Tribune: Cuts in Education Budget Sinks Utah Deeper Into Last Place in the Nation
Tribune Editorial
Updated: 03/10/2010 05:04:01 PM MST
Republican legislative leaders like to say that they’ve “held public education harmless” in the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year. That means, we assume, that they feel they have done no harm to the public schools, that, for the time being, all is well and quality education has been preserved.
That view, it seems to us, is like looking at a glass that’s three-quarters empty and being steadily depleted and calling it half-full.
It’s true that the Legislature has managed to keep its education cuts relatively small compared with reductions made to other state agencies. The deal made between legislative leaders and Gov. Gary Herbert this week first trimmed 1 percent, or about $21.1 million. But $6.3 million siphoned out of school transportation was added back in. And $5 million was backfilled to help pay for classroom supplies — about half the money allocated in past years.
Watts Cookin’ has a great deal of confidence in The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board. It works hard in getting at the facts and is a voice of reason in Utah politics. The Tribune ran two editorials regarding the 2010 budget that will be passed by the legislature tonight.The other editorial is also posted on this blog entitled “Tribune Praises Herbert’s Budget in Tough Times.”
Generally speaking the Tribune was supportive of Governor Herbert and the legislature in arriving at a conservative budget in difficult economic times. The Tribune would have preferred that severance and fuel taxes be raised to reduce the harm to Utah’s education system, and yet the Tribune recognized the difficulty of the economic climate and was only mildly critical of the results.
However, despite legislators’ advice to education officials to be grateful for the harm that wasn’t done to education, we feel obliged to point out a few facts. Everybody’s heard it 100 times, but it bears repeating: Among all the states and the District of Columbia, Utah is dead last in education spending per student. Not only that, the gap between Utah and No. 50 is growing, as is the difference between Utah’s per-pupil spending and the national average.
The Legislature, for the first time, appropriated no money to cover the cost of school enrollment growth. An estimated 11,000 new students will arrive in Utah classrooms in August. That alone will reduce the per-pupil spending figure even further. Only an influx of federal stimulus money kept that from happening in the current fiscal year.
The approximately $10 million cut is in addition to the reduction created by the lack of funding for growth.
Legislators say specific cuts are in areas that don’t affect the classroom. But it’s difficult to make a convincing argument that no new library books, fewer school buildings and nurses, the elimination of a program for science and math teachers and less money to help high school students take college classes don’t have a direct impact on learning.
We understand the tough economic situation legislators faced this year. But there were alternatives. Herbert fought hard to truly protect education and proposed three ways to save money or boost revenue that the Legislature ignored. While it did increase the tobacco tax, other reasonable taxes were not even discussed.
Legislators certainly might have done worse by public education. But they could, and should, have done better.