Ogden school board rebukes lawmakers
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By BROOKE NELSON
Standard-Examiner Staff
RESOLUTION LETTER: Board of Education of Ogden City School District Resolution 2008-07
OGDEN -- A resolution reprimanding the Utah Legislature for poor policy and requesting a change to charter schools was unanimously supported by the Ogden City School Board.
"I think every taxpayer in the state should be aggravated by this," said board member and resolution author Brad Smith.
A provision in Senate Bill 2 currently requires school districts to give a portion of property taxes to charter schools.
This money is in addition to funds redirected from school districts for every student that attends a charter school.
"Charter schools are great. I think charter schools should be funded. I think there should be a capital funding mechanism for charter schools," Smith said. "I just think it's unfair the Legislature can say to the school districts, 'You raise the taxes and we'll tell you where to put them.' "
The idea to send a resolution to local policymakers asking them to rescind the provision originated at a board meeting earlier this month at which a slight tax increase was debated, and barely passed, to raise the $132,000 lost to charter schools.
The resolution makes it clear the board intends to keep the promise it made to taxpayers when a $95.3 million bond passed in 2006 to keep taxes at a certain level, and the recent tax increase would not have passed except for Senate Bill 2.
The resolution also reminds the Legislature that when charter schools were approved, school districts were promised they would not lose funding.
Smith described the bill as "inverse taxation without representation."
"The problem is the Legislature has passed along a cost to the local school boards to fund charter schools," Smith said. "It's unfair to put an expense on the taxpayers of the district for entities that the taxpayers in the district never have any say in who runs them."
The resolution will be signed by board president Don Belnap and will be distributed to local and state government officials and elected representatives, local media and school boards and administrators throughout the state over the next few days.
"I believe there are others who have similar thoughts," Belnap said. "Maybe it will encourage them to take similar action."
Smith said the vote to approve Senate Bill 2 was especially frustrating because a similar bill, House Bill 278, had failed just a short time earlier.
"What changed in between then?" he said.
Add Your Comment
Please people. You need to understand two very important things. First, when a student leaves a district school for a charter, the district does NOT receive any state funding for that student and they DON'T tax for those students on a local level. Now they have to do that in order to give money to the charter schools. Since not one citizen voted on whether to open a charter school in your district, including your voted representative board members, it is taxation without representation. The place that this money should come from is a STATE property tax levy, but then our legislature is very good at making the local boards do their dirty work.
This was a courageous act for the Ogden board to take.