Alpine wrestles with charter school, public land lease

JACKSON — With the Town of Alpine signaling that it will consider a lease on city-owned property for the construction of a charter school, two powerful allies, Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, and Alpine Airpark resident and developer Steven Funk, have championed the Utah-based American Preparatory Academy for consideration of the only available western Wyoming charter school slot.

While there has been broad, longstanding support in Alpine for a new public school, even a charter, not all residents support the application from American Preparatory Academy Charter School. Residents have questioned the school’s right-wing political bent, as the organization’s founders have generated controversy with disparaging comments in the past about immigrants and the LGTBQ community.

“I stand before you and ask you to press pause and breathe,” said Jordan Kurt Mason, a resident of Alpine and public educator who serves on the Alpine Education Committee, a community group formed to explore a school in Alpine. “The current proposal of using our very limited town land for the American Preparatory Charter School seems to have some serious questions without great solutions.”

The proposed school would be the first American Preparatory Academy in Wyoming, joining seven campuses in Utah. The organization had one school in Nevada but lost its contract.

In its promotional materials, American Preparatory Academy touts classical studies, “patriotic education,” small class sizes, no cellphones — and no “critical race theory;” diversity, equity and inclusion; or social emotional learning, all buzzwords for conservative activists and politicians.

On top of what residents say is a glaring need for a new public school, there is added pressure to get the American Preparatory Academy’s application across the finish line with the Wyoming Charter School Authorizing Board, which has until Oct. 10 to make a decision.

American Preparatory Academy is competing with another applicant that hopes to open a charter school in Cody. The virtual school, Vitalis Charter Academy, filed an application with the authorizing board on July 28, a few days before the Alpine school applied.

With only one spot open for a new charter school in western Wyoming before 2026, backers of the proposal — including Alpine Mayor Eric Green, who prides himself as a mayor working toward bringing a school to Alpine — say it’s now or never for a charter school in Alpine.

But even school backers are opposed to this particular charter institution.

At a community meeting Sept. 11 at the Alpine Civic Center, Kurt Mason cited APA’s stated opposition to teaching about race, promoting diversity and fostering social learning.

“These three are dog whistles to a far-right political stance, and I am a firm believer that politics has no place in education,” he said.

Over the last two weeks, hundreds of residents have shown up to public meetings and hearings to say Alpine deserves a new public school.

“I hope that you recognize that, when factoring in different populations and schools, that you’ll see that Alpine is in dire need of a school,” Alpine resident Phillip Clauson said at the Wyoming Charter School Authorizing Board hearing Sept. 18. “I beg you to understand the needs of our community far outweigh the needs of the Cody school.”

Developer on team

Funk is one of the applicants vying for the state-appointed board’s approval for American Preparatory Academy. He is the school’s lead founding director, according to his website.

The applicants for American Prep also include Realtor Kelly Shackelford; Dave Jenkins, who serves on the Lincoln County School Board; Rod Jensen, a banker; and Alpine resident Rob Hagedorn.

On Sept. 17, the Town of Alpine granted Green the authority to issue a “letter of intent” to lease an unspecified amount of town land to the American Preparatory Education Foundation, the nonprofit arm of American Preparatory Academy. The 20-acre site is located behind the river walk and Buffalo Drive, near Melvin Brewing.

The letter does not indicate how much land the town would lease to construct the school, but the applicant’s consultant, Jeff Daugherty, former assistant superintendent for Teton County School District, said 20 acres is the desired piece of land. An appraisal of the town-owned property has not yet been conducted.

When asked if he would offer up land that he owns for the school, Funk told the community during the Sept. 11 meeting that using his own property to build the charter school would be a conflict of interest.

Funk is a developer in Alpine who is working through the public process with the town to annex 33 acres for a development called Alpine Lakes, in the same part of the community as the proposed school. The development holds 12 lots. Funk will receive nearly $3 million worth of water and sewer credits for the project, city officials said.

