The program study, part of a wide-scale study of the district, aimed to create an equitable distribution of programs across ASD boundaries to give more students access and the opportunity to participate in ALL and DLI programs. The entire presentation is now available on the ASD website.

“Programming is determined by district leadership. … We will continue to gather feedback from patrons and employees, and district staff will make a final decision by Jan. 23,” said Kimberly Bird, executive director of internal relations, communications and operations. If the recommendations for each program are accepted, they will go into effect for the 2025-2026 school year.

ASD is accepting feedback from the public about these recommendations until 5 p.m. Dec. 21. Anyone can leave feedback through the DLI and ALL feedback surveys, also found on ASD’s website. The comments will be read by district leadership and sent to the appropriate director who should see the comments.

ALL program study recommendations

ALL is the name of the district’s gifted program. The ALL study was done to analyze the current status of the program in terms of student enrollment numbers and access, as well as where changes could be made.

Nichole Whiteley, Daily Herald

It was recommended to the board that a standardized entry grade be created for the program at each school within ASD, specifically pointing to third grade. Currently of the 10 ALL program locations, three begin in third grade and seven begin in fourth grade. An effort to eliminate ALL for third grade students, proposed earlier this year, was met with resistance by parents and ultimately abandoned.

To create equitable access for students, the recommendation lowers the program to nine locations but adds six third-grade classrooms. Due to the changes of relocations and the closing of the program at some locations, there would be a total addition of three ALL classrooms to the district.

With the addition of classrooms and the standardization of grade entry, Jamie James, director of gifted services, explained the district would need to add six ALL teachers in the third grade. “Those may be teachers that relocate from the other programs. We may need to use teachers that are in the schools and help them get endorsed. We also have a lot of teachers in the district that do have the training already and may relocate.”

If these changes are made, James said they expect a rough increase of about 90 students programwide for the district.

Changes for the ALL program locations

Under the proposal, all ALL programs across the district would have standardized grade level opportunities from a third grade entry point to sixth grade. However, the locations of the programs would change if the recommendation is accepted by the board.

The following areas would maintain their current ALL program locations at the stated elementary schools:

• Eagle Mountain program location: Hidden Hollow.
• Alpine/Cedar Hills/Highland program location: Highland.
• Saratoga Springs program location: Saratoga Shores.
• Lehi program locations: Sego Lily and North Point.
• Orem/Vineyard program locations: Foothill and Orem.

The changes for the ALL program locations include phasing out the Cedar Ridge and Westfield elementary programs for the Alpine/Cedar Hills/Highland area. For the American Fork area, a new ALL program would be created at Shelley Elementary. The ALL program in the Pleasant Grove area would relocate from Lindon Elementary to Rocky Mountain Elementary.

Currently, Cedar Ridge and Westfield elementary ALL programs have about 20% of students coming from other areas to participate in the program, James explained. “These are services that should be serving students in an area, and they should have students in their program coming from other elementary schools. It’s not happening at these two schools, which means it’s not really serving the need that we have. So we’re changing that location to Shelley where it’s more centrally located for where we’re identifying our gifted kids,” she said. The ALL program looks for the top students in a geographical location, not just one elementary school, then those children participate in the program at one of the locations, she explained further.

As the ALL programs are phased out of Cedar Ridge and Westfield, a full ALL program would be phased into a new program location at Shelley Elementary. The two programs at Cedar Ridge and Westfield would close and one program would be relocated to Shelley, James said.

Ruiz explained during her presentation that if the recommendation is taken, Cedar Ridge and Westfield would provide programs for fifth and sixth grades for the 2025-2026 school year, meaning they would phase out their fourth grade programs. In the same school year, Shelley Elementary would begin its new ALL program by offering a program for grades three and four.

For the 2026-2027 school year, Cedar Ridge and Westfield would provide programs for sixth grade only, phasing out their fifth grade programs. In the same year, Shelley elementary would begin offering a fifth grade program in addition to grades three and four.

By the 2027-2028 school year, the ALL programs at Cedar Ridge and Westfield would be completely phased out and Shelley Elementary would offer ALL programs for the standardized third through sixth grades — the same as other program locations in the district.

DLI program study recommendations

The DLI program study was done to ensure there are DLI programs offered in each region across the district, looking at situations where out-of-area students participating in DLI were sustaining a school with declining enrollment and to provide equitable access to DLI programs for multilingual learners, said Aaron Hale, Alpine’s director of DLI.

In response to concern from board member Ada Wilson about a high demand for DLI but not enough desks or space for those students, Ruiz responded, “Because we study these programs annually, we continue to monitor the demands and balance that, again, with all of those variables that we mentioned earlier, like enrollment trends (and the) waitlist.” She explained that is something they are constantly studying “to balance and manage the demands for these programs in each of our communities.”

