By Robert Gehrke and Lisa Schencker

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 18, 2010 06:07AM

An offer of $140 million in federal money for education and health care is not being met with gratitude by Utah legislative leaders.

Far from it.

Instead, Utah’s Republican leaders are apoplectic that Congress provided the money — aimed at keeping teachers in the classroom and helping with the health care burden of low-income residents — and frustrated that any attempt to reject it may be fruitless.

“I’m truly astonished,” House Speaker David Clark, R-Santa Clara, said Tuesday. “Congress has unequivocally carried out the constitutional responsibilities of this state and this Legislature. … [Congress said] ‘The Utah Constitution doesn’t matter. We’re doing an end-run around this, and we’re going to decide how the money is going to be spent.’ ”

Astonishment! The Republicans are wailing at Obama for not fixing quickly enough the economy they ruined. When he takes action, they cry ‘No.” They block the very solutions necessary because they would rather have the country fail than Obama succeed. We are in a mess, a diabolical mess.

No decision has been made on whether Utah will seek the funds. Legislative leaders are meeting (more…)

By TONY SEMERAD

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 14, 2010 10:26PM

The amount of federal stimulus cash pumped into Utah by the controversial American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has now surpassed the $3 billion mark in spending and as much as another $1.5 billion in tax cuts.

Spending alone — on education, business and student loans, road and infrastructure construction, energy projects, and expansion of existing social welfare programs like jobless assistance and food stamps — has pushed Utah’s benefit from the stimulus to $1,110 per resident, according to data newly compiled by the nonprofit investigative journalism website ProPublica.org.

That puts Utah slightly below the national per capita average of $1,170.

But the Utah stimulus figure is much higher than $3 billion. Almost $1.5 billion more in tax cuts — not part of spending data — has been reaching Utah pocketbooks since 2009, through the stimulus bill’s changes in payroll withholding brackets and relief from the alternative minimum tax for middle-class taxpayers.

So, with a financial boost that large — one likely to be more even than the $3.7 billion the bill originally targeted for Utah — what do taxpayers have to show for the money?

A lot, it turns out.

This is great news—but Republicans will twist it into bad news.Through the eyes of a Republican Obama can do nothing right. Whatever he is doing is wrong. If the stimulus is helping the economy then we are ruining the economy with deficit spending. If the stimulus isn’t working then blame Obama. Whatever the situation — the Party of No can turn it upside down.

“Whenever you get that amount of money infused into the state, it has to have a certain amount of benefit,’’ said John Nixon, budget director for Gov. Gary Herbert, who has helped shape (more…)

Utah to receive $101 million for education, save more than 1,400 teacher jobs

By Joseph M. Dougherty and Elizabeth Stuart

Deseret News

Published: Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010 12:12 a.m. MDT

WASHINGTON — With President Barack Obama’s signature on the $26 billion stimulus bill for education and Medicaid on Tuesday, Utah stands to nab about $101 million for education for fiscal 2011.

Though that number is just 1 percent of the $10 billion allocated for education funding nationwide, it could save the jobs of 1,400 to 1,500 teachers in Utah, according to state estimates, and up to 1,800 teachers, according to federal estimates.

Republicans are opposed to this good news. It boggles the mind! They would rather give a tax cut to the rich than keep our kids in teachers. Such distorted values!

Both the U.S. House and Senate passed the bill this month, with the House’s vote taking place Tuesday afternoon before a copy of the bill was taken up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

The votes in both houses happened nearly along party lines, with the Democrats supporting the bill (more…)

The Pull of Magnets

Susan Eaton | May 27, 2010

Just beyond the bodegas painted in tropical hues, past the bleak jail for juveniles and the vacancy signs along Broad Street in Hartford, Connecticut, a startlingly sleek, sterile collection of buildings materializes. Weekday mornings, a chain of yellow buses encircles the compound. Under the eyes of security guards and cameras, kids hop down, saunter into buildings and settle into classrooms where the mix of complexions and family incomes does not match Census data culled from these streets.

