Nice to see that community interest still trumps market ideology in education. Hopefully our conservative legislators will now end their private school crusade and look at ways to actually improve the quality of education in the underperforming—and perhaps not coincidentally, underfunded—schools in our public education system.
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A Liberal Mormon 
November 7, 2007 at 4:00 pm |
That’s great! I’m always amazed how little the education of our youth is regarded, how hesitant society is to fund it. Our society will only as good as the rising generation, and skimping on public school funding or crippling it by diverting part of it to private schools is a recipe for failure.
November 7, 2007 at 4:08 pm |
Disagree with you here. The way I understood it, the money for vouchers would have come from general funds, not the public schools. This really didn’t make financial sense.
November 8, 2007 at 9:00 pm |
So ideally now, that “extra” money in the general fund could go toward improving education for all children!
I heard on the radio that the state legislature won’t try to push vouchers in the upcoming session. After that, all bets are off.
They wouldn’t want to get into the habit of representing their constituents afterall.
November 9, 2007 at 10:30 pm |
What doesn’t make sense Aaron?
Vouchers did not make financial sense or voting down vouchers did not make sense.
I, for one, was glad to see the voucher bill go down in flames.
November 10, 2007 at 6:35 pm |
Rejecting them didn’t make financial sense. My understanding was that this really would not have cost public schools anything. The problem was that the school boards here are so cheap and aren’t at all competitive in salaries, and if there were significantly fewer students in public schools, they may have made further cuts. But all the same, it didn’t make financial sense to reject this. I don’t see why everyone got so up in arms about it.
November 10, 2007 at 9:33 pm |
How does it make financial sense to subsidize even the wealthiest Utah families $500 per child (at the onset, the money would have increased over time) to go to a private school? Families that already are enrolled and can afford it???? Sorry, Aaron. It doesn’t wash. The proposal was a subsidy for the upper/middle class. And the $3000 for the lower incomes just doesn’t cut it, especially when you figure in transportation costs and other private school costs.
November 11, 2007 at 6:23 pm |
What I’m talking about is that the public school districts would not have lost any money, because it would have been taken from a general fund. Now, oddly enough, the higher-ups in the public education system are trying to weasel their way into that money, which they knew they would lose if Referendum 1 failed. And I don’t mean to suggest that it would be put to poor use, but it just seems this would have helped some and injured no one. Yes, $3000 is not enough for the lower-income families, but it’s a start. At least it would have subsidized something. Sorry, I just don’t agree with you.