Two high schools serve the far side of the lake, and they opened exactly ten years apart to the day.
Westlake High School opened on 20 August 2009. Cedar Valley High School opened on 20 August 2019. Between those two dates, Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs did something almost no other pair of Utah cities has done: they went from a place where one high school was plenty to a place where two enormous ones are barely enough.
This is the west side of Utah Valley — the Cedar Valley communities, on the far side of Lake Mountain from the lake itself, connected to the rest of the county by a small number of roads and by not much else. It is the fastest-growing corner of a fast-growing county, and the school story here is a growth story from beginning to end.
It is also the corner of the valley where the 2027 district split does something it does nowhere else: it draws a new district line straight across an existing high school attendance area.
The short version
| School | City | Opened | Team | Colors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Westlake High | Saratoga Springs | 20 August 2009 | Thunder | Carolina blue, Vegas gold, navy |
| Cedar Valley High | Eagle Mountain | 20 August 2019 | Aviators | red, steel gray |
- Both grades 10-12, both currently Alpine School District.
- Both move into Lake Mountain School District together on 1 July 2027.
- Both are very large — Cedar Valley around 3,400 and Westlake around 2,847 in recent reporting.
- Westlake has historically served Lehi students, and Lehi goes to a different district.
- A six-year statutory election protects families caught on that seam.
One school, then a bond, then two
For its first decade, Westlake carried the entire Cedar Valley on its own.
It opened in Saratoga Springs in August 2009, initially serving grades 9 through 12. From the 2013-14 school year, ninth graders were reassigned to a middle school in Eagle Mountain, which is the kind of adjustment a district makes when a building is filling faster than planned.
That did not solve it. Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs were built in a hurry — both went from essentially open ground to tens of thousands of residents inside a generation, and a growth curve like that produces a school construction backlog faster than any district can clear it.
Alpine School District voters passed a $387 million bond, construction on a second high school began in 2017, and Cedar Valley High School opened in Eagle Mountain in 2019.
Splitting one school into two did not make either of them small. In the 2023-24 year Cedar Valley reported around 3,400 students and Westlake around 2,847. To put that in the valley's own terms: Orem High, in the largest city of the new Timpanogos district, reported around 1,225 in a comparable period. Either of these west-side schools is roughly two to three Orem Highs.
That is the single most important thing to understand about high school here. These are not typical Utah Valley schools. They are among the largest in the state, and they are large after the district already built a second one.
What a school this size is actually like
Scale is a trade, and at this scale both sides of the trade are pronounced.
What you get. A student body of three thousand supports a depth of offering that a school of a thousand simply cannot. More sections of more courses, deeper Advanced Placement menus, more languages, more specialized electives, larger and more competitive performing arts programs, and athletic programs with genuine depth across many sports. If your child has a narrow interest, a school this size probably has somebody teaching it and a group already doing it.
What you trade. Anonymity is the honest word. It is harder to make a varsity roster when three thousand students are competing for the same places. It is harder to get a solo, harder to be known by name in the front office, harder to be a visible part of a student body rather than a number within it. Counselor caseloads at schools this size are large, which matters most in the year a student is applying to college or needs someone to notice they are struggling.
Neither school offers a small-school experience, so this is not a choice you make between them — it is a feature of living out here. Families who specifically want a small high school will not find one on this side of the mountain, and that is worth knowing before you move for the affordability.
The names, which are unusually literal
Westlake are the Thunder, with a mascot named Thor and a school song called Mighty Thunder. The address is Thunder Boulevard. Its colors are Carolina blue, Vegas gold and navy blue, and its mission carries the Latin motto Lux et Virtus — light and excellence.
Cedar Valley are the Aviators, in red and steel gray, on a campus at Aviator Avenue in Eagle Mountain.
The two are listed rivals, which is inevitable. When a district splits one overloaded school into two, the resulting rivalry is not manufactured — half the students at the new school were going to attend the old one, and a good number of them have older siblings who did.
The district split, and the seam that runs through Westlake
Here is where this pair becomes genuinely different from every other high school comparison in the valley.
Alpine School District dissolves on 30 June 2027. From 1 July 2027, Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Cedar Fort and Fairfield belong to Lake Mountain School District.
