announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is provided in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Foundation Fund, Merit Medical, and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Jason Perry: Tonight on "The Hinckley Report," our expert panel delves into the state of education in Utah.

Is technology changing the classroom for better or worse, what is the current debate over school funding, and what are the major issues facing students and families today?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Jason Perry: Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report."

I'm Jason Perry, Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Utah representative Karen Peterson, a Republican from Davis County; Sarah Young, chief of staff for the Utah Board of Education; and Geoff Landward, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education.

We're so glad to have you all with us tonight.

This is a special episode of "The Hinckley Report," we're gonna talk about education, the state of education here for Utah.

You all are experts in your fields and we have a lot of issues to get to and, Representative, I wanna start with you for just a moment too, because we have a lot of students in the state of Utah, and one thing everyone always likes talking about is the funding.

Let's talk about how public education, and it gets to higher education, is funded in the state of Utah.

Karen Peterson: Yeah, so public education is funded with a couple of different funding streams, right, we use income tax, we use a lot of property tax, we use our basic rate, and then our local levies that our local school districts contribute as well.

Jason Perry: So Sarah, what's interesting about the funding model is, constitutionally, in the state of Utah, income tax is earmarked for public education.

Talk about that through your role, because that seems to be something that is a constant source of conversation.

Sarah Young: Yeah, it sure is, you know, the income tax guarantee here in Utah, I actually think is one of the things that has allowed our system to build out the amazing schools that we see our kids in today.

It's really important for our systems and our teachers to know that funding is available to be able to meet the needs of those kids, provide them the materials they need, and to be able to really provide the education that we honor and expect here in Utah.

So I think that dedication of funds has been incredibly important to the system.

We're now starting to talk about, you know, what it would look like to not have that guarantee and to really ask our legislature to look at the funding more comprehensively for needs across the state, and it kind of remains to be seen how that's going to play out in terms of K-12 education.

Karen Peterson: And can I clarify something there?

So the conversation we're having around SGR 10, which will be on the ballot for voters to decide this November, doesn't actually remove the guarantee for education.

Instead, what it does, is it prioritizes education within that--within the constitution, to say we are going to use income tax and fund, first, the growth of new students, as well as inflationary costs, which we have never done before.

What we've always said is the money for education is going to come, partially, from income tax, but that doesn't mean that the money gets to the classroom necessarily, when we just say where it comes from.

What we wanna say is we want to know the money gets there.

And so this is a new guarantee for education that retains the earmark, but also ensures that the money gets to the classroom.

Jason Perry: Maybe explain this for just a minute, this is a joint resolution passed by the legislature the session before this last one.

Maybe, let's back up for a minute there and talk about that, because it will require a constitutional amendment to implement these changes, right?

So maybe start with that level.

Karen Peterson: Yeah, so we've been having a conversation in our state around income tax, and it's been--there's a lot of pressure, and as we look at surrounding states on what their income tax rates are, and there's been a pressure to push income tax lower, especially as families have felt the impacts of inflation.

And as we've had these conversations when we worked with education, a couple of years ago, we passed Amendment G that said we're gonna expand a little bit the use of the income tax, but, in exchange, we're going to create some guarantees in statute.

At the time, education asked us to put those guarantees in the constitution, and the legislature wasn't really interested at the time.

But now we've seen that model work, the legislature is willing, now, to say, "Let's put those guarantees into the constitution, and then let's also give us ourselves the opportunity, as income tax changes, and as states needs to change, to say, we're gonna prioritize education first and then we're going to look at our other state needs."

Jason Perry: So, Geoff, this has been an impact on higher education, this goes back to 1996.

We, as citizens in the state of Utah, decided income tax could be for public ed and higher ed, and then in 2020 is when it expanded children and those with disabilities.

Talk about that, particularly as it impacts the funding for higher education.

Geoff Landward: Well, you know, so many--so much of the conversation around higher education is how expensive is it, and is college unaffordable for people, and one thing I like to remind people in Utah is that if you look at the whole country, Utah is the fourth lowest in tuition of all 50 states.

And the reason is because of the way that we fund education in Utah.

We're so well taken care of by the legislature that it keeps college affordable, so even though the national conversation is college is unaffordable, if you look at how much Utah costs, it's low, and it is more affordable simply because we have access to more resources, and the legislature has made that commitment to higher education as well as K-12, and we think that's really critical for why Utah is seeing such rapid growth, such a robust economy is because of that commitment to education.

