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Show Utah Public School Expenditures Hit S49 Million For 1948-49 Year; New Buildings Cited As Major Expense Expenditures of Utah's pub-1 lie schools and colleges totaled nearly $49 million for the 1948-49 1948-49 school year, Utah Foundation Founda-tion reported in a study of school costs released today. The $10 million college total for 1948-49 includes $4 million of state appropriations and $6 millions mil-lions from tuitions, federal grants, and other sources. The public schools spent $38 V2 million, mil-lion, the colleges $10 million. According- to the Foundation study, public school revenues of $38V2 million in 1948 compared com-pared with $30V2 million the previous year, and $22 million in 1946-47, $13 million in 1940, and $13V2 million in 1930. Cited as a major factor in public school expenditures are the increased expenditures for new school buildings, which rose from one million dollars in 1946-47 to $2V2 million in 1947-48, and jumped to a record rec-ord $7 million in 1948-49. In addition, substantial amounts were raised by tax levies and placed in building reserve funds, the tax study group reports. The major increase in public pub-lic school revenues resulted from the 1947 Legislature's revision re-vision of the school financing plan, based upon Tax Study committee recommendations and amendments to the state constitution. con-stitution. The Tax Study committee com-mittee recommended a state-guaranteed state-guaranteed minimum program of $3,000 per classroom unit. The Legislature upped the guar-I guar-I anteed program to $3,300 and increased the number of classroom class-room units by liberalizing the formula. Districts were given the discretion dis-cretion to exceed the minimum program. Actual operation expenditures ex-penditures in 1948-49 averaged $4,228 per classroom unit, $928 above the state-guaranteed minimum mini-mum program. State aid is provided from a state-wide property tax, the corporation and individual income in-come taxes, and rentals and royalties from state school lands. Local funds come almost entirely from the property tax. In 1948-49, property taxes furnished furn-ished $20 million for the public schools, and nearly $6 million additional of school revenus came from the individual and corporate income taxes. |