As the mayor of Pleasant Grove City, I have decided to share my feelings on the difficult situation we find ourselves in concerning the upcoming vote on splitting the Alpine School District.

ASD is highly successful — student achievement and teacher satisfaction are high, and the AAA bond rating shows that it is financially well-managed. Reasons to split have ranged from “ASD is too big” to “the needs of this area are too different from the needs of that area” and “we don’t believe that others will support our needs.” None of these reasons have to do with student achievement, teacher satisfaction or financial stability. Sometimes things move forward more slowly than we would like, but that is not a reason to divide this well-established education entity and merely hope that a new, smaller district will be able to move more quickly and somehow have more money to work with.

I spent 19 years on the ASD school board and have seen firsthand the complexities and nuances of running a school district. The recommendations on any split should have come from the school board and not from city councils. City councils are not elected to represent schools. That is the role of the school board.

Splitting the district is a decision that cannot be reversed. There are many questions that have not even been addressed, let alone answered, that should be at least discussed before this decision is irrevocable. Some of the concerns will need to be addressed by future board members, but the concerns should not be ignored simply because they cannot be solved immediately.

Startup costs are one of the major unknown factors that cannot be quantified in dollars and cents right now but which will be necessary and, depending on the area, very costly. When Jordan and Canyons split 15 years ago, it cost a total of $60 million for startup costs, leading to immediate property tax increases, teacher wage freezes and program cuts. New districts need district buildings, bus depots and other physical facilities that will all have to be duplicated in some fashion.

Duplicating district leadership, services and programs cannot and will not be less costly. ASD has a AAA bond rating, which is the highest possible rating. It took more than 17 years of good financial management and growth to receive that rating. That is not something to take lightly, nor will it be easily replicated.

This will mean higher costs to build the schools and other buildings that each new district would need because of the higher interest rates associated with lower bond ratings, regardless of what any future school board members would want. We have heard that we won’t need to duplicate services and will just form “shared service” agreements. If splitting the district will result in needing to share the services we already have, what exactly is the point to splitting? There is no reason to pay more to get what we already have in ASD.

Teacher and other educator concerns should not be overlooked. The purpose of a school district is to educate children in the best way possible. That means we need teachers. We all know that our education dollars in Utah are already impossibly stretched to cover the needs of our students, and when teachers express concerns about their livelihood and the impact a split will have on their students or their benefits, we should listen.

How many of you remember what it was like to try to teach children at home during the first few months of the pandemic? Remember how much we all appreciated our teachers then? Teachers and administrators make the difference between merely imparting information to our children and having them actually become educated. We need to seriously consider the concerns of the teachers in this matter.

We are messing with something that may not need to be fixed. Working together benefits everyone. In ASD, we are strong because we incorporate several cities. As a result of having more than a small, condensed collection of communities that will most likely encounter similar issues at the same time, we have a larger collection that can help offset economic or demographic difficulties. No setup is perfect, but there are better ways to overcome differences than to split like this and hope that it turns out well for our students eventually.

I’m very concerned that, like the Jordan and Canyons split, a huge portion of voters will not have a say in this decision. Eighty-one thousand voters, including those in my own city, will not be able to vote on what happens to their own school district. Some say that’s our own fault for not creating an interlocal with Orem, Lindon and Vineyard. However, when we city leaders met, it was clear that we did not want to put an option on the ballot that would lead to the most expensive, least recommended outcome: a three-way split. That is not good for our area, and we would be irresponsible to support it for our community.

Additionally, it didn’t make sense to create an initiative that could be overruled by other city initiatives; if we voted no and they voted yes, our vote didn’t matter. If a split is needed on a ballot, we need one initiative that everyone votes on.

Let’s get everyone who will be affected to the same table, and let’s really listen to the concerns of everyone who will be impacted by this irreversible decision before it is too late. And, certainly, let’s remember that the purpose of a school district is to educate children in the best way possible. A split at this time and in this way is not the best decision for the students who will be the most affected of all. I hope my neighboring communities will be wise and vote no on their propositions.

There is a better way — let’s pause and do things the right way.