District proposes short-term boundary shifts and temporary reassignments as enrollment declines

Dr. Van Natter, presenting for the district’s elementary planning team, told the Davis County School District board that a boundary study focused on Sunburst Elementary and several clusterwide reviews has produced a set of short-term recommendations to address declining enrollment and imbalanced immersion/English enrollment splits.

The team recommended moving a defined group of students ("group number 2" in the district packet) out of Sunburst and back to Sand Springs Elementary for the next school year; staff said the change would move roughly 150 students and would hit the district’s short-term target for relief at Sunburst while avoiding moving the same families twice in successive boundary changes. Van Natter said area 1 would remain unchanged now to preserve options for a later, larger boundary study.

For the 2025–26 school year only, staff proposed two temporary reassignments to address insufficient English-only enrollment in lower grades:

- Students in Eagle Bay boundaries who choose English-only (not immersion) for grades 1–3 would attend Canyon Creek Elementary; staff said transportation can be provided.

- First-grade students in Stewart Elementary who do not enroll in the Chinese immersion program would attend Reading Elementary where capacity exists; the district said transportation support would be considered.

Van Natter said those temporary assignments are intended as one-year measures to prevent the inability to form viable English-only classrooms; staff warned that communities and teachers at affected schools were concerned that temporary moves might become permanent if a broader long-term solution is not adopted. "If we don't have a solution for the following year, we're going to decimate their school," she said, recounting teacher concerns at Stewart.

Staff described the districtwide context: multiple elementary schools in the Davis and Farmington clusters show significant under-enrollment compared with historic levels, and district presenters cited falling birth rates and demographic change as part of the cause. The boundary team proposed posting the Sunburst proposal and related proposals to the district website the next day, opening a boundary email address for public comment, holding an open house on Feb. 6 at Sand Springs, and returning to the board with public input on Feb. 19.

Board members asked questions about immersion enrollment, magnetification and long-term options such as magnet or cluster-level reorganizations. Van Natter and Tracy Robbins (elementary director) said long-term remedies will require clusterwide study and that ideas raised at meetings—closing a school or creating magnet models—would be considered only as part of a larger boundary review.