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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Class-size disappointment
The state
, since 1993, has funneled $700 million to schools across the state in an attempt to reduce class sizes in grades K-8. But for most of us who have children in the schools, the classes look as crowded now as they've always been.
Turns out we weren't imagining things - a legislative audit found the classes really haven't been shrinking, despite nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars being poured onto the problem. Basically, the $700 million has been nothing more than a fund preventing class sizes from growing.
Turns out we weren't imagining things -- the classes really haven't been shrinking, despite nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars being poured onto the problem. That's the finding of a legislative audit that found, basically, the $700 million has been nothing more than a fund preventing class sizes from growing.
The bulk of the money -- $460 million -- has been spent during the past seven years. And since state law doesn't require districts to track the money specifically, auditors, for the most part, were unable to say precisely where each penny went in every district. The audit did, say, however, it discovered no unlawful allocation.
According to the audit, reducing class sizes during an era of exploding student growth would require a lot more money than the Legislature has been spending. That's because the only way to reduce class sizes within the public system is to hire more teachers and build more classrooms.
We all know that the cost of construction and building maintenance has been growing at budget-busting rates of inflation. Likewise, personnel costs are expensive; teacher pay is up 25 percent since 2000, and the increasing expense of health insurance and other benefits has been nothing short of ridiculous for many years running.
That much, most of us could figure out on our own. But the audit uncovered other contributing factors to the inability of the class-size-reduction funds to accomplish the goal. The fact that all schools get the class-size-reduction money, even if they don't need it, is wasteful. Not only are there rural schools getting the money, but enrollment-capped charter schools have been getting it, too.
The state ended the requirement that districts track their class-size-reduction funds in 2003. It was designed to streamline reporting. But as the audit discovered, it's simply masked where the money actually goes. If districts won't track the funds on their own -- and half don't -- then lawmakers will have to require it. But the truth of the matter is, if Utah wants to reduce its average class size from the current 22.6 students to anywhere near the national average of 15.8 students, it looks like it'll have to allocate significantly more money to the effort.
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