Lindon Elementary is on a school-closure study list for the third time in four years, this time under the new Timpanogos School District board that Alpine School District officials explicitly left the decision to in December 2024. On August 26, the Timpanogos board named Lindon among 10 elementary schools and three junior highs for a 90-day study that could close three to five elementaries and consolidate one junior high, with a final vote targeted by December 2026.
The pressure is not a single Lindon-only budget cut. Timpanogos Business Administrator Jason Sundberg told Lindon City officials on May 4 that, using fiscal year 2025 actuals, the incoming district faces an annual operating deficit of about $18 million to $20 million — roughly 8 to 10 percent of its projected budget. He listed three options: a property-tax increase, spending cuts, or both. Sundberg, who previously served as Alpine’s business administrator during the 2024 Lindon closure hearings, also said Alpine is positioned to leave Timpanogos a capital-levy building fund of about $20 million a year, which could reduce the need for a tax hike.
Lindon Elementary, at 30 North Main Street next to Lindon City offices, is one of the oldest campuses Timpanogos will inherit when Alpine dissolves on June 30, 2027, and the new district takes over on July 1. The school has about 630 students as of 2023–24, down from a peak of 737 in 2014; more recent directories list about 594. Nearby Rocky Mountain Elementary in Lindon enrolled 483 students in 2024–25.
Why this school keeps coming up
Alpine first moved to close Lindon after voters rejected a $595 million bond in 2022. In March 2023, district official David Stephenson said a boundary study recommended closing Lehi, Valley View, Lindon, Windsor and Sharon elementaries because all five sat on the Utah K-12 Public Schools Unreinforced Masonry Inventory, a 2022 state-federal list of campuses built of brick with little or no steel reinforcement. That inventory identified 119 Utah school campuses with unreinforced masonry, serving about 72,000 students.
Alpine paused those closures in 2023 after parents sued. It came back on September 17, 2024, opening a 90-day study of Lindon and Windsor. Then-board member Ada Wilson said Lindon “is one of our older buildings which has historically had problems” and that “we do owe this community a study.” Wilson now sits on the Timpanogos board that relaunched the question.
On December 17, 2024, Alpine voted 6-1 to halt both studies and leave the issue to the new district. Wilson cast the no vote, citing a south-end deficit and the need to “attack” making a competitive district. Board member Julie King warned that more than a dozen schools would be underpopulated by 2027 and that keeping a school open is “a multimillion-dollar decision.” President Sara Hacken said some PTA and faculty members supported closing Lindon over age and seismic issues, then asked: “I think a lot of us feel like Lindon needs to be closed. But is now the time, and is this the way?”
Lindon Mayor Carolyn Lundberg had already asked Alpine, at a November 12, 2024, public hearing with about 57 people in the room, to leave the school to the new board. On May 4, 2026, she told Timpanogos officials the school “has appeared on closure discussion lists for several years, creating uncertainty that has discouraged some families from enrolling.”
Where students would go
The 2024 study’s working plan was to send Lindon neighborhood students to Rocky Mountain Elementary. Parent Shandra Mueller told the Alpine board Rocky Mountain “does not have the capacity.” Combining Lindon’s roughly 600 students with Rocky Mountain’s 483 would produce a campus of more than 1,000. Alpine board member Mark Clement said in 2024 there was “really no way of moving the students…without getting rid of both the DLI and ALL program,” referring to Windsor’s Dual Language Immersion and Lindon’s Advanced Learning Lab.
Lindon has hosted that ALL gifted program for decades. Alpine opened Rocky Mountain in 1996 specifically to relieve overcrowding at Lindon and Northridge; ALL was kept at the older Lindon building. Several families who spoke on November 12, 2024, including the Hunsakers, had already been moved once when Valley View Elementary closed. Chad Hunsaker said if Lindon closed it would be “the second school to close within a mile of his house.”
Sharon Elementary, also on the 2023 URM list, is already gone as a neighborhood school. Timpanogos is renovating that Orem campus as Silver Peak School, a specialized program, with a target of August 2026.
Mayor Lundberg said many Lindon residents hope that if the school is affected, a campus on the west side near Anderson Farms — land Alpine previously acquired — could keep families in the city. Board member David H. Smith said the Timpanogos board had visited that site on its facilities tour. Board President Jen Lyman said then that “no decisions have been made, that everything is on the table.”
The schools named with Lindon for the current study are Aspen, Bonneville, Foothill, Northridge, Orchard, Orem, Parkside, Rocky Mountain and Windsor elementaries, plus Canyon View, Oak Canyon and Orem junior highs. Timpanogos Communications Director Tyler Vigue said several of the district’s 20 elementaries are “already below what we consider a robust school size,” and that projections show declining enrollment. Utah State Board of Education data director Aaron Brough said Utah County added about 16,000 residents from 2024 to 2025 but that in-migration no longer produces the large families that once filled classrooms.
What happens next
Utah law requires a minimum 90-day study, with a board decision by December 31 of the year before a closure takes effect. Timpanogos opened that clock on August 26. Being named for study is not a closure vote; the board has said it will take public comment through open houses, focus groups and hearings, then vote by December 2026 on boundaries, consolidations and grade configurations. Any closure would not take effect before the 2027–28 school year, Timpanogos’s first year of full operations, serving a projected 23,330 students across 29 schools in Orem, Lindon, Pleasant Grove and Vineyard.
Lindon Parks Director Heath Bateman formally asked the district to keep the city informed, citing the school’s location on the civic campus. Superintendent Joe Jensen, a former Oak Canyon and Orem High administrator who lives in the footprint, has said the study’s goal is “robust” schools, not a predetermined hit list. For Lindon families, the record is now three studies, one paused lawsuit, a seismic listing, a new district staring at an $18 million hole — and a vote due before year’s end.
