Giving schoolchildren nutritional supplements to boost academic performance.

Detoxifying alternative high school students through exercise in saunas.

Teaching study skills to struggling students under a program created by L. Ron Hubbard, whose philosophies founded the Church of Scientology.

Some lawmakers think these could be good ways to improve public schools.

The Education Interim Committee last winter gave its blessing to those and other academically geared proposals forwarded by the group Innovations in Education as part of a bidding process to improve public schools.

The Legislature this spring redirected $1 million in hopes state school leaders would implement the proposal, though there's some question whether the unconventional parts would be included.

Gov. Olene Walker vetoed the item.

But the proposal lives on.

Some legislators who approved the proposal are slow to remember the unconventional elements — some thought they were taken out — but quick to keep urging the State Office of Education to implement it.

But the so-called education establishment calls parts of the proposal bizarre at best. And several school leaders and districts — the same ones Innovations in Education has publicly billed as supporters — are distancing themselves from the group.

Ed Fila Jr., Innovations in Education CEO, wonders if the actions are rooted in fear: Fear of rocking the boat, or the consequences of positive change, or appearing to endorse Scientology, which he says wouldn't be the case, anyway.

"That (proposal) is put together based on what we could find in the past 11 years with the intent to help teachers, the parents and the students," Fila said. "There is so much good in that thing. I'm positive of it. I've seen it."

Anyone else can see it at an education conference, beginning today in Sandy.

Fila wants to serve public schools. The Bountiful volunteer, along with IIE president Michael Phillips of Fruit Heights, seeks the globe's best education practices and research that might help Utah kids — and save the state money.

They've found a detoxification model, said to have halved criminal activity for offenders in Utah's 4th District Juvenile Court. A Texas program had English as a second language gaining as much as five years' growth in a semester. Fila's own once-struggling daughter "learned how to learn" using a study skills course developed by Church of Scientology father L. Ron Hubbard.

The pair for years has tried to share such models with educators and lawmakers. Phillips says the reception often is tepid.

"(Fila) always has the solution, the silver bullet," said Utah's Electronic High School principal and former state Rep. Richard Siddoway. "I think he's an honest man. I think he sincerely believes this is something that needs to be adopted . . . but I'm not sure it's appropriate."