The good news first: Cedar Valley and Westlake go into Lake Mountain together. The new district does not divide the two schools from each other, and it does not divide Eagle Mountain from Saratoga Springs.
Now the complication. Westlake's served communities have historically included Lehi — along with Saratoga Springs, Eagle Mountain, Cedar Fort and Fairfield. And Lehi does not go to Lake Mountain. Lehi belongs to Aspen Peaks School District with Alpine, American Fork, Cedar Hills, Highland and the Utah County part of Draper.
So from 1 July 2027 there is a category of family that lives in one district and whose child attends a high school in another. That is not a hypothetical edge case invented for a guide — it is a direct consequence of a district boundary drawn on city lines being laid over an attendance boundary that was never drawn on city lines.
Compare it with Lehi's own two schools, where the city, the students and both buildings land in the same district, or with Lindon, where the two out-of-city high schools its students attend both happen to sit inside the same successor district. Those are the clean cases. This is the messy one.
The six-year election, which is the most useful thing on this page
Utah's Legislature anticipated this, and the protection is stronger than most families expect.
Buried in Utah Code § 53G-3-302(2)(a)(iv) is a provision our guide to Timpanogos School District sets out in full. In short:
A student residing within the boundaries of a new district when that district is created may, for six school years following the creation, elect to enroll in a secondary school located outside the new district's boundaries — provided that on the day before creation the student lived within that school's boundaries and would have been eligible to enroll there had the district never been created.
And it goes further. The district where that secondary school sits shall provide educational services to a student making the election, including busing for each school year the election is made, if busing was provided before the new district was created.
Read plainly: a family a block on the wrong side of a new district line does not automatically lose the high school they were zoned for, and does not automatically lose the bus either. It is not a courtesy and it is not discretionary.
Six school years is long enough to carry any student who is already in the pipeline through to graduation. A child entering tenth grade in autumn 2027 is comfortably covered.
Two cautions. First, it is an election — something a family makes, not something that happens automatically, so find out what the process and the deadline are rather than assuming. Second, confirm your specific case with both districts. A statutory summary in a guide is a starting point for that conversation, not a substitute for it, and the details of how two brand-new districts operationalize this in their first year are exactly the kind of thing worth having in writing.
Boundaries, and why they move more here than anywhere
Every school guide on this site ends with the same instruction. On the west side it carries more weight than usual, for a specific reason.
The rough shape is that Cedar Valley takes the Eagle Mountain side and Westlake takes the Saratoga Springs side. That is a useful mental model and a poor basis for a purchase.
The line has already moved once, comprehensively. Cedar Valley's entire existence is a boundary change — thousands of students who were attending or would have attended Westlake were reassigned to a new building in 2019. Anyone who bought a house in 2015 on the strength of a Westlake assignment learned exactly how durable an attendance boundary is in a growing area.
And the growth has not stopped. These cities continue to add rooftops, which means capacity continues to shift, which means boundaries will be looked at again. Lake Mountain begins life as the fastest-growing of the three successor districts, and rapid growth means building schools.
So: confirm the school assignment for the exact address, with the district, before you commit. Not the street, not the subdivision, not the listing description, not a neighbor's confident recollection. The address. And out here, add a second question — ask whether a boundary study is currently open, because the answer has been yes more often than no.
Our guide to school boundaries in Utah Valley covers open enrollment, deadlines and how boundary changes actually get adopted.
The vote, which the west side actually got
There is a civic point here worth making, because it explains why the mood about the split is different on this side of the valley than it is in Orem.
Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Cedar Fort and Fairfield were asked. The proposition that created Lake Mountain School District covered exactly those communities, and they voted for it.
That is a meaningful contrast. Over on the Timpanogos side, Orem had voted decisively against leaving Alpine in 2022 and was then excluded from the 2024 vote entirely, ending up in a district formed by subtraction and named in neither proposition.
Lake Mountain was chosen. The argument residents made was straightforward and it was about exactly the schools in this guide: when a seven-member board governing more than 80,000 students weighed a new west-side elementary against needs in older, more politically established communities, the west side kept losing. A district of their own means the board setting priorities lives on this side of the mountain.
Whether that produces better outcomes is a question for the 2030s. What it produces immediately is a district whose entire reason for existing is the growth pressure that built these two schools.