Many of the children scattered among the elementary, middle and two high schools have indeed been “bused” in, to engineer the creation of racially and economically diverse schools in this otherwise extremely poor, sharply segregated Latino neighborhood. Some of the children who attend the schools in this “learning corridor” live nearby. Others come from the African-American neighborhoods to the north, and a large share travel up to an hour from the lily-white suburbs that surround the city of Hartford, where 46 percent of children are poor. Several other “magnet” schools in and around the city open their doors each morning to a student body that reflects the diversity of the region, as opposed to the homogeneity found in schools that enroll kids from just one town or neighborhood.

“It has been nothing short of a beautiful experience,” says Mara Whitman, a white mother of four who opted for a magnet in Hartford over the far more affluent and far less diverse schools in her town, West Hartford. “To be honest, it was not the diversity that attracted us. It was the educational program. The theories that drove instruction were well thought, based in evidence…. But it wasn’t long before we realized that the diversity made the experience rich.”

After a state court ruled in 1996 that the region’s public schools were segregated, in violation (more…)

by Rosemay Winters,

Salt Lake Tribune

Murray » Geniah Stuber, a third-grader at Parkside Elementary, knows why it’s important to learn to read.

“So then you can be, like, smarter,” she said Tuesday during reading time in Mrs. Buehler’s class.

Learning to read by the end of third grade also is a key predictor of children’s future success, according to a new report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. But nationally and in Utah, two-thirds of students are not proficient readers when they start fourth grade, according to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Process or NAEP.

“Up to third grade, children are learning to read,” said Abel Ortiz, the foundation’s director of evidence-based practices. “Starting in fourth grade, they are reading to learn. So if they don’t learn to read by third grade, that greatly impacts their ability to learn in later years.”

It also affects students’ long-term earning potential, Ortiz said, and for low-income kids, their ability to leave poverty behind.

As a teacher back in the mid-60s I taught health to all the seventh graders at Logan Junior High School. After two weeks I would make a list of those students who would be juvenile delinquents by the ninth grade and took it into the principal.

The list was composed entirely of non-readers, and it proved to be a very (more…)

In the era of Will & Grace, Portia & Ellen and Neil & John, it’s hard to believe that there’s a public school in America that would insist on holding a “straights-only” prom or else none at all. But sure enough, Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi is trying to do just that.

Constance McMillen, an 18 year-old senior at IAHS, approached her school’s administration because she wanted to attend prom with her girlfriend, also an IAHS student, and knew that same-sex dates had been banned in the past. After meeting with school officials, she was told that she and her girlfriend would not be allowed to attend together. Constance was also warned that they would be thrown out even if they came separately but tried to slow dance with each other or even if their presence made other students “uncomfortable.”

Schools in Utah have not prohibited same-sex dating at the school dances. Gay Pride Clubs are prominent in many Utah high schools and gays have not been restricted at school dances.

That’s when Constance contacted the ACLU, and we sent the school a letter demanding that they respect her constitutional right to bring a female student as her prom date and to wear a tux. The school board met over the issue and, apparently, saw that there was no way they could hold a prom and not allow Constance and her girlfriend to attend.

So they canceled it.

What is up with that? As Constance has said “prom is one of those high school moments everyone should get to experience and enjoy.” How did this school board (more…)

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 (more…)

by Dylan Lovan

Associated Press

Louisville, Ky. » Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn’t taken a friend’s advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old’s biology lessons.

Mule’s precocious daughter Elizabeth excels at science and has been studying tarantulas since she was 5. But she watched Elizabeth’s excitement turn to confusion when they reached the evolution section of the book from Apologia Educational Ministries, which disputed Charles Darwin’s theory.

“I thought she was going to have a coronary,” Mule said of her daughter, who is now 16 and taking college courses in Houston. “She’s like, ‘This is not true!’ ”

Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth’s creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children “religious or moral instruction.”

