Inside Tad's Mind

Another bill being considered by the Utah Legislature this year, SB-199, would require schools to provide equal access to all parent groups, and would bar schools from allowing access to parent groups that charge a mandatory fee for membership. (As last amended, the bill wouldn't exclude any group that would waive it's fee, but the Utah PTA says they'd have to amend their bylaws to waive their annual $5 dues.) The first question I have to ask about such a bill: Why is it necessary? Why is there a perception that the venerable PTA has a choke hold monopoly on some, if not all, of Utah's schools? And even if it does, why is that a bad thing? The second question I have to ask is what problem does paying dues present in allowing an organization like PTA or another parent group to have access to schools and other resources within a school? There is a lot of rhetoric in the media about how this is a revenge bill being pushed by the folks who lost the voucher battle last year....

Yesterday, the Utah Senate Education committee narrowly defeated (4-3) a bill to modify the procedures to divide a school district. The bill would have changed one word in the existing statute, but would have made a municipality originated district division all but impossible. Although the issue, on the surface appears to be a question of democracy and franchise, the reality is a question of taxation and school funding. There are four school districts in Utah that have student counts that place them in the 100 largest districts in the nation. Growing dissatisfaction with the quality of education, responsiveness to patron needs, and a general sense that three of these districts are not getting the job done has fueled a four year effort to create a mechanism to allow cities to create their own districts from these megalithic giants. Perhaps I will detail the history of this effort in another post, but for now it will suffice to say that the current procedures allows a city (or group of m...