Crowded schools perturb Utahns

Utah residents say their students are heading back to overcrowded classrooms this fall, and a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows most would be willing to pay more taxes to make classes smaller.

In a Dan Jones & Associates survey of 420 Utah adults, 77 percent said Utah's public school classrooms are overcrowded. Numbers are even higher — 87 percent — among those with children in public school.

When it comes to money, nearly two- thirds of Utah residents surveyed said they would pay more taxes to shrink class size, and 74 percent said they would favor the Legislature using unprecedented income tax revenue growth to take care of it.

The survey, conducted Aug. 15-17, has a plus or minus 5 percent error margin.

Big classes have been a thorn in Utah's side for years. The Beehive State has the nation's biggest classes, with an average teacher-to-student ratio of 1-to-23 students. The national average is 1-to-15.6. Teachers say those ratios don't do the problem justice: Those in big school districts say high schools can have 40 or more students per class.

"In that learning environment, our kids are not getting a good education," said Becky Hutchins, mother of three who represents the Concerned Parents Coalition of Oakcrest Elementary in West Jordan. "When you've got 29 kindergartners in a class, a lot of those kids are going to fall between the cracks."

The coalition is pressing the Jordan Board of Education, which runs the state's largest school district with nearly 80,000 students, to build the area school it promised. Those plans seem to have stalled, and Hutchins says parents feel they're getting lip service.

The group has outlined for the board its concerns: Oakcrest enrolls more than 1,400 students and has 12 portables; children spend 40 minutes each way on buses; and the group fears playground supervision, bathroom and cafeteria space are in too-short supply to be safe.

Attorney Wesley Hutchins forwarded the concerns to the board earlier this month, seeking a Sept. 5 written reply. Or else, Becky Hutchins says, parents might take their pleas to the State Board of Education or the courts. They say if the board is holding off because the parcel lacks infrastructure, that's discriminatory because, the group says, the board funded infrastructure for another school.

District spokeswoman Melinda Colton said the board is working on the issue, which is far more complex than meets the eye.