Becky Edwards

Our last Education Committee meeting was held today. We had seven bills on the agenda and ended up hearing five before we had to adjourn to go to the floor. Just to give you a sense for the kinds of issues being brought to this particular committee, I’ll share those we ended the 2010 session with:

HB 149 – School Finance Amendments, Rep. Ron Bigelow
This is a bill that focuses on providing flexibility for small schools and charters by allowing them to combine funds for certain programs that receive less than $10,000 with funds from other programs. It also removes a statutory cap on the maximum number of students that may be enrolled in charter schools now. Previously enrollment was based on a formula, now it will be based on funding. There are 70 charters in the state now.

HB 433 – Foreign Exchange Student Amendments, Rep. Carl Wimmer
This bill clarifies the rules for allowing a foreign exchange student to enroll in a Utah school, especially when that accepting school is overcrowded. It provides that if a foreign exchange student is simply trading places with a regular student from that school who is going to school in a foreign country then that one to one exchange allows the trade. Currently Rotary International is the main program who does this student to student exchange. As a note, foreign exchange students pay a tuition to attend our schools.

HB 295 – Expanded Uses of School District Property Tax Revenue, Rep. Ken Sumsion
This bill allows a district for two years to transfer excess or unused funds in capital outlay to be used for maintenance and operations, however not for debt services. This is an attempt to bridge the structural imbalance between capital outlay and maintenance and operations budgets. For instance, the $10-11 million Jordan School District currently has in their capital outlay “bucket” could be used to offset their maintenance and operations shortfall, i.e. teacher shortage. This bill provides the ultimate local control. And it mirrors what happens currently in charter schools, they get one funding stream to do with as they wish. Districts are held to specific streams of funding that are to go to specific programs. This is a move in the right direction and could really help many school districts, specifically it will free up $10-11 million in Jordan School District alone. I wonder if I’ll get 1672 emails on this bill as it moves along? Maybe just 836 thanking us for providing this level of flexibility for that school district.

HB 137 – Public School Funding, Rep. Wayne Harper
This is an 89 page bill that changes considerably the funding streams for public education. It replaces a large portion of property tax and replaces it with sales tax. It begins as a revenue neutral shift of taxes, but down the road truth in taxation would be required if the school district needed or wanted to increase the taxes. The concern is the volatility of the sales tax vs. the stability of the property tax. While property tax is typically the most hated tax of the three main taxes: income, property, and sales, it is also the most stable. Sales tax varies considerably with the economy. The bill sponsor argued that education needs the flexibility businesses have and that in the end “all three legs of the stool” are still being paid for by the consumer. Another key point is that the increase in these funds would be distributed 100% across the state.

I think I’ll leave it at that, but you get the gist of this. Complex bills receiving a thorough discussion by the members of the committee and always enhanced by spirited public comment. We definitely ended with a bang. I will miss this committee.