As a junior high school teacher, I have been thinking a great deal about the special legislative session on Tuesday. The Legislature seems bent on passing a tax cut. The theory is that the tax cuts will encourage businesses to move into Utah.

While I think the "trickle down" theory, in which tax cuts will encourage business growth and therefore generate new taxes, is fine in theory, it has not worked out in practice. While the past two years have been banner years for Utah's economy, the huge tax growth in the state has not translated into better funding for education. Salaries of teachers have actually lost ground, as they have not kept up with inflation. Many school districts have actually cut teacher salaries in order to keep up with spiraling medical costs. And it has not been just teachers who have been affected. The salaries of classified employees have not been raised in several years.

Materials are in such short supply that I have already spent my allotment from the state for the entire year to equip my classroom and am now dipping into my own pocket in order to keep my classroom running. My smallest class size is 33, and my largest is 38. There is no way I am able to give each junior high student the personal attention he or she needs with classes that large, and I am nowhere near alone in this situation.

If the state is so flush with cash, then how is it that schools have received none of this windfall? In the past 10 years, the state of Utah has gone from spending the fifth most per capita on public education to 26th in the nation.

The days of "stack 'em deep and teach 'em cheap" are over. The students today are infinitely more diverse than 20 or even 10 years ago. There are far more English language learners and special education students than there have been in the past. They need — and deserve — more individual attention than I can physically give them.

Perhaps a tax cut would attract businesses, but I think that businesses will and do also look at the education system of a state before moving there. No business can possibly be pleased at the paltry funding and huge class sizes that Utah has. Education and other issues need the funding much more than a few need tax cuts.

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Jennifer Allen teaches junior high in the Davis School District.