Utah County voters last year decided to divvy up the massive Alpine School District into three separate districts.
The move created 21 brand-new school board seats (seven for each new district). Seventy candidates threw their names into the ring, and after August primaries, 40 will advance to November’s general election — with one seat already decided.
Julie King, a current Alpine school board member, was the only candidate to file for “Seat 2” in the temporarily named Lake Mountain District, the western-most district created in the split. It encompasses Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Cedar Fort, Fairfield and unincorporated parts of Utah County west of Lehi.
Without any contenders, she quickly secured her spot.
“There’s no question that a tremendous amount of work lies ahead,” King told The Salt Lake Tribune.
The new Aspen Peaks School District — also a temporary name — will encompass the cities of American Fork, Cedar Hills, Draper, Alpine, Highland and Lehi.
The third, called Timpanogos School District for now, comprises Orem, Lindon, Pleasant Grove and Vineyard.
Interlocal committees, made up of officials from the cities within each new district, selected the interim district names. When the newly elected school board members take office in January 2026, they can choose to keep or change those names.
What’s next for Alpine students?
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Students during a break between classes at Lehi High School, in Lehi on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2025.
The Alpine School District won’t officially dissolve until July 2027, when the new districts will take its place.
Before that can happen, much work needs to be done, said Rich Stowell, a spokesperson for the Alpine School District.
The first task will involve the elected leaders of each new school board selecting superintendents and other administrators to run district operations, Stowell said.
“The sooner they can hire superintendents, probably the better off for students in those school districts,” he said.
Teachers and other school staff will remain at the schools where they currently work, Stowell said.
Under state law, school employees’ “accrued seniority and benefits” will transfer to the new district their school falls under. That includes their career status, salary and any contracts they had with the former district.
But district administrators — and employees who are not assigned to a specific school — are not guaranteed those same assurances, Stowell said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Students work in video class at Lehi High School, on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2025.
Another big task that Stowell said is already underway is the dividing of Alpine’s current resources and assets among the three new districts.
“[We] basically have the model already built out where they can quickly divide up assets and liabilities,” he said. “Most of these things are tied to student enrollment, so the resources will follow the students — outside of the real property, like buildings and land.”
While each new district’s boundaries were established last year with the passage of the split, there are some schools that now teeter along the new borders and will have to be rebounded.
“The work of the new school boards will be to determine boundaries of all the schools in their new districts,” Stowell said.
He added that the looming split is the focus of every decision Alpine administrators make moving forward.
“This question is ever-present,” Stowell said. “How to prepare the ground for those new school districts informs every single thing we do at the district office.”
That includes a recent Alpine school board decision to raise property taxes by 11.5%, which saw swift community backlash. Officials argue the extra $23 million the increase will generate is much needed.
“Our board felt that they owed it to new school districts to raise a little bit of capital for flexibility in starting up a new school district,” Stowell said.
For homeowners, the increase amounts to paying roughly $28 more a year, based on the median home value in Utah County, Stowell said.
Why did Alpine split?
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Members of the Alpine School District's board of education, from left, Sara Hacken, Superintendent Shane Farnsworth, Sarah Beeson and Stacey Bateman, during a school board meeting on June 30, 2023.
Splitting the Alpine School District has been a possibility for decades because of its rapid population growth. The district covers nearly half of Utah County, which encompasses 13 municipalities and 92 schools.
But it wasn’t until 2023 that district leaders took formal steps to set it in motion.
The massive district had been gearing up to put its own split proposal on November 2024 ballots until state lawmakers shut down the effort. During a special June 2024 legislative session, lawmakers then passed HB3003, titled “School District Amendments,” which prevented local school boards from initiating the process to divide a district.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, said the legislation was necessary at the time because there were also two interlocal proposals to split the district planned for the upcoming ballot, and the school board’s proposal would have conflicted with them.
Both measures passed with majority support. Proposition 11, which created Aspen Peaks, received 57.61% of the vote. The other, Proposition 14, which formed Lake Mountain, passed with 60% support.
As a result, the Timpanogos School District was automatically established.