"What impact would the split have on the child?" Henshaw said in a recent interview with the Deseret Morning News. "Will it significantly change the classroom? Will it reduce class sizes? What would change? At this point, I don't see how anything would be different."

Cox credited Gwendolyn Shoop, Kristi Seely and other residents of the three communities within the Lehi High School boundaries with making the petition a success.

"There were others who gathered a lot more than I did," he said. "If there hadn't been 26 different people who turned in petitions, it wouldn't have happened. Some of those people put in hours and hours and hours. I think we only scratched the surface, but it was a lot of hard work."

He said volunteers found little opposition to his proposal, but the law requires a campaign that could last another 10 months.

The committee's study won't be done until July 1. Then the county commission must hold a public comment hearing and vote whether to put the matter on the ballot in November 2004.

All registered voters within Alpine School District boundaries would be eligible to vote on the proposal.

But even Cox said talk about a ballot initiative is putting the cart before the horse.

"We need to have a study locally to see what this would do," Cox said. "It's a scary thing to break away and do your own thing. Our ancestors did it 200 years ago to form this country and I believe there are some similarities there."

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E-MAIL: twalch@desnews.com