“The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians,” said Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. “Most home-schoolers will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program.”

Those who don’t, however, often feel isolated and frustrated from trying to find a textbook that fits their beliefs.

Two of the best-selling biology textbooks stack the deck against evolution, said some science educators who reviewed sections of the books at the request of The Associated Press.

“I feel fairly strongly about this. These books are promulgating lies to kids,” said Jerry Coyne, an ecology and evolution professor at the University of Chicago.

The textbook publishers defend their books as well-rounded lessons on evolution and its shortcomings. One of the books doesn’t attempt to mask disdain for Darwin and evolutionary science.

Parents who shield their children from a modern education so as to protect their religious beliefs are not much different than parents who won’t let modern medicine treat their sick children. When taken to an extreme it is sad and serious and borders on child abuse. Parental rights have limits.

What can be done about it? Probably very little, except that we should do everything we can to inform the public about the lack of academic merit these schools have—a warning label so to speak.

“Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God will find many points in this book puzzling,” says the introduction to Biology: Third Edition from Bob Jones University Press. “This book was not written for them.”

The textbook delivers a religious ultimatum to young readers and parents, warning in its “History of Life” chapter that a “Christian worldview … is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it (more…)

From the webpage, UnknownNews.org. Democracy depends on an informed public discourse, and it’s imperiled when lies and misinformation are multiplied by mass media, or by bloggers or panicked emailers. Please — our nation and our world face very serious, very real problems, and you can help, by being a little skeptical about all the phony, non-existent problems that are only distractions. —H&HH

This seemingly unending list of lies vomited up by pathological liars is so long you won’t have the patience to read it all. Sadly, this is what the Republican Party has come to. A ridiculousness that should result in an almost complete abandonment by anyone with a brain. Oh, the awful embarrassment of being associated with this stuff.

Latest update: Feb. 14, 2010

No, it’s not true that global warming stopped in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since. This video does a good job tracking down the single wingnut who made that bogus claim, which has been repeated ceaselessly by climate change deniers ever since.  #

No, Republicans are just lying when they claim that prosecuting terrorists in ordinary American courtrooms is something unusual or dangerous. There’s nothing outrageous or even out of the ordinry about how the Obama administration is prosecuting the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  #

No, contrary to conservatives’ claims, big snowstorms don’t disprove global climate change. A snowstorm doesn’t mean science is a fraud. As explained briefly, we’re going to see more snow, not less, because more precipitation — including heavy snowstorms — is a sign of global warming, as atmospheric moisture levels have increased with warmer temperatures, meaning more storms with heavy snow or rain.  #

No, it’s not true that Sen Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) has proposed legislation the would establish universal voter registration, including votes for ex-felons and welfare recipients and oh my!
It sounds like a great idea to me. I believe people should be encouraged to vote and voting should be as easy as is practically possible — but for their own reasons, other people like to have a few hurdles in the way so that only people who bother to jump those hurdles get to vote. You could make reasonable arguments for the latter notion, and maybe that’s a conversation we should have.
But instead of making those reasonable arguments, right-wingers like John Fund, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are simply lying, because Senator Frank has made no such proposal. There’s no universal voter registration legislation to oppose. When you hear or read about this proposal from Senator Frank, you’re hearing or reading a lie.  #

No, the widespread right-wing meme that the underwear bomber quit talking as soon as he was read his Miranda rights is bull.  #

No, it’s not true, despite columnist George Will’s claim, that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would “abolish workers’ rights to secret ballots”. It’s a right-wing talking point, but it’s no more true today than the last time it was debunked on this page. It’s untrue every time you hear it, which sure is often.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama used a teleprompter to address a class of sixth-graders at an elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia.  #

No, despite Investor’s Business Daily’s hokum, the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t cause (more…)

The results of a Salt Lake Tribune poll support the idea of offering two sex education tracks in Utah secondary schools.