Jenkins, who in July signed a letter of support for the charter school as a member of the Lincoln County School Board, owns one of the lots inside Alpine Lakes that is slated for annexation. Jenkins did not want to speak over the phone with a reporter but wrote in an email that he is not in business with Funk.

“This is not related to the school, and as I said, this [does] not benefit me at all,” Jenkins wrote of the annexation application. “I don’t have a business relationship with Mr. Funk so I don’t know why you would ask this question. Please ask the town of Alpine for details on annexation.”

Jenkins’ name is on the annexation application.

In April, the Alpine Town Council lobbied the Lincoln County School Board to consider building a public school in Alpine. Last week, Town Councilman Jeremy Larson told the authorizing board that the Lincoln County School District “doesn’t get it” when it comes to understanding why Alpine needs a school. He asked the authorizing board to “think outside the box” to find a solution for the community.

The town is geographically challenged, as the small community sits at the northern tip of Lincoln County, 130 miles from the county seat of Kemmerer. The town has struggled for decades, lobbying Lincoln County School District No. 2 to advocate on its behalf to the state for facility building funds. Many residents commute to jobs in Jackson.

In 2004, residents went so far as to file for a legal review after the public school district decided to build a new school in nearby Etna instead. Some residents expressed concern that there was discrimination against immigrants in Alpine. The judge sided with Lincoln County School District.

Controversial founders

American Preparatory Academy has made headlines for charges of misusing federal special education funding in Utah and claims from the ACLU for discriminatory behavior.

These include reports on Carolyn Sharette, executive director and co-founder of American Preparatory Schools, and her son, David Sharette, who is the strategic business director for the school, using discriminatory language about immigrants and alleged biases toward the LGBTQ community.

When pressed by a reporter, American Prep dismissed these reports, calling the claims “baseless” and media reports incomplete in their telling of the story.

In 2016, QSaltLake Magazine reported that David Sharette shared a link on his social media page from the American College of Pediatricians stating that “Transgenderism of Children is Child Abuse.” ACP has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group” with “a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people.”

Asked about those allegations, school consultant Daugherty defended Sharette.

“David was speaking of adult males using women’s restrooms improperly. Many Wyomingites are concerned about men using girls bathrooms and locker rooms,” Daugherty wrote in an email. “The context that he sought to articulate was that men should not use girls’ bathrooms or locker rooms. He was not representing APA at the time of the comment in 2016.”

Daugherty did not refute claims that Carolyn Sharette posted on her social media account that immigrants were to blame for Salt Lake City’s drug problem and that she was “praying for a wall.”

“APA can’t be judged on the opinions of media and other outlier voices of detractors,” Daugherty wrote. “What speaks for APA is its academic achievement, its ‘customer satisfaction’ among parents, its long waiting lists, and its willingness to serve the needs of special needs children and kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially immigrants.”

Dockstader, the longtime Republican senator from Afton, brushed off questions regarding the Sharettes’ personal positions on immigration and LGBTQ issues, saying a “vocal minority” do not support American Prep.

Dockstader also is publisher of the Star Valley Independent. The newspaper has elevated excitement around the charter school and American Prep, encouraging community members to write and “express support” for the project.

Asked by a reporter about the Independent’s support, Dockstader said articles in the paper were press releases that he did not write.

The state senator, who also represents parts of Teton County, sponsored a bill in 2023 titled “Parental rights in education,” which would have restricted public school teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in their lessons for kindergarten through third-grade students, while directing school boards how to interact with parents.

Dockstader said in an interview that he would not answer any questions about reported comments made by the Sharettes.

“I’m not going to go down that route,” he said Monday. “We’re trying to … you’ve got an agenda with your story when you start to ask those questions. And I will stand for a charter school in Alpine, just as I did for Munger Mountain in Jackson and Broncs [Achievement] Center in Jackson.”

Dockstader toured an American Prep school last year.

“I will say, I was very impressed with that school,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ve ever been this close to getting a school.”