Utah for years has been at the nation's cellar on what it spends per student — the standard measure for education funding across the United States. Demographics don't help. Utah has the nation's highest birthrate and relatively few wage earners to pay for public education.

Utah in 1996 was seventh in the country in the amount of personal income going toward and spent on public education.

Its effort was hefty.

But it's been sliding since.

By 2004, Utah ranked 27th in the country for public education revenues per $1,000 of personal income, and 36th for public school spending per $1,000 of personal income, the report states.

The gap between Utah's and the nation's per-pupil spending also has widened. In 2000, Utah spent $4,331 per student versus the national average $6,836, or a $2,505 difference. In 2004, that gap had grown to $3,279.

That happened at the same time Utah's enrollment grew less than the national average, the report states. States with higher enrollment growth were able to give more money per student than Utah, which at the time was relatively raking it in in terms of personal income — a 22 percent increase, or 12th-highest growth in the nation.

The report chalks up the slipped effort to changes in the tax structure in the mid-1990s. Those include changing the basic property tax to no longer rise with property values and increasing the property tax exemption from 20 percent to 45 percent of the property's value.

Those changes were shouldered by increased revenue in the income tax, all of which went to public schools at the time, the report states.

But in 1996, voters approved a constitutional amendment to let colleges and universities share income tax revenues with public schools. The report says that change, on top of the property tax changes, led to the decline in public school funding efforts, and did not help higher education either.

"The transfer of income tax funds away from public schools was really a transfer to health, welfare, prisons, and transportation spending" through freed-up general funds, foundation executive director Stephen Kroes said. "That may have been acceptable at a time when Utah's school population was not growing, but today's rapidly growing student population calls for a fresh evaluation of state spending priorities."

The foundation plans to call on policy makers, school officials and the public to provide suggestions to reform public education funding. At this point, Kroes says a tax hike is unnecessary.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington agrees with the findings. While she characterizes last session as a good year for public education, she has some concerns about the long term.

"The first thing we have to look at is why are they giving taxation back and tax cuts? Let's put (the revenue) to work," Harrington said.

"We have seen this slow, but sure and steady whittling away of taxpayer dollars devoted to public education. That is the wrong direction. On the contrary, we should be at least sustaining our efforts . . . (as the) public voice repeatedly has clamored for in opportunities for our students."

Bigelow believes some changes are in line, due to a teacher shortage and an impending enrollment boom.

"Within the Legislature there have to usually be reasons to change funding, because of some critical item, a crisis," such as not enough beds for prisoners, Bigelow said. "In public education, the crisis hasn't developed. But it soon may with these projected increases in numbers. If we don't do something before then, certainly those increases . . . will force us to take some sort of action. What they will be, we can't know at this point."

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E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com