College and Career Counseling Bill - Progresses

Fri. Jan 27 - I was the only member of the public to testify against HB65. It passed the House Education committee with only the dissenting votes of Rep Sumsion and Rep Newbold. It may be that some committee members voted for it because they expect it to fail to win funding in the appropriations process. Without an appropriation, the bill is of no effect. My argument was that America's greatness comes from local creativity and meeting needs at the local level.....Not from implementing central planning which is dictated by the largest bureaucracy possible. This is an example of the latter.

Conflicting Good Principles - HB24

Rep. Jim Bird is sponsoring HB24 - Health Insurance for School Districts. This bill is an example of a bill which pits two good principles against each other. 

On the one hand it is commendable to require open market competition in purchasing health insurance for government entities. Substitute 1 of this bill would apply to charter schools and institutions of higher education.

On the other hand, the governing boards of each school district, charter school and institution of higher education are already highly motivated to obtain the best possible price for health insurance provided to their employees. This bill restricts the local control authority of the locally elected or appointed governing bodies who know the needs of their local constituents best.

There is an expense to school districts to prepare requests for proposals, but that is outweighed by the lower costs to government and to employees obtained through the competitive process. This law will ensure no government educational institutions get lazy and just keep the same health insurance providers when they might obtain a better price.

It is a tough call but I come down on the side of favoring the bill.

College and Career Counseling Bill - A Bad Idea

Rep. Patricia Arent  has proposed HB65 College and Career Counseling for High School Students. This bill is on the agenda of the House Education committee for 2:00 pm today. It would provide $800,000 to hire 18 high school counselors who would work only in helping students apply to college and seek scholarships.

This is a bad idea because it is one more thread tying the hands of school districts. It gives money for counseling, but forces the money to be used only for college and career counseling. School districts know best where to use funds for school counselors. Local control of schools is better than state level control of schools.


I had the opportunity, as a member of the Davis School Board, to speak on this subject to the Utah School Board Association Joint Legislative Committee. I will attend the committee meeting this afternoon to testify against the bill.

State Report of Federal Funds in Utah

Rep. Ken Ivory sponsored HB138 in 2011 which required the state of Utah to report how much federal funding it received, and how departments would be affected by a 5% cut in federal funding and a 25% cut.

Utah receives about $5 Billion of its $12 billion budget from the federal government. As federal debt becomes ever more overwhelming, I hope federal funding will be reduced to all states including Utah. That means Utah is acting very responsibly to consider how it will react to such cuts.

The state report is available for all to review at http://www.le.utah.gov/lfa/reports/bbib/appeac_12-14-11_1.pdf

2012 Utah Budget Working Details are Online

The 2012 Legislative Session Utah State Compendium of Budget Information (COBI) is available for all to review on line at http://le.utah.gov/lfa/reports/cobi2012/COBI2012.htm

If you want to research how much money is spent  in any state department this tool makes that easy for anyone at home.

I invite citizens to scrutinize this document in your area of interest and send me your comments and suggestions. I will be happy to pass on good ideas to the legislature.

Elementary Class Size Cap (SB31) Passes Committee Against My Recommendation

Sen. Karen Morgan (D) is sponsoring SB31 that will cost Utah Taxpayers $17 million per year. It will impose a maximum class size on all Kindergarten through 3rd grade classes throughout the whole state. It is an affront to local control of schools in each district. Local districts know best where they can use $17 million to improve education. It is a well accepted principle that quality of teaching is a much more important factor in the quality of learning than class size. Tell your legislators how you wish them to vote on this bill. 

I testified in the Senate Education committee against SB31.
1. Class size is easily measurable, but teacher quality has more influence on how well students learn.
2. This bill would take control of education funding away from local school districts and force them to spend set amounts on class size reduction.
3. If this were to pass, funding would be attached to it for now. But in future years of funding shortfall, low funding would not remove the class size limits. Districts would become caught with an unfunded mandate.
4. We will very likely find new technology in the near future which will allow us to teach more children more effectively with fewer teachers. This bill would force us to have set class sizes in spite of the benefits of new technology.

Every senator attending the committee meeting voted in favor of SB31. Those voting included Sen. Osmond, Sen. Thatcher, Sen. Stephenson, Sen. Morgan, and Sen. Stevenson.