Surprisingly, the percentage of those polled who said Utah public school teachers should be required to teach about contraception using state-approved instructional materials is exactly the same as the percentage — 43 percent — who said teachers should not teach about contraception.

What better way to meet the preferences of Utahns in both camps than to let parents decide whether their children should receive comprehensive sex education at school, or lessons that steer clear of explicit instruction regarding birth control and intercourse and focus primarily on abstinence?

The Tribune is right on here. We should be offering more sex education, not hiding it. Unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are tragedies that should not happen. Ignorance is the source of those troubles. If the glory of God is intelligence then let’s not be afraid of it.

If we have to continue to live in the dark ages in the public school system then as parents we need to become informed and learn how to educate our own children and grand children about the role sex plays in their lives. Most of us won’t get it done and the next generation will make the same mistakes as our generation and the school system and poor parenting will continue to fail our children in that regard.

Legislation that would require schools to offer both options has been abandoned in favor of modifying current law just a bit to let teachers talk about the limitations and benefits of (more…)

Lt. Governor Bell; President Waddoups; Speaker Clark; Members of the Utah Legislature and of my Cabinet; Utah’s Supreme Court justices; the State’s First Lady, my wife Jeanette; my children, my mother and my fellow Utahns; I am humbled and honored to stand before you tonight as Utah’s 17th Governor to offer this annual report to our great State.

Tonight, I first pay tribute to the many Utahns who have answered the nation’s call to serve. Whether it’s as a soldier in Afghanistan, a Utah National Guardsman in Iraq, a humanitarian volunteer in Haiti or Ambassador Jon and Mary Kaye Huntsman in the People’s Republic of China, we give them all our heartfelt thanks.

I also recognize those who put their lives on the line every day to protect ours. We suffered a great loss when Millard County Sheriff’s Deputy Josie Greathouse Fox of Delta lost her life in the line of duty. Her family is here with us tonight. Please join with me as we remember a life of service and pay tribute to our entire law enforcement community, whose sacrifice helps to keep us free and to keep us safe. In my inaugural address, I spoke about the importance of, and the need for, unprecedented partnerships. This will be a continuing theme for my administration. Our success will be measured by the way we unite stakeholders from across the state, and from across the aisle. We must join together to combat the challenges we face and to seize the opportunities ahead.

Over the past four months, we have formed several such partnerships. Let me highlight two of them.

First, we created the Advisory (more…)

The 2010 general session of the Utah Legislature opens Monday, and Utahns are holding their collective breath, waiting to see how deep the budget ax will cut. As effects of the Great Recession drag revenues down, to the tune of about $700 million dollars, give or take a few million (we won’t have final projections for another month), legislators are digging in their heels, resisting any tax increases.

That’s shortsighted and dangerous, especially when it comes to public and higher education.

Utah public schools, already the most crowded in the nation, will welcome approximately 11,000 new students next fall, and many of them will be from immigrant families, where English is not the first language. Latinos make up about a fourth of new student enrollment. We already spend the least per pupil in the nation, by a growing margin. We’ve dropped from near the top to 34th in the nation in public “effort” to fund K-12 education; that’s the amount spent per $1,000 of personal income. Cutting fat is not an option.

This Tribune editorial does exactly what a good newspaper should do. It gives serious thought to serious matters and comes up with serious suggestions. This is substantial journalism.

All Utahns should read this carefully. This editorial isn’t something that was typed quickly in a moment of angst, or to fill a daily hole in the newspaper. The editorial evaluates where we are, where we need to be, and how to get there. It was hard work and required research, collaboration, and leadership.

If the readers will carefully read and evaluate this editorial they will be hard pressed to find areas of disagreement. The facts are there and the solutions are reasonable and doable.

People are naturally reluctant to raise taxes, but the arguments in this case are compelling. The governor and legislature won’t go for this, but they will not come up with a better overall result.

