Wasatch County parents are weighing in on new school boundaries. As survey results trickle in, Wasatch County School District Director of Student Services Eric Campbell said class sizes are a main concern.
Drawing new school boundaries is a necessary next step, Campbell said, due to the construction of Wasatch County’s Deer Creek High School. Just west of Heber City, Deer Creek High will curb the growing enrollment of students in the county.
In March, Superintendent Paul Sweat said Wasatch High School is past overcrowded with nearly 2,700 students attending.
Campbell said then that the school board will not draw any lines without input from the community. The board has since sent out a survey, and 376 individuals have responded. While Campbell said that just 40% filled out open-ended questions, those responses indicated parents are thinking along the same lines.
Survey responders urged the board to “plan for the next 10 years, not five,” and provide equitable access to learning opportunities.
“One high school shouldn’t be the ‘AP’ school while the other just gets the basics,” one response reads.
In order of most to least represented, top common themes revolve around keeping kids together to maintain peer relationships, creating an even enrollment balance, and transportation or safety issues when it comes to navigating Heber City’s Main Street and Highway 40. Campbell said that the most “emotionally charged” topics relate to class sizes and continuity.
School board member Bradley Ehlert said he understands why restricting class sizes is a priority for the community. Ehlert added that he is unsure how to fix the problem without first setting a standard for the issue.
“I don’t think we’ve set standards for classroom sizes at the high school levels, so there’s no guarantee that it’s actually going to reduce class sizes unless we hire enough teachers to reduce class sizes,” Ehlert said, referring to the construction of Deer Creek High School. “If that’s a priority for the community, then the board has to hear that. If we want to reduce class sizes, there should probably be some type of standard.”
Survey results show that the majority of respondents — 29% overall — have ties to Wasatch High School. The second largest group of respondents, making up a total of 21%, selected their identifying school as Timpanogos Middle School and 11% marked ties to Rocky Mountain Middle School.
Sweat, who said this year he believes Deer Creek High School will “create a more level playing field” for students in the county, said it makes sense that parents would mark class sizes as a top issue. When Sweat started his career in the district, he became principal of Wasatch High School with 1,350 students. Since then, he’s watched that number double.
“The people that are going to be most adamant about reduced class sizes will be the actual parents of the high school kids. … That’s how we all are. We’re most adamant about the thing that affects our family.”
Sweat said the issue “is not something we need to even vote on,” but that all board members should be focused on creating a “conducive environment” for students to learn.
Survey data will continue to come in this summer. A board meeting with a public comment period about school boundaries is set for August. Firm boundaries will be drawn in October.