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Show Volume II, Issue XVII THE OGDEN VALLEY NEWS Page 3 1 September 2000 Guest Commentary Year-Round School Proposed by U.S. Congressional Candidate By Matt Frandsen Here we are into another school year with little hope of improving teacher’s salaries, class size, or student body retention. Did your high school son or daughter talk enthusiastically about their first week back and their new outlook of learning, or did they get stuck at the back of the room, out of sight from the board and in another world altogether? A well-known fact is that many children end up either avoiding classes or are easily distracted, with little motivation to prepare for a class that requires minimal feedback. Children are smart enough to know when they are not getting a good education. Understand these ramifications: Utah continues to grow as it has for the past 70 years, a rate matching that of India’s; our student population will double in 37 years; our tax base cannot support school construction and teachers at this growth rate; our Utah State Institutional Lands Trust funds contributes less than 1% of the annual educational budget; and our Utah legislature and School Board are struggling to articulate a clear vision of a future school system structure to address these critical concerns. My proposal is a little more substantial than opening the school doors year around, it’s a conceptually new way of using the educational system that is in place to reduce class size, improve teacher salary parity by full year contract extensions—-all with only a modest budget increase. Imagine our school system adopting a year-around program with your children attending classes with only 14 students. This proposal would split the current student-body to effectively reduce class size by 50%. One group of students would attend two of the four quarters of classroom instruction per calendar year immersed in basic courses of mathematics, science, language and civic studies while, at the same time, another group of students from across town would spend their time in a community-based setting outside the traditional classroom, using classroom knowledge in challenging, hands-on situations. Available to engage the students are technical job training, athletics, the arts, wildlife studies, natural resource science, farming, biology, child-care, home economics, government studies, or involvement with the National Guard. If I believed Utah could double the teachers and classrooms in which to move Utah class sizes back within a national norm, I would have left my year-round proposal at home, but the simple fact is that a traditional solution to our problem is cost prohibitive. Year round schooling would increase education costs only 13% because of improved utilization of school buildings and staff. Let’s choose greater value in education with the quality of smaller classes over great quantities of mediocre instruction. The cost breakdown shows $81 million a year for teacher contract extensions, $32 million a year for year-round staffing and food services, and $143 million a year to finance much of the community-based mentors. Utah expenditures would increase from $4,008 to $4,540 per student, still keeping Utah ranked 51st in the country. These budgetary numbers are based on class size statistics issued from the Utah State Office of Education. A Utah Legislative taskforce has been looking for alternative taxing, tax credits, vouchers or efficiencies in order to reduce Utah class size. HB 238 was proposed last January to reduce class size to 28 pupils, (twice the national average) at a cost of $1.5 billion for new schools and teachers. In an effort to fund my educational proposal, I suggest Utahns openly cooperate and push our legislature to study the following three funding provisions: First, establish user-fee guide- lines on large families planning to use public schools; second, reform the regressive state income tax code, which is unfairly hitting the lower 60% of taxpaying families with an additional $300 million a year; and third, share the burden of education with corporations who should begin to pay their share of local property and income taxes, or generously work with school districts in opening up community-based locations to stage our students in practical job skills training. Citizens need to take on this issue of school reform as directly as with campaign finance reform, urban planning and the accountability of our political leadership. Mr. Frandsen is the Natural Law candidate running for US Congressional District #1. He lives in Huntsville, where he stays interested in socialeconomic concerns. He can be contacted online at www.naturallaw.net/ut . To place your scheduled event in the Calendar of Events, call Shanna Francis 745-2688 or Jeannie Wendell 745-2879 |