Jason Perry: Mhm, so we've had recently, when this resolution was passed, we had kind of sort of broad support, but just this past week, the UEA has come out and said they are opposed to this--maybe talk about this--and then, Sarah, follow up with that because it impacts your position particularly as well.

Karen Peterson: Yeah, so when we were negotiating this amendment, we brought all of our education stakeholders to the table, they were very involved in that conversation, UEA included, our local school boards, our superintendents, our business administrators, the State Board of Education, they all participated very much in that conversation and gave feedback on the language.

That passed, as you said, last session, and we've continued conversations with all of those groups, and all of those groups have retained their current position that they took last year, with the exception of the UEA, who initially had no position and then now, they have moved to a "no" position.

I will say personally, it feels a little frustrating when someone changes their position after the legislative session has ended, and then it doesn't give us an opportunity to be responsive and reconvene the group.

But we are where we are, and at this point, we're going to talk to Utah families and we're gonna talk to Utah educators about what the constitutional amendment does and how it's good for both families and education.

Jason Perry: Sarah, will you please talk about that, you know, our commissioner, Syd Dickson, is very much involved in this issue, talk about how this impacts you, as you interface with the UEA and the funding overall.

Sarah Young: Yeah, so I mean, I think it's also important to recognize, as one of our legislators put it, this was a lean year, in terms of budget and opportunities to really do additional funding for some of those key area needs.

I think that that plays a pretty big role, in terms of, maybe some of the concerns that we're hearing from our UEA members, and I think it's important to separate those two pieces.

The fact that this was a lean year in terms of revenue that was available to fund new pieces doesn't mean that that's going to be our trajectory moving forward.

And so, you know, we will continue to work with our educators, our leaders at UEA, the state school board is supportive of this resolution moving forward.

And you know, we wanna make sure that our community understands what those impacts are and how they can successfully still advocate for the needs of students in alignment with these opportunities.

Karen Peterson: And speaking of funding, so this year, we put $800 million into public education.

At the same time, we gave a little trim to higher education, right?

And so, it was a great year for our K-12 schools, we value our K-12 education system, we know that they need resources, and we did contribute additional resources to them this year, even though it was a lean year.

Jason Perry: Geoff, talk about that cut just a little bit, because the legislature did go trim--but they did backfill those cuts, but talk about that and the dialogue you're having with legislators as they look at that portion of the state budget.

Geoff Landward: Well, I think that what we're trying to do is make sure that--no matter what, we wanna make sure that higher education is running as lean as possible.

I mean, it is an expensive endeavor, these are massive organizations, essentially cities that are being run, they run the economies of their local regions that they're serving in, and it's unlike K-12, and what we're talking about with their funding, we have the tuition aspect of higher education as well.

So the tuition aspect is a financial contribution, essentially, from those who are attending, unlike K-12, which is the free and appropriate education.

It's a significant responsibility to keep that cost low.

The legislature is sending a message to us saying, "Look, there are no--there are a lot of expenses, we know that you have a lot of needs, but we want you to make sure that you're looking internally as much as possible to find expenses."

So by keeping that downward pressure on costs, it helps us to be creative and it helps us to be responsible to look for any ways that we can continue to keep the costs low.

And the other aspect of higher education that I think is interesting is that we do have a performance funding model, and people may not know this, but a significant portion of any new funding that we get in higher education every year, we have to earn by showing we're meeting certain performance measures.

Those performance measures include increasing the number of people who are going to to our institutions of higher education from high school.

So, if you look at the numbers for public education, 40% of people graduating from high schools are not going to any college at all, that's unacceptable.

And so, one of the incentives that we have to earn money from the legislature is increase that number, get more people going to college, but once they come, they need to graduate.

They've got to get a certificate or a degree, because if they're going to college and they're spending the money in that investment and not coming away with the credential, we have failed.

So increasing that number helps us earn, and then the last thing, which I think is critical when we talk about value, is that we want them to earn degrees or certificates in areas that we call high yield.

These are areas that are high wage, high demand jobs.

So once they're graduating, there's high demand for what they're doing, but not only high demand, but they're paid well.

That's good for Utah, that's good for the economy.

