Comments about ‘Utah budget woes send shudder through schools’

Money does not translate into a good education. A great education can be had without spending a ton of money. Education, across the board, in all states, has become so bloated...cuts can be made in many places. Start by cutting the sports budgets, deeply. Let the coaches volunteer for a year or two if necessary. Eliminate the cross country games, the games to Hawaii, and leave the cheerleaders, the band, and the pep club home.

Don't tell....the education budget is exempt from any budget adjustment. Please don't give me the rhetoric that there is actually less money being spent this current budget year than last year. This is government speak that your 10% to 15% above last years' expenditures for the current year is either flat (no increase or just a cost of living increase) of the budget is now 8% above last year not 15%. This is the so-called government cut concept. Right? This idea of forecasting taxes to be collected from all sources appears to not be as high as guessed by the state apparatus that goes through this gyration is less than their guess is now characterized as a shortfall. Why couldn't this less than guessed tax collections have been discovered before now? The federal government is in on this charade as well. They are now telling us that we have been in a recession since December 2007. You government folks are now telling me that tax collections are not coming in as fast as you thought they would be just a month or so ago? This is just great forecasting. The anwser is obvious. Lower tax rates and eventually collections rise.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. We have all learned that simplicity is best in ALL areas of our lives, I believe paring down the fancy this and that and going back to what has always really mattered in learning, the three r's and history and REALLY LEARN THEM WELL. That would be unique!

How about having a parking charge for Legislature People to park in the new Garage
Say $400.00 a Month due in advance
We the people need to retrieve some of that money
This is a classic case of putting the burden on the CHILDREN
You asked for it voting Republican
You maybe wonder why Utah is so backwards?
Utah is well known for some real stubborn people
No common sense what so ever
It seems clear it is about 50-50

We should blame our greedy Legislature for the problems in our schools. They think everyone can teach and that public schools should be done away with. This is why they pressed the horrible Voucher law and cost the state millions in dollars trying to fight it. Shame on you Legislators.

So why did we knock down the voucher bill. It would have saved money, no teacher would have lost a job? Now teachers should be glad they have a job.

Let's go back to what really matters in our education and get really good at it!

California laid off 10K teachers at the start of the school year. I don't see that happening here, but something has to give.

The obvious would be to give up on programs since we can't cut kids, basic supplies or educators. Get rid of the Stephenson pork--the 3.5 million preschool software package. Schedule all trips closer. One school should send the football team to the other school and all the other sports on the same bus to school that the football game isn't being played at.

Get rid of the Iowa or SAT test requirement during economic downturns. I bet the legislature wants to axe the CRTs as well. Only problem is that doing so axes the federal money the State gets for education, further cutting ed. funding.

How about paring back on the middle management bureaucratic positions within the district offices before cutting back on teachers?

Yes, money is needed to pay the tutors but parents need to step up to the plate, pay for the tools the children use to learn with i.e. pencils, paper, etc and yes even buy your kids tissue for their noses, that is for sure a parents responsibility. Get back to teaching the basics Arithmatic, English and for sure handwriting. Bring back discipline i.e. including disciplining selfish parents. Time for parents to pay for the school lunches better yet make the kids lunches at home. Parents need to be parents and step up to plate and share the costs!

If money doesn't translate into a great education, then why are we spending any money at all on it?

What about a tax increase. Sure we have the lowest price per student but we also have the most children per family. I would bet that the total amount of money spent on education in Utah is far from last in the nation.

The Voucher law would have alleviated much of the problems that we are facing today. It would have created a competition structure within the education system which has existed in the private realm for years. Why is it that the U.S. is the leader in business, technology, medicine? It is because of competition and allow market principles to work. Why is it that the U.S. education system is the worst in the developed world? It is because we are holding on to an archaic socialist system that provides no incentive for teacher improvement or school betterment. We the people are the ones to blame for these problems because we fell for some impassioned emotional argument that if we supported the vouchers we didn't support our teachers. What garbage! Shame on us. We are the ones that have handed our children the poor education because we are unwilling to face the fact that the public school system as is doesn't work.