We could go for this result 100%, but even more, we would like to commend the Tribune on offering such a great community service. It once again has displayed the importance of a good newspaper. If you find anything as constructive and thoughtful, that requires thinking and hard work, from the other newspaper in town please let us know. We will be happy to celebrate if that ever becomes the case.

Gov. Gary Herbert proposes no further direct cut to public education after the current year’s 5 percent cut, but he would not fund the enrollment increase, the equivalent of a cut. Legislators (more…)

by Michael Lewis

Salt Lake Tribune

Just over a year ago, the Utah Utes celebrated one of the finest moments in their sports history: a Sugar Bowl victory over legendary Alabama that capped a perfect football season and triggered much rejoicing.

Not just on the field, either.

The triumph allowed the Utes to balance their athletic budget — something that would not have come close to happening without the estimated $2.3 million profit they made from their second trip into the lucrative Bowl Championship Series in five seasons.

This is an outstanding story. Congratulations to Michael Lewis. There is much more that needs to be uncovered and written about the mess of college athletics. The Sugar Bowl was the absolute zenith of success for the University of Utah.

It resulted in a ‘pot of gold’ of $19.2 million, but when costs and shares are distributed Utah ends up with a paltry $2.3 million, and even that is an illusion because that money will vanish quickly into increased salaries for the head football coach and his entire staff that will continue even in non-Sugar Bowl years.

The college presidents and the general public have been hood-winked.

You know we have our values upside down when the teacher-pupil ratio in college football is about one coach per five players, and our first grade reading classes have one teacher for 30 children, and the salary of one head football coach could pay the salaries of 30 elementary school teachers.

You know something is upside down when a coach is fired at one university for egregious rule violations and is quickly hired at another college at an increase in salary—-because he can win.

Utah put up with one of the crudest college basketball coaches in the nation for how many years?—all in search of the ‘pot of gold!’

Go Michael go! Don’t quit here.

(Also, congratulations to The Tribune for making this a front page story.)

But while that surely counts as a victory, on the eve of the annual BCS title game, it also illustrates a growing problem for many universities: Spending in pursuit of sporting success can result in serious financial jeopardy if they cannot reach a brass ring, such as a BCS game, to deliver multi-million-dollar salvation.

“The real crisis facing college athletics” is not the need for a major football playoff system, two co-chairmen of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics wrote in The Washington Post recently, but rather “the sustainability of its business model, which is on a path toward meltdown” because of soaring costs amid a troubled economic environment.

President R. Gerald Turner, of Southern Methodist University, and chancellor William E. Kirwan, of the University of Maryland, noted that NCAA statistics showed that nearly 80 percent of the 120 athletic programs that sponsor major-college football reported operating deficits (more…)

by Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune

Jizelle Jurquina won’t tell you she’s gifted. She’s too modest for that.

But she’s the type of student who does six math equations for every three required. The kid who is easily bored in class. The one who makes teachers swoon and, more often, sweat. She’s a natural candidate for the Open High School of Utah, an online public charter school, say its administrators.

Congratulations to the Salt Lake Tribune for seeing the importance of this story and placing it on its front page January 2, 2010.  Its front page placement was appropriate, but more appropriately it should have received a full page banner. It may be the solution to the headline that was just above it—Family Slayings Climb in 2009.

Online education is becoming a cultural phenomenon. It is changing the world. It will permeate every aspect of our lives and change our views on everything. This is revolutionary. Television, computers, the internet were monumental changes in the last half century, but this new method of education that will reach multitudes and allow them to proceed at lightning pace will bring even greater achievements in the next half century, and this open and nearly free education for all will become the greatest product of the internet.

Congratulations to the pioneers, David Wiley, DeLaina Tonks, Sarah Weston, and other shakers and movers. The conductor on this train is yelling, “All Aboard!”

Jizelle belongs to the growing ranks of K-12 students engaged in distance learning. About 3,000 students in Utah chose the digital route over traditional brick and mortar schools last year, up 30 percent from the previous year.

