School bills may bite into budgets

It turns out voucher and tuition tax credits bills before lawmakers come with a constitutional catch: If they pass, Utah will have to cut the budget for public schools by more than $12 million.

School choice advocates have touted the bills as a way to save the state in education costs and even boost school spending.

But to make it all work, the Minimum School Program appropriation would have to be cut by $11.3 million for tuition tax credits and $903,300 for the Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships, Deputy Legislative Fiscal Analyst Mike Kjar says.

These cuts would be necessary to balance the budget — required under the Utah Constitution.

Some observers believe the cuts, spelled out in the bills' fiscal notes, would be only on paper. Several legislators predict the money will go right back into schools, considering this year's huge surplus.

But people lobbying for public schools are nervous. Utah already spends the least per student in the country. And they've said all along tuition tax credits and vouchers would take money away from schools.

"We were going to get to keep the difference, weren't we? We were going to reap all the benefits," Utah Education Association President Pat Rusk said. "What we said from day one is, you will never give us one dollar for a kid who isn't there. They don't generate any money, and therefore we don't get to keep any additional money."

Key questions center on whether money from the budget cuts would return to public schools, and whether school budgets would see red ink if fiscal analyses, largely based on assumptions, are wrong.

Reduced revenues

Second Substitute HB39, a bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Ferrin, R-Orem, would offer an income-based, tuition tax credit ranging from $500 to $3,570 to parents of private school students. Current private school families qualifying for reduced-price school lunch also could receive the credit.

The bill comes before the House Education Standing Committee this afternoon.

HB249, the Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships, passed that committee this week. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Merlynn Newbold, R-South Jordan, would give an education voucher worth up to $5,500 or so to parents with special education children in private schools.

Both bills are touted as giving options to parents whose children's needs are not met in public schools. And tuition tax credits have been put forward as a way to divert a coming enrollment boom to private schools. The thinking is, it's cheaper for the state to give parents a portion of what's spent in public education and let them pick up the rest of the tab.