It is generally true that collections eventually rise when tax rates are lowered, but then what do you do with the extra collections? In this state, they continually gave those extra collections back to the wealthy few which is the case with the so-called 5% flat tax. Many years back, the legislature had a plan to decrease taxes, especially for big businesses, with the goal of attracting new business to Utah and therefore collecting more taxes to put in the school uniform fund. The plan worked well. Utah became a more business friendly state, attracted new business, and net in-migration was up substantially, and so were the number of kids. Instead of giving the extra revenue to schools, more tax breaks were given, and in the meantime, Utah went from approximately 34 in the nation in WPU to 51, with the possibility of being surpassed by Puerto Rico in the near future. I don't know about you, but I would be hesitant to re-locate my business to a state that has an abysmal record in education funding. The dividend is coming to Utah and it won't be good.

California had low enough class sizes that each class could absorb more students. Utah has let their class sizes already reach preposterous levels, so unless you want class sizes to reach 45 or more, then yes, something could give. Much of the shortfall in Utah has to do with the implementation of the so-called flat tax. There was an article a few months ago about tax collections being down because of the aggressive nature of the tax. Should we make our children pay the price because of the stupidity of the legislature in giving millions of dollars to the wealthy few who lost it in the stock market these last few months?

Many parents are showing their true socialist ways.

Utah has a larger overall population in the state, so I'm sure we spend more than other states. The excuse of high birthrates is becoming less and less valid. Utah's birthrate has been slowly declining. In the 1980's our birthrate was much higher, yet we were not dead last in the nation in per pupil spending. In fact, Utah used to contribute 2/3 of the overall state budget towards K-12 education, but that has now dropped to less than 1/3. Most of the recent tax cuts have come from the school education fund which is supplied through income tax, and the state also approved a constitutional amendment to fund universities and colleges through the same sources as K-12. Because of its large Mormon population, Idaho also has a high birthrate, yet are able to fund public education $1,000 WPU better than Utah. In fact, Utah is in danger of being surpassed by Puerto Rico. Now that is pretty sad. Arkansas was so bad, that their supreme court ordered the legislature to adequately fund education. Something amazing happened. The test scores in Arkansas dramatically improved and the economy of Arkansas has also been improving. Education is important to our futures.

Perhaps those with several children in school should step up and pay the same tax rate as those with no children in school - that is, do away with state tax exemptions for kids. After all, is it equitable that those who burden the system the most in turn pay the least?

Are you sure you wish to put schools into the same category as business, technology, and medicine? If we do, the Unites States will undoubtedly become a leader in education, but like technology and especially medicine, you will create a society where part has access to it and the other part does not. Health Care costs in the private sector have been jumping higher in the double digits for years now, pricing more and more people out of the system. Could you imagine a system of private education where costs jump at the same rate? We would definitely have a society of haves and have nots. While your offer to privatize education is tempting, I say no thank you. It is actually funny to me how many people want to create a capitalist system with education, but in their hearts they want others to pay for it. A voucher scheme just transfers more public dollars to private school investors and shareholders--very inefficient. Why don't we save ourselves from a bureaucratic headache and just be true capitalists and have parents pay for the education of all their children. Isn't that what capitalism is? Pay for what you use?

I agree. My next door neighbor, who has three school-age kids, complains about having to pay taxes to the schools. Based on his house value as compared to mine, he pays about $1,000 per year to the school district in property tax. His wife doesn't work and his mother-in-law also lives with them, so he can claim 6 deductions off of his income tax and he only makes about $50,000 per year. According to my calculations, he actually gets a tax credit rather than paying income tax. Sales tax does not go towards schools. Yet my neighbor complains to high heaven about how much money he is paying to schools. He even complains about paying for my salary. If you ask me, paying $1,000 per year for 3 kids in school is one heck of a deal. I'm a school teacher with a small business on the side. I'm single with no dependents and I pay about $5,000 per year to local schools. If anyone should be complaining about taxes it is me, and not my neighbor. I wonder how many other people on this forum are like my neighbor and complain about what they don't pay for.