Deseret Peak High School under construction on Monday, May 15, 2023. The school is slated to open in the fall of 2025.
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Loading...With two new schools opening in the fall of 2025, new boundary lines will need to be drawn up to populate those schools witch students.
Stansbury Junior High School and Deseret Peak High School are both scheduled to open in the fall of 2025.
Sarah Jarnagin, Tooele County School District Stansbury area director, updated the school board on progress towards new boundaries during the May 9 school board meeting at the school district office.
An internal committee to conduct research on boundaries has been formed. The committee includes 13 school district staff members and with two school board members consulting.
The committee is co-chaired by the Stansbury and Tooele area directors, the assistant superintendent, the operations director, communications director, and transportation director.
The Stansbury High School and Tooele High school principals, two affected elementary school principals, the school district’s GIs specialist, pupil services secretary and administrative secretary are also on the internal committee.
School board members Scott Bryan and Melissa Rich were listed as “of consultation” on the list of committee membership.
The committee’s first meeting was in February where they set goals and reviewed the process and timeline. In March, the committee reviewed current boundaries and enrollment numbers. In April, the committee organized into subcommittees and started looking at boundary possibilities.
“So we’re really just getting started,” Jarnagin said.
One of the committee’s goals is to “create a pure feeders Elementary through High School.”
To accomplish that, the committee will look at boundaries of elementary schools as well as boundaries needed to establish the new junior high school and high school, according to Jarnagin.
The committee also hopes to create high schools of equal size and study future growth projections to create boundaries that will not need more than one change over the next five years.
The committee proposed creating a focus group of parents and community members district-wide to provide feedback on the committee’s boundary proposals.
Public input would also be solicited through required public hearings and possibly a webpage, a Facebook live Q&A and a Qualtrics survey.
Two key dates are an October 2023 notice and public hearing to comply with state law requiring a 120 day notice of which schools are being considered for a boundary change.
Jarnagin said the committee’s timeline calls for the committee to have three proposals ready for school board consideration with a public hearing and possible board action in February 2024.
Board president Melissa Rich pointed out that February 2023 would be a full 18 months before the new boundaries would be effective.
“Students would go to school for a full year knowing what school boundary they will be in for the next school year,” Rich said. “This will be a great thing. Families will have time to adjust.”