Hale explained during the board meeting that the wait list is very long for the DLI programs across ASD boundaries. There are currently 3,448 elementary students participating in the district’s DLI programs. The four programs offered, and their corresponding enrollment numbers, are: Chinese, 1,179; Portuguese, 274; Spanish, 1,671; and French, 324. If these recommendations are accepted, Hale said, “depending on how we launched the programs, there would be a growth of about 200 slots per year.”

Changes for the DLI program locations

DLI programs are set up in a pathway, which means students can participate in programs from kindergarten or first grade through middle school and high school.

The following areas would maintain their elementary school DLI program locations and pathway:

• Saratoga Springs pathways: Chinese DLI pathway from Riverview Elementary to Vista Heights Middle School to Westlake High School, and Spanish DLI pathway from Harvest Elementary to Vista Heights to Westlake.
• Lehi pathway: French DLI pathway from Belmont Elementary to Viewpoint Middle School to Skyridge High School.
• Alpine/Highland/Cedar Hills pathway: Chinese DLI pathway from Alpine Elementary to Timberline Middle School to Lone Peak High School.
• American Fork pathway: Spanish DLI pathway from Legacy Elementary to American Fork Junior High to American Fork High School.
• Orem pathway: Chinese DLI pathway from Cascade Elementary to Canyon View Junior High and Orem High School.
• Orem/Vineyard pathway: Spanish DLI pathway from Cherry Hill Elementary to Lakeridge Junior High to Mountain View High School and Orem High School.

The changes for the DLI programs include changes of locations and creations of entirely new DLI programs at elementary schools. Eagle Mountain would be maintaining the Chinese DLI program at Black Ridge Elementary, but the pathway would be relocated to the new middle school in Eagle Mountain that is set to open fall 2025; it would then continue into Cedar Valley High School. Also in Eagle Mountain, a new Spanish DLI program would be created at Mountain Trails Elementary to feed into Frontier Middle School and Cedar Valley High.

A new Spanish DLI program would also be created in the Lehi region at Liberty Hills Elementary and follow a pathway to Willowcreek Middle School then to Lehi High School. The Pleasant Grove/Lindon area would receive a new Portuguese DLI magnet school at Lindon Elementary to then feed into Oak Canyon Junior High to Pleasant Grove High School. Orem and Vineyard would also receive a Spanish DLI magnet school at Orchard Elementary, feeding into Canyon View Junior High to Timpanogos High School and Orem High.

Ruiz explained during her presentation to the board, “A magnet school is where every student in the school from kindergarten through sixth grade participates in the dual language immersion (program).” For schools that are not magnet schools, the DLI program is offered from first through sixth grade.

In addition to the recommendations to add DLI programs to these elementary schools, Hale said they are also recommending adding a Spanish bridge program to Orem High. Bridge is the high school version of DLI. Orem currently has a feeder middle school with a Spanish DLI program. But since Orem High does not have a bridge program, the middle school, students must go to a different high school to continue through bridge. If the recommendation is accepted, Orem High could support Spanish DLI students coming in from middle schools in the area.

There are two categories for DLI programs: one-way immersion and two-way immersion, Hale explained. One-way immersion typically provides services to students whose native language is English. “Two-way immersion is more of a balanced demographic where you have a greater representation of native or heritage speakers of the target language,” he said.

In ASD, the Spanish and Portuguese DLI programs lean more toward two-way immersion depending on the elementary school, Hale said. For example, in ASD there are five Spanish DLI elementary schools, three of which are one-way immersion and two of which are two-way immersion.

Hale said, “Our recommendations really looked at, ‘How can we move towards expanding that, so that we have more opportunities to have two-way immersion programs versus just the one-way.'”

However, he added they want to keep a balance of one0way and two0way immersion programs because both provide positive benefits to participating students and communities.

Magnet schools are more focused on two-way immersion, which Hale explained is typically more effective for multilingual learners. Hale said part of the reason for recommending that Orchard Elementary be made a magnet school was because, through their program study, they looked at areas in the district where multilingual learners were greatly represented, and one of those areas was Orem. He said through this recommendation they want to ensure multilingual learners have access to the DLI programs, specifically at magnet schools.

In addition, Hale said they were intentional in their recommendations of new Spanish DLI programs at Mountain Trails Elementary in Eagle Mountain and at Liberty Hills Elementary in Lehi after analyzing community feedback and demographic data. He said while there is a high waitlist for the Spanish DLI program in those areas, there has not been a high representation of multilingual learners in the programs. So, they wanted to ensure through their recommendations that multilingual learners in the area have access to the DLI programs.