School boundaries have been decided, construction on Deer Creek High School is nearing completion and now Wasatch County School District students are tasked with choosing between attending the current high school or its new counterpart in August.  More than 2,700 students are currently enrolled at Wasatch High School. That number will likely be cut in half based on what students decide during the open enrollment process. Wasatch County School District Superintendent Garrick Peterson said it’s hard to put a number on how many students will attend each school. But it’s not something the school district is restricting. What school students attend is a choice best left up to those kids, Peterson said. For the superintendent and the school board, it’s about honoring the connections students have made.  “I think there’s always been a concern with what our third goal is as a board, which is that every student’s going to be connected to their school,” Peterson said. As enrollment grows, Peterson said it can be more difficult to maintain that level of connection between students and their school, teachers and coaches.  “Wasatch High School does a great job, but when you have 2,700, 2,800 kids sitting in the school, it becomes a little bit difficult to know every kid’s name and help them feel like they’re known,” Peterson said. “If you’re splitting the school to achieve a goal of connection, you don’t want to force a kid to go to a school that maybe their favorite teacher isn’t going to be at.” Teachers and coaches, Peterson said, influence a student’s life. The school district does not want to take that away from any student. But Peterson also said that students tend to follow their friends’ decisions. The choice is in “two worlds” for students, and especially for 11th- and 12th-grade students.  “Especially for our seniors and juniors, there’s a little bit of loss in this because kids that you’ve went to school with … or maybe that teacher is not going to be at the school that you were. So, there’s that side of it,” Peterson said. “Is it hard for kids to choose? It probably depends on the kid. It probably depends on the friendship group.” At a Heber Valley Chamber of Commerce State of the Valley talk on March 17, Peterson said projected enrollment was around 1,350 students at Wasatch High School and 1,250 students at Deer Creek High School. Peterson said that number is subject to change, but the school district expects to see somewhere between 1,350 and 1,400 students at either school.  Teachers, however, do not have the same choice. Peterson said the school district wants to see “strong teacher leadership” in both schools.  “We want to make sure that all programs are available in both schools, so it was a combination of teacher preference and making sure we have all programs in both schools,” Peterson said.  School Board President Kim Dickerson said it’s important to note that the school district is not hiring double the number of teachers.  “The teachers follow the students,” Dickerson said. “I think that’s … important for the community to understand.” That strong sense of leadership among teachers benefits the school district on an academic level, Peterson said. One aspect the school district focused on when dividing teaching opportunities is maintaining a collaborative culture.  Peterson also discussed the level of academic improvement the school district has achieved in the last 10 years. Seven years ago, 32% of students were passing the 10th-grade ACT prep course. That placed the district 19th out of 20 similarly sized schools in Utah.  “We had some room to improve,” Peterson said.  Now, Wasatch High School is at a 68% passing rate, placing the school district in first among the same schools seven years later. But Peterson said it’s not so much about test scores — it’s more about keeping students’ options open for their futures. That involves emphasizing kids’ personal goals.  “I think that this split, having these two schools, is just giving kids more opportunities to be interested in things that maybe they wouldn’t have even considered before,” Dickerson said. “The connectivity piece of this is very important.” Maintaining high academic achievement and thinking about how to help students pursue their goals involves a lot of collaboration between teachers in the school district, Peterson said. That is something the school district will maintain despite the high school split.  “Our teachers will still be working back and forth together,” Peterson said.  Peterson attributes a good deal of the school district’s academic success to the teachers’ ability to interact, collaborate and learn from each other.  “Really, our model is that we have teachers learn from other teachers based on the learning results that they are getting,” Peterson said. “I think it’s going to be easy to see the benefits that come from splitting the schools as we move through this.” The new Deer Creek High School is on track to open for the 2026-27 school year in August. Wasatch County School District finalized its boundaries in November. The post Deer Creek High School or Wasatch High School? Wasatch County School District says the choice is up to the students appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less