PROVO — Education issues dominated the discussion at a Saturday morning meeting between Utah County legislators and residents.

With only three days left in the 2007 legislative session, comments focused primarily on the budget priorities legislators announced Friday afternoon, particularly an increase in education funding.

The Legislature plans to allocate an additional $458 million to the public education budget.

"And with that comes raises for our teachers," said Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem. "And I'm talking about big raises."

Each teacher will receive a $2,500 raise and a $1,000 one-time bonus.

Despite the education budget increase, Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, told meeting attendees she has heard complaints the money will not decrease class sizes.

"I just need to let you know that in the last 10 years an excess of $700 million has been allocated by the Legislature for class -size reduction," said Dayton, emphasizing another $5 million will go toward class-size reduction this year.

As a result, Dayton said an audit will be performed to determine how those funds have been used.

"For almost three quarters of a billion dollars to go to class- size reduction in the last decade and for class sizes not to have been reduced is a really serious concern," she said.

Another education issue was raised by a group of parents of deaf children. They expressed concerns about a bill passed in the House on Friday that would allow nonverbal children who are not deaf to attend state schools for the deaf.

The three parents all have children who either currently attend the deaf school in Orem or have attended schools for the deaf in the past. Allowing children with other disabilities, such as autism or Down syndrome, to attend the schools would place too great of a burden on the educators and resources, the parents said.

"Our worry is that you have these teachers who have been trained to teach deaf children and all the services are set up to teach deaf children and work with them," said Michelle Archibald, whose 5-year-old child is deaf. "Then you throw in all these other children with other disabilities ... and none of these teachers have been trained to work with them."

Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland, said he voted for the bill, HB291, because state school board members recommended it in committee hearings.

"From my perspective, if we're trying to meet the needs of students and (this bill) allows for that, I want to make sure they get that opportunity," he said.

However, the parents at the meeting said providing services to other disabled children would compromise the ability of their children to learn. The bill does not grant additional funding to the schools to help meet the needs of children with other disabilities.

"It just kind of opens up Pandora's box," said Taunya Paxton, another parent at the meeting.

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E-mail: rwestenskow@desnews.com