Wasatch County School District Superintendent Paul Sweat said the district offers students opportunities to learn outside the classroom.
The district’s CAPS program, the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, gives high school students a chance to learn skills through real-world projects.
At a school board meeting Nov. 28, the district decided to purchase two plots of land for the CAPS program to use in a class teaching students to build houses, usually one home per year. The homes are then sold to teachers or first responders at below market rate.
“It’s a construction class where kids get some… experiential learning as they build a home together throughout the year,” Sweat explained. “This is a good program and it works good for our kids, and it helps a teacher out each year.”
Affordable housing has made hiring and retaining faculty a bigger challenge in recent years. Sweat said his team is brainstorming ways to make living in the area more achievable for district staff, like talking with developers about master leasing an apartment building for new teachers.
Experiential learning is also incorporated into the plans for the new high school, the second in Wasatch County. The high school under construction at 1000 West 100 South in Heber will sit next door to a Mountainlands Technical College campus, or MTECH.
The superintendent said he’s excited about the future high school’s neighbor.
“It does focus on skilled labor and it’s something that I think is badly needed here on the Wasatch Back,” he said. “We’re really excited to have that campus here and what it’ll offer our kids.”
Sweat said he anticipates both buildings will be up and running by fall 2026.