But the Open High School, now in its inaugural year, is no ordinary virtual school.

Whether she knows it or not, Jizelle and her peers are on the leading edge of yet another educational trend: the open educational resources movement.

The Open High School of Utah is believed to be the first secondary school in the nation (perhaps (more…)

Posted Dec 31st 2009 9:01PM by TMZ Staff

Football legend Merlin Olsen is suing NBC Studios, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, Sherwin Williams, Lennox Industries and other companies, claiming he developed a rare form of cancer as a result of being negligently exposed to asbestos.

Olsen — who gained fame as a member of the Los Angeles Rams and went on to be a sportscaster, actor and spokesperson for FTD Florists — was diagnosed with the rare asbestos cancer mesothelioma a few months ago.

According to the lawsuit, filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, Olsen worked after school doing manual labor when he was 10 or 11 and was exposed to asbestos.

Olsen claims he was exposed to asbestos later in life when he was doing drywall. Olsen also worked at NBC and 20th Century FOX and is alleging those companies negligently exposed him to asbestos.

Olsen, who is undergoing chemotherapy, claims in the suit that all of the defendants, “were engaged in the business of manufacturing, fabricating, designing, assembling, distributing, leasing, buying, selling, inspecting, servicing, installing, repairing, marketing, warranting and advertising a certain substance the generic name of which is asbestos.”

Olsen says in the lawsuit that mesothelioma “is a vicious, painful, and invariably fatal malignancy” and there is no known cure.

Olsen and his wife Susan are suing for unspecified damages.

(This was taken from the website of Humanists of Utah and was credited to George Washington. It’s worthy of attention.)

-Associate yourself with persons of good character. It is better to be alone than in bad company.

-Think before you speak.

-Accept corrections thankfully.

-Be not obstinate in supporting your own opinion.

-Do not repeat news if you know not the truth thereof.

-Speak not evil of the absent.

-Do not reprove or correct another in anger.

-Do not curse or revile anyone.

-Let your conversation be without malice or envy.

-Yield the place in front of the fire to the latest comer.

-Jog not the desk on which another reads or writes.

-Speak not injurious words either in jest or in earnest. Scoff at none although (more…)

By Erin Alberty

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated: 12/14/2009 10:10:01 PM MST

A former Davis School District official will serve no prison time for stealing $350,000 in a textbook-purchasing scheme.

Susan Ross, 65, was sentenced Monday to 36 months probation, 3,000 hours of community service, $10,000 in fines and a $350,000 restitution after pleading guilty to felony money laundering.

“I’ve severely tarnished my professional reputation,” Ross said. She began working for the district in the 1970s and retired as the director of federal programs in 2005.

Ross and her husband, John D. Ross, were each accused in 2006 of 47 counts of fraud, theft, money laundering and copyright infringement. The indictment claimed they sold photocopies of books to schools that receive federal Title 1 money to help disadvantaged students at vastly inflated prices through an intermediary company, which kept a small percentage of the profit and paid the rest to a company owned by the Rosses.

U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups will receive some heavy criticism for what appears to be a light sentence for this highly publicized fraud, but most of the charges were reduced during trial and the crime apparently didn’t match the rhetoric of it. These are tough decisions for judges, and in this case, no matter your view of the case, Waddoups showed a lot of courage with this charitable sentence. We know none of the players in the case, but we believe that judges are in the best position to determine fair and just sentences.

All of the charges were dismissed except for the fraud charge Ross pleaded. John Ross, the former Title I specialist for the Utah Office of Education and grant specialist for the Davis district, pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor count of aiding (more…)

Officials at the Canyons School District, Utah’s first new district in 100 years, want to do things a little differently, and better, than other districts, although Superintendent David Doty puts it more diplomatically. He stops short of criticizing the status quo but says he sees in his new district an opportunity to set the academic bar higher and inspire students to work harder.

