The Alpine school district division begins with the November 2025 General Election, where voters will elect all 21 school board seats within their respective school board member districts. Once elected, the new board members will begin serving in December 2025 with three (3) to five (5) year terms. Over the following year, the three new districts will focus on crafting policies, hiring staff, including the superintendent, negotiating with other boards to decide which district gets what resources in the Alpine split and set property tax rates. The transition will culminate at the beginning of the 2027 school year when the newly formed districts, Lake Mountain, Aspen Peaks and Timpanogos districts, will officially start educating students. Lake Mountain School District will have 7 seats and encompasses Cedar Fort, Fairfield, Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs and some unincorporated parts of Utah County. District Seat 1 will serve a three year term.
Candidate has not yet responded.
Candidate has not yet responded.
Candidate has not yet responded.
Candidate has not yet responded.
Candidate has not yet responded.
Campaign Phone
801-502-5269
State code requires and outlines some of what we need to initiate a transition. For example, all policies, employees and salaries roll over as-is at least for the first year. Similarly, we have a calendar that's fully planned out a couple of years with an outline for calendar through 2030. One of our biggest needs is to adequately support the staff in transition with careful planning, lots of communication and backfilling district-level staff that don't directly work in a school. There's lot of ideas for things to change and a few of them are 100% worthy of consideration but our primary focus has to be continuity. Another key to our success will be to start quickly and make fast, steady progress for the first six months.
I am a huge advocate for the arts. Many students struggling to stay engaged in school find a home in our CTE programs. The PLC (a method for teacher collaboration and improvement) program provides a structured and research based framework to continue learning. We have a lot of programs we want to retain. I will always advocate in support of our teachers- practically speaking, that means listening to them and understanding which programs need updating or elimination. For example, I commonly hear from teachers that behavior is a growing challenge. We should explore a digital hall pass and attendance system well known to help with truancy, violence and drug use. We should also explore a district wide comprehensive behavior management system.
Listening to our teachers is the fastest way to support them. We can't help if we don't know what they're experiencing. In very simple terms, we can set expectations for district staff to be reaching out for input, visiting classrooms, and generally be in schools more.
Teachers often talk to me about being over burdened with unnecessary tasks, frustrated with student behavior, big class sizes and not having enough time to prepare. We can't tackle everything at once, but we (the board) can immediately hire strong district leadership that will work to improve our work place culture right from the beginning. I'll be looking for leaders that focus on helping and retaining teachers is a direct line to helping students.
Alpine has a number of highly effective programs like student services, community outreach, student advocates and school counselors. We even have a teen center planned for the new high school. However, many of these efforts are focused on secondary schools.
Addressing achievement gaps will require a focus on high leverage interventions earlier. Expanding counseling services for elementary, additional reading intervention professionals and paraprofessionals, and in-class aides are all powerful tools. We will also need to develop strategies for including and supporting families.
Identifying underperforming students as early as possible allows us to respond before students get lost in the shuffle of later grades.
Boards are, by nature, looking at things from a high or macro level. Like any organization, senior leaders do this work by looking at a lot of numbers, reports, and big data sets. In my professional career, I work as an executive so I'm very experienced with this process. I also know, through experience, we have to look through the numbers and consider how our decisions and policies impacts people- students and staff. We have to weigh the emotional and psychological impact of policies every time one is considered.
My mom was a career educator and middle school counselor. I know too well the value our services like counseling, psychology, student services, etc. I will advocate for the continued support of these programs.
