Support staff feels even worse–they didn’t even get a Twinkie! What they heard with HB215 is, “you are not educating our most at-risk students well, so we’re going to take funding that could have been yours and give it to a private company, so you have competition. Maybe then you’ll do a better job.”

I believe one of the best kept secrets in the Utah Legislature is that local school board members are publicly elected officials AND we share the same constituents with Legislators. However, I argue that we are closer to our shared constituents than Legislators because we are in their schools daily, engaging with their most precious belongings–their children.

We also sit with them in their school community councils, PTA meetings, school activities, and graduations. We celebrate and mourn with them personally. HB215 was passed in a record eight days with a suspension of the rules in both chambers of the Legislature.

If an LEA governing board pulled that stunt, we’d be sanctioned so fast it would make your head spin! Now, a bill to remove the income tax earmark for education from the Utah Constitution has been introduced, without replacing that earmark with constitutional guarantees of funding and appropriations for public education and you want us to TRUST the current Legislature as well as future legislatures to “take care of Public Ed” through statute? I don’t think so!

Please tell Mr. Jonathan Ball, when he’s creating his graphs and numbers to show the “unprecedented growth in public ed funding” to the Legislature, he should at least give them some context, like adding a line for the unprecedented inflation, and the unprecedented growth in student numbers, and the unprecedented growth in mandated reports, audits, and state-sponsored staff trainings that are overburdening public education personnel in time, and therefore money.

Recently, one of our venerable Legislators was overheard saying, “I’m PROUD that Utah is last in education funding!” I’m confident I speak for school board members across this great state when I say, “We don’t care whether we’re 50th, or 12th in the nation.

We just want Utah public ed funded ADEQUATELY to provide well for our staff members as they provide a world class education for our students. We believe the Legislature should try a little harder to do a little better to provide constitutionally funded, and appropriated, public education funding for generations to come.

Teri Rhodes

President, Cache County School Board; President Elect, Utah School Boards Association