Valley Elementary School has a current student body of 130 students and can accommodate just over 300 students without any additions to our campus,” she said before the baord. “If we were to add more classrooms to our campus, we could accommodate the growth predicted in our new map.”

Cedar Fort Mayor Wyatt Cook said the closure of Cedar Valley Elementary would have deep impacts in his city.

“This is one of the only few things that we have in our community that keeps our community alive (and) keeps it going,” he said. “We don’t have hardly any commercial growth in our area, and this school is the heart of our community.”

Mayor Hollie McKinney of neighboring Fairfield urged the board to consider the long-term effects on students and families of closing Cedar Valley Elementary, including travel impacts along state Route 73 for families in her city to and from the center of Eagle Mountain.

“If any of you guys drove out there every day, you would understand what a hellhole it is for us to drive out there on a daily basis and for us to put elementary kids on that highway with buses and not counting the growth that is going to go on out there,” she said.

Other comments argued in support of keeping Cedar Valley open, re-emphasizing that it would relieve pressure on other schools and could lead to improved academic outcomes.

At this point, no decisions either way on the matter have been made.

The boundary study remains underway, with two open houses scheduled for Oct. 9 and Oct. 29 to gather public feedback. 

The board is expected to vote on the boundary adjustments and the fate of Cedar Valley Elementary in mid-November.

By then, new board members for the soon-to-be-formed Lake Mountain School District will be elected and preparing to take office.

Derek Farnes, director of operational analytics for the Alpine School District, said current board members and newly elected boards will work together in the process to approve or halt any future boundary adjustments and subsequent school closures.

Individuals wanting to submit online feedback can visit alpineschools.org.