We believe Doty and his staff should be applauded for raising expectations and supported in establishing a tiered diploma system that helps students focus on classes they need to prepare for careers and college. But some parents are worried that their children, if required to take more advanced courses in math, science, foreign languages and English, won’t have time left in the day for “electives” — drama, sports, music — or for seminary classes taught off-campus by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We believe that Doty has enough of a challenge without trying to accommodate non-credit religious (more…)

(This story appeared in Utah State Magazine and was written by Rebecca Dixon.)

RELAXING IN THE WARM WATER, Dr. Jim Wheeler ponders the vast, cosmic questions of our universe. His body does the familiar work of swimming laps, while his mind is free to reflect on things like the direction of time being determined by motion. Stars and mountains are also frequent backdrops for these musings; and he says that walking his dog “provides an excellent opportunity for mulling over whatever the current puzzle is, while drinking in the grandness of it all.”

As an acclaimed scientific researcher, who can both challenge and inspire his students, Wheeler is one of USU’s most valuable treasures. Some of his students even change their lives through work on his groundbreaking research. “Jim Wheeler is one of the most inspiring professors imaginable,” writes undergraduate Joseph Slansky. “He guides his students into the thick of theoretical physics with a mathematician’s rigor and a kid–in–a–candy–shop sense of excitement.”

Pizza, laughter and midnight discussions about physics stand out in Juan Trujillo’s mind when he thinks of Wheeler. A Ph.D student, Trujillo frequently helps the professor and other graduate students grade piles of tests late into the night. “Dr. Wheeler is usually kind enough to buy us pizza or take us to the Aggie Marketplace until we get kicked out of the building.”

Many physicists work in laboratories with expensive equipment, but Wheeler (more…)

By Amy K. Stewart

Deseret News

Published: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 9:18 p.m. MDT

The latest version of a bill aiming to revamp sex education in Utah allows parents to choose between two classes.

One course would be abstinence-based and teach strategies for waiting until marriage but also offer information about issues such as sexually transmitted diseases. The other class would emphasize abstinence but also offer facts including STD prevention and contraceptive options.

“This just offers up another opportunity,” said Melissa Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Council, which supports the legislation. “It addresses the needs of all parents.”

Rep. Lynn Hemingway, D-Salt Lake, presented his proposal to the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Interim Committee on Wednesday. The committee plans to have future hearings on the bill.

Hemingway cited Utah Health Department statistics for ages 15 and 19 that showed 1,332 reported cases of chlamydia in 2005 rising to 1,805 in 2008. A total of 4,356 young women became pregnant during 2007.

“These numbers are frightening,” he said. “This isn’t a moral issue anymore. This is a health issue.”

However, the conservative Eagle Forum opposes the bill, with Dalane England, the group’s vice president of issues, calling it “inappropriate and unnecessary.” Part of the problem is that teenagers mature at different times.

“It should be addressed at the right time in the right way,” she said. “It should be handled in a sacred manner.”

Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, pointed out times are changing and teenagers should be educated. But abstinence should still be encouraged.

“We’re in a whole new world,” he said.

However, Rep. Chris Johnson, D-Salt Lake, said the state can’t turn a blind eye and ignore this topic.

“Kids are going to be sexually active,” she said.

Hemingway’s bill is modeled after one in North Carolina. The program there is offered to grades seven through 12.

The current State Office of Education rule, in accordance with Utah law, states educators may instruct on contraception options with prior parental consent.

However, some teens, education officials and lawmakers say students are not getting adequate sex education because teachers are afraid of being accused of advocating sex. They contend educators are therefore erring on the side of caution by eliminating important information.

Hemingway’s legislation aims to allow educators to instruct students on birth-control options “without fear of reprimand.”

How much information is too much can be a gray area for some educators. In 2008, a Fort Herriman Middle School 30-year teacher was placed on paid leave for several days after parents complained she was extremely explicit with her instruction. Jordan School District terminated her employment.

E-mail: astewart@desnews.com