Education

1. The bill requires duplicative notification that will delay selling land at the optimal time for the maximum revenue.
2. The bill requires large land sales take place only in and around the yearly legislative session.
3. SITLA lands are NOT public lands. They belong to the beneficiaries. This bill directly introduces a political entity into an agency created to avoid political influence.

4. The "beneficiaries" of these trust lands are the children. This would negatively impact the ability to properly care for and manage these lands thereby decreasing the funds distributed to the children's education.

Drop out and absenteeism have been a frightening byproduct of the pandemic. Now more than ever LEAs must have the mandate and flexibility to handle this issue and offer the right services for struggling students. 

This bill will continue to bring standardization and interoperability between the disparate information systems across LEAs & at the State Board of Education, as it will eliminate double entry and result in faster and higher quality on mandatory reporting which will produce timely results for more targeted and timely intervention.

Children are poorly served by this legislation. At best, the teachers will be worried about making any changes to the curriculum and will not as a result, share with students new information or new innovative ideas for fear of not meeting the stringent requirements. At worst, it pits parents against teachers, as opposed to having them partner in the education of students. Adversarial relationship, guided by mistrust are not in the best interest of students.

Charter school students who receive special education services and their families will greatly benefit by having a Special Education director who is appropriately trained and licensed in this field.

Using restricted special education funds for purposes other than to specifically benefit students with disabilities will negatively impact the education of students with disabilities by decreasing the resources available for these students. Also, this bill seems to imply that the least restrictive environment is the general education classroom and the most restrictive environment is the special education classroom. This is not true. LEAs are already required to serve special education students in the LRE for each student according to their Individualized Education Program. The LRE is not a place; it's where a student is least restricted in accessing their curriculum. LRE could be different for every student. It is based on their individual IEPs.

This will lift the financial burden on families.

Utah PTA opposes any bill that would decrease the education fund and therefore funding for earmarked education. Utah has consistently ranked at the bottom of the per pupil spending as defined by the Census Bureau. Utah PTA believes that investing in Utah children will reap the best dividends for Utah and Utah economy. While Utah has done wonders with the comparatively low levels of funding dedicated to education, it has also come at a cost of overstretched teachers and large class sizes. Positively impacting these two will benefit Utah children.

This is a focused, evidence-based system to help increase literacy in K-3. Reading on level in 3rd grade has been linked to higher graduation rates, leading to a better chance at making every child's potential a reality.

This bill amends the formula used to figure funding for students with disabilities.