What this means if you are buying out here
The Cedar Valley communities are among the most affordable places in Utah County to buy a family-sized house, and school questions are the main thing people underweight when they do.
Expect a large high school. Both are enormous and will stay that way. If a small school matters to your child, this is the wrong side of the valley, and no amount of address optimization changes it.
Confirm the assignment, then confirm the district. Out here those are two separate questions in a way they are not elsewhere. Which school, and — if the school is Westlake and the address is in Lehi — which district, and what the six-year election means for you.
Price the commute honestly. The Cedar Valley is connected to the rest of the county by a limited number of roads. That shapes school transport as much as it shapes work commutes, and a large school with a wide catchment means long bus routes for some students.
And accept that the map is provisional. This is the part of Utah Valley where attendance boundaries have the shortest useful life. Buy the house, the street and the commute. Treat the school boundary as current information rather than a permanent attribute of the property.
The middle school layer, and the ninth-grade question
There is a wrinkle in the west-side pipeline that catches families arriving from other states, and it is worth spelling out.
Westlake opened in 2009 serving grades 9 through 12. From the 2013-14 school year, ninth graders were reassigned to a middle school in Eagle Mountain, moving the high school to the grades 10-12 pattern that is standard across Alpine School District.
If you come from a state where high school means grades 9 through 12, the practical effect is that your fourteen-year-old is in a middle school here rather than a high school. That is not a demotion and it is not unusual in Utah — it is simply the pattern — but it changes which building you should be asking about, which staff you should be meeting, and which attendance boundary actually governs your child in their first year here.
Ask about the middle school assignment as carefully as you ask about the high school one. In a fast-growing area the middle school boundaries move for the same reasons the high school boundaries do, and they move on their own schedule.
What the growth curve means for the next boundary
Cedar Valley exists because Westlake filled up. It is worth being clear-eyed about whether the same thing is about to happen again.
Both schools are already very large. Cedar Valley reported around 3,400 students in 2023-24 — a figure that would be a substantial school anywhere and is remarkable for a building that opened in 2019. Westlake reported around 2,847. Between them, that is roughly six thousand high school students in two buildings on the west side of the valley.
Meanwhile the cities have not stopped growing. Lake Mountain begins life as the fastest-growing of the three successor districts, and rapid growth is precisely what generates school construction backlogs.
The honest read for a buyer is this: a third high school on this side of the valley is a plausible medium-term outcome, and a third high school means a third set of boundaries. Nobody should treat that as a forecast — no such building is on a published schedule that this guide can point to — but the pattern that produced Cedar Valley in 2019 has not obviously exhausted itself.
What that argues for is not avoiding the area. It is treating the school assignment the way you would treat any other piece of current information about a property in a fast-changing place: verify it now, expect it to be revisited, and buy a house you would still want if it were.
What to ask before you commit
Confirm the high school assignment for the exact address, in writing.
Confirm the middle school assignment separately, because of the ninth-grade pattern above.
If your address is in Lehi and your school is Westlake, ask both districts about the six-year election described earlier, and get the process and deadline in writing rather than a verbal reassurance.
Ask whether a boundary study is open. Out here the answer has more often been yes than no.
And ask about bus routes specifically. Large schools with wide catchments in a valley connected by a limited number of roads produce some long rides. The route your child would actually take is a concrete question with a concrete answer, and it is better asked before you buy than discovered in September.
Related Guides
- Lake Mountain School District — the district both schools join in July 2027
- The Alpine School District Split — what dissolves, when, and into what
- Lehi High vs Skyridge High — the neighboring city, and the clean version of this story
- Eagle Mountain Neighborhoods Guide — where to live in Eagle Mountain
- Saratoga Springs Neighborhoods Guide — where to live in Saratoga Springs
- School Boundaries in Utah Valley — open enrollment and boundary changes
Frequently Asked Questions
How many high schools serve Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs?
Which is bigger, Cedar Valley or Westlake?
What are the two schools' mascots?
Will the district split separate these two schools?
My child goes to Westlake but we live in Lehi. What happens in 2027?
Why did Alpine build a second high school out here?
Where is the boundary between Cedar Valley and Westlake?
Did Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs vote for their own district?
