Letter to the Editor: Petitioners demand $700M more in taxes for Utah schools, but for what?

September 23, 2017 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — A group, Our Schools Now, wants to increase your income taxes by 40 percent, and increase your sales taxes, too. They have no specific identifiable objective that I have been able to discover other than to grab $700 million in new taxes from you next year, and every year thereafter.

I received the impression at the meeting, as did others, that a few large Utah companies want to spend a million dollars in propaganda to ensure an annual $700 million windfall so their companies will not have to invest money to train new hires for entry level jobs. They want you, the taxpayer, to pay to train their low level employees.

At the meeting in St. George (in early July), I spoke with the Our Schools Now representative about the glaring absence of specific identifiable objectives. He told me several times that their measurable, specific objectives could be found on their web site. I went there and was able to find nothing at all.

Every year the Legislature provides ever more money, “for the schools” or “for the children.” That should be a legislative decision, not private, closed door decisions by big companies to take money from the little guy.

We never see demands for increasing the performance of the students. Activists resist accountability!

Activists never address the issue of student performance, of student achievement. They evade it.

Before we even think about talking of spending ever more money on schools, let’s look at recent history. The UEA (Utah Education Association) union is always crying wolf to get ever more money “for the children,” but the money never quite trickles down to the children’s achievement.

“More money for the children” is a transparent ploy to have citizens pay company expenses. We never speak of increasing the performance of the children. Most monies now go to sdministration salaries and beautiful Taj Mahal buildings. For example, the Granite School District monstrosity of a headquarters for administrators. Whoops, sorry, “for the children.” Look at our own Taj Mahals here in Washington County School District. Wow! Money.

Before we even look at spending more money, the school districts should consider where the money is going now. One example: administration salaries. The following figures are approximate. There are 919 schools in Utah. 587 elementary, 170 middle schools and junior high schools, 147 high schools, and 15 “other,” making about 919 schools. Assuming a principal and two vice principals at each school that would be 2,757 principals and vice principals receiving maybe $150,000 per year salaries. I believe that is far too much for what they do. We are now looking at over $413 million dollars each year in excessive salaries for principals. Let’s be very conservative and guess a mere $100,000 salary for each of these 2,757 principals and vice principals; that would translate into a mere $275,700,000. Each year.

How many more hundred million dollars for all of the curriculum and other administrators throughout the state? I suggest that there be only one principal per school and that that person be a working principal, receiving as their top wage the overall averaged salary of all of the full-time and part-time employees in that school. At an average $50,000 per year for principals, we could be paying a lower principals payroll of “merely” $45,950,000. That is still a lot of money that could go to the children. But it would free up $367,200,000 for increased salaries for the teachers, secretaries, custodians, bus drivers, et cetera. Lower taxes.

But we still have to pay off the bonds, through taxes, for the Taj Mahals for some school board and other buildings. Have any of you seen the huge Granite School District building in Salt Lake City. Oh, my word! Think of the upkeep!

If money is truly needed for buildings, we have the school Educational Trust Lands (Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, or SITLA). A resource asset worth billions of dollars. Maybe we can eliminate the major portion of home property taxes that now go to education by using income realized from the State Educational Trust Lands. I’m in favor of that. Let’s eliminate our property tax, not increase taxes!

“… the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), which has deposited more than $1 billion into the Permanent School Fund since 2004, and $125 million last year alone.”

Thus we see that we already have most of the money Our Schools Now claims was “lost” annually by nonappropriation of funds over the last 20 years by the state Legislature and we have a no cost to the taxpayer source for any other funding that is actually needed and can be justified.

Several citizens spoke about the fact that there are no text books available in the schools. About money bring squandered. About the Taj Mahals that are constructed “for the children.” We do not need Taj Mahals for school buildings, and especially not for vastly overpaid administrators, curriculum staff, et cetera. The world famous Johns Hopkins University started in an unheated loft in the slums of Baltimore, Maryland, and has produced marvelous graduates, including, for example, Dr. Ben Carson.

Can Our Schools Now enumerate specific, quantified, short-term, specifically specified goals in the performance levels of the students, by individual student and by grades within each class and school, and publish these annually in a clear, unambiguous format?

Email me if you want to make meaningful, measurable, positive change in our schools.

Submitted by EARLE RICHARDSON, Washington, Utah.

Letters to the Editor are not the product or opinion of St. George News and are given only light edit for technical style and formatting. The matters stated and opinions given are the responsibility of the person submitting them.

Email: news@stgnews.com

Twitter: @STGnews