Comments about ‘Utah Legislature: School programs at risk as budget decisions draw near’

WAKE UP!!!! Why not try cutting all the funding that supports Illegals, Before we cut anything that helps Americans!

Education is more important than designer job training for commercial business in schools. Business is using our education system as OJT instructors at tax payer expense. While students are in school they must learn the basics of core learning, which they are not. Too much of education dollars are being diverted to job training.

While we are in a long term recession and strangled funds for education there has to be some lines drawn, what it education and what is job training. When there was a surplus of money, many of these programs were nice but not essential. The time has come to weed out the non essential and concentrate on the essential needs of education, like books, papers, and pencils, teachers, and parental citizen only students.

The recession and economy is going to take decades to even out and during these decades education will have to priortize its subjects to be taught and eliminate those that are a nice to have excess.

Good! Next, get rid of athletics and get back to educational basics. The schools will find they have plenty of taxpayer money to operate when they eliminate unnecessary programs and fire layers of administrators.

"She now wants to earn a bachelor's degree in culinary arts and work as a wedding cake decorator."

We are paying to send someone down a career path of cake decorating? A college degree to boot?

Graduate early and go work in a bakery!

I am surprised they aren't thinking of whacking the whole system and starting over. Education spending is very unpopular unless the legislature can make a profit off of it.

If it was up to me I would privatize parts of the educational experience. Sell sports and Driver's education and be done with it. There are plenty of organized classes outside of school for both these subjects. They still could be loosely tied to the school too.

Why not axe the sex ed class too. Send a packet home with each kid instead and let the parents teach it at home. If they want abstinence they teach it. If they want no sex ed, they teach it. If they want comprehensive sex ed they teach it. It is the parent's responsibility anyway. That would save the schools more money and likely would meet federal criteria.

If the cut ends up being 12% or even close, there are a lot of things that will have to go. Based on the responses I read to anything education related, we should eliminate traditional public ed, and have charter schools or home school all students. That would save lots of money and improve the quality of education. Utah education is funding at a bare bones level currently, hopefully the legislature has enough sense not to cut it any more.

How about cutting football, basketball, swimming, in other words all sprot programs--That would save miliions--or are the macho legislators eog too big

Kids probably learn as much or more about life in the sports programs as they ever will in the class room. cutting funds to some of those programs and laying more fundraising on the participants is understandable. But cutting sports, band, and any other extra caricular activities would be flat out stupid. You should have found something you could get involved in.

Hey Peter:
What's a sprot program? Oh...you mean "sport" program. Probably didn't know how to spell it because you probably didn't play in it. For some kids, sports are the only thing that keep them in school and learning. Having to maintain the required gradepoint average to be eligible to play sports sometimes is the only incentive they have. Enough said.

There's one very simple solution to the fact that we can't keep putting money we don't have into the education system: cut bureaucracy and administration expenses.

Most people think, when they hear about money going into "education," that that money ends up in the classroom or in the teachers' paychecks. Wrong. Administrators - mostly state and district administrators, but also principals, principals' assistants, counselors, etc. - get much higher pay in most states than teachers do. I assume that's probably true in Utah as well as other states, though I haven't seen the exact numbers.

Bureaucracy costs money. Period. The more ridiculous requirements that come down from the federal, state, and district levels, the more administrators are paid whopping salaries to enforce them, the less money (and time) that go into actual teaching and beneficial programs. My mom, who is a teacher in a state near ours, can attest.

"sprot" and "eog". Thank you for illustrating. YOUR JOBS WILL BE LOST BECAUSE NO BUSINESSES WILL STAY IN UTAH IF WE DO NOT FUND "EDJERCASHUN". Is it raining yet Legislature? Use the rainy day fund. Please go start a compound in Waco or somewhere where you are sovereign and aren't obligated to pay taxes. Utah's extremism is going to cost it jobs and federal taxes if this Legislature does not wake up. Propose a 3% cut for education, use rainy day fund. We must educate 11000 more students, you can't do that by cutting administrators, these proposals just aren't real. By the way, all studies show students are better students in basics when they are offered sports, the arts and other items you deem nonessential. Cheaper to educate now than pay for prison later.

"Administrators - mostly state and district administrators, but also principals, principals' assistants, counselors, etc. - get much higher pay in most states than teachers do. I assume that's probably true in Utah as well as other states, though I haven't seen the exact numbers."

Maybe you could investigate that and come back to us with some concrete suggestions. It's very easy to point fingers and complain but much more difficult to find real solutions to problems.

Keep up the good work. I hope your program stays. I hope people in Utah learn that educating the children is more important than any other state government expense, even in hard times.

I guess some people think there is an unlimited amount of money. No doubt every government program is important. One govt worker told me we could dispense with 1/3 of our govt workers and wouldn't miss a beat. Unfortunately government workers do not want to be laid off.

For all those who think cutting sports is the key to making education economically healthy, I would suggest you read some of the studies that demonstrate how sports and other extra-curricular opportunities (such as alternative, job related training) are the only things that keep many students in school. Reducing or eliminating these programs would be criminally shortsighted.

This is a great program, which I fully support.

IF WE COULD AFFORD IT.

But, we can NOT afford it at this time, so regretfully it must be cut. If private industry wants to subsidize it, wonderful.

If students want to join the military and and get cooking schools there, that is another option.

Taxpayers do not have bottomless wallets, and the state (and federal and local) government needs to spend no more than they have in hand.

Both Senator Stephenson and Senator Whadoups were "surprised" at the millions it cost to split Jordan District - and not one penny of those millions went to educate a single student. Our legislature uses school money to fund converting gasoline cars to natural gas cars because they believe we have excess school funds available. Why don't we get rid of those legislators who voted to use school money to fund pet projects unrelated to education, and get rid of those legislators who voted for the bills to allow Jordan District to split. Salt Lake County ought to have one school district - saves nearly a million dollars right there getting rid of 4 District Administrators. There is no rational reason to have five districts in this valley. In fact, the only reason for "separate but equal" here is to be sure that those who have it keep it.

I took a sex ed class in high school. Learned more from a half hour talk with my dad than I learned from the class. Same with Home Ec. learned alot more from my mother in a couple of hours than I did from a year of class. Alot of the info. taught in these extra classes can be learned in a much shorter time period in a real world setting than in the classroom. Teach basic education, like math, reading, history, etc. If kids want to learn the ohter things, they can do it on their own time.

Hey Peter. Better do a little research before you let you rearend overload your brain. Football MAKES money for its school. In fact, in most schools football pays for most other sports, or sprots as you put it.

I'm against forcing taxpayers to subsidize a small select segment of the population. This scholarship program should be in the private sector, not the public.

As long as public education exists, I'd be in favor of vouchers or tax deductions for education expenses when the child's needs are better met in a non-public school, but it should be available to all, not a few.