Relief is on its way, albeit slowly, for American Fork and Pleasant Grove high schools, two of the most overcrowded schools in the Alpine School District.
In its Tuesday night meeting, the Alpine School Board awarded the contract for construction of a new high school in the American Fork-Highland area to Bud Mahas Construction of Salt Lake City. The expected cost of the high school is $28.2 million, roughly within the estimates the district has prepared.The new school is expected to help with overcrowding at American Fork and Pleasant Grove high schools. Last year, those high schools had more than 2,000 and 1,500 students, respectively. Neither of them were designed to hold that many students, and both are still overcrowded despite having extensive portable classroom space.
Students from American Fork, Alpine and Highland currently attend American Fork High, while Pleasant Grove High's boundaries include its home city, as well as Lindon.
Gary Keetch, assistant superintendent of secondary schools, said current enrollment projections show both those high schools adding at least 300 students apiece, which would exacerbate the existing crowding problems.
The new high school will be located north of the State Developmental Center and Tri-City Golf Course and is projected to hold as many as 2,000 students. MHT Architects Inc. of Salt Lake City designed the school and a new high school in the Orem-Lindon area from similar blueprints to save the district designing costs.
American Fork High School Principal Vern Henshaw, who stands to gain the most from the construction, said his school will still have to make do with portable classrooms until the new school is ready to open.
Funding for the school - as well as construction of three other new schools throughout the district - came from last year's $98 million school construction bond, which was overwhelmingly approved by district residents last spring. Of that $98 million, $73 million was issued in 1994 to begin construction of two elementary schools and two high schools in the Orem-Lindon and American Fork-Alpine-Highland areas.
Last year, the schools board approved a bid of $12 million for construction of both of the elementary schools. Construction has begun on the American Fork-area elementary and that school could be open for the 1995-96 school year. The two new Orem-area schools should be open the following school year and the other high school would follow by the 1997-98 school year.
Alpine district officials opted to delay construction of the Lindon elementary, as well as the Highland high school, to receive favorable building costs and conditions and allow Canada-based Granville Construction Co. to build both elementaries.