If we can show increases in those three areas, the legislature then appropriates additional money to higher education, so we're earning that additional funding through those measures, and I think that's really an important and good model.

Jason Perry: Representative-- because you're the House Chair of the Higher Education Appropriation Subcomittee, so all this flows through you on that particular side as well.

What is the connection between appropriations and tuition?

Karen Peterson: And tuition, so, in our state, we have a 75/25 split, right?

So if we increase compensation for our higher education professors, and faculty, and staff, then the institution has to make up the other 25 and often that does end up in tuition.

So we have to balance both being able to retain good faculty, and making sure we're competitive with the fact that we don't want our tuition to be too high in Utah, we want it to be affordable for Utah families.

Jason Perry: Commissioner, really quickly, you just had to vote on these tuition increases, in fact, as I recall, a push back on some.

Geoff Landward: Yeah, and this is important.

I think it's important for people to know as well, and they may not know this, but the entire system of higher education, at least the public side, is governed by the Utah Board of Higher Education, and one of their responsibilities is to set tuition and fees for the institutions.

Now, the institutions come with recommendations for tuition and fees, and generally there's gonna be an increase, because as Representative Peterson pointed out, we have a 25% match for these mandatory costs, but there are also sometimes other needs that the institutions may put in their increase for fees and tuition.

So, this last week, the Board of Higher Education had an opportunity to review those requests for increases in tuition and fees, and, frankly, what is a an unusual and unprecedented move, the Board of Higher Education revised some of those recommendations downward.

Said, "Look, we understand the needs that you're asking for, but we're looking at it, and we feel that we can reduce that number by a little bit," trying to keep in mind that these are checks that these students or their parents are having to write, and it is not inexpensive.

And so, I think that sends a really good message, first of all, that the Board of Higher Education is doing its job, it's scrutinizing these requests, it's looking for ways to keep the costs low.

And secondly, the institutions recognize that this is part of how the central--the system of higher education is going to be governed, that this board is gonna take that responsibility to govern seriously.

Jason Perry: There's a lot of innovations going on, with our legislature, to higher ed, but Sarah, particularly in public ed, I wanna talk about some of these things, these pieces of legislation, like for example, the Utah Fits All Scholarship.

There's been some efforts from our legislature and others to expand the variety of options.

Can you talk about how that is working through your view in public education?

Sarah Young: Yeah, so one of the things that I think is actually really promising about our system, is we have one of the most open and flexible school choice policies in K-12 education compared to any of our sister states across the nation.

What that means is, is that our parents have the power to be able to say, "I'm gonna choose the educational setting that is best for my student."

Currently, that has always existed within the public education system, so if my boundary high school isn't the best fit for my child, for one reason or another, I have the opportunity, as a parent, to say, "I'm going to send them to another public school or another charter school," which are all public within the state of Utah.

With the Utah Fits All Scholarship, we're now moving to a model where we're allowing parents to say, "I can choose an additional educational experience in a private school setting."

And the way that's being funded is through an educational scholarship, where up to $8000 could be available to a family that applies, to be able to then offset the costs that would go into that additional education setting.

Jason Perry: Talk about how that's working, you know, the people--you know, what is the take on this, how many people are taking advantage of this?

Sarah Young: Yeah, so we've seen high numbers of families that have applied.

The program itself actually hasn't been executed into implementation yet, that will be this fall.

So really, this fall is going to be that proof of concept, in terms of how many students are participating, how many students can we fund, and what type of expenditures are they using that $8000 for?

It's not explicitly limited to just private schools, parents can choose from other educational service providers, they can use it towards curriculum needs for a home school setting.

So we're really in, kind of, this "wait and see" moment, when it comes to what families are gonna use this for and how it's gonna translate into our system.

Jason Perry: Representative, please talk about this, I know you're closely connected to it, and more money is being allocated towards this, because we know the applications are considerable.

Karen Peterson: Seventeen thousand applicants so far, and we funded 10,000 spots.

I think the biggest thing is just--education sometimes goes through these cycles, where there's disruption.

We saw this maybe ten years ago, when we were doing digital teaching and learning, and our teachers were trying to figure out how do we use all this technology in the classroom?

We're kind of in that space again where there's a little bit of disruption.

Parents wanna engage a little bit differently, they all had a variety of experiences during the pandemic, that sometimes made them say, "I think I want something a little different for my student," and so, they're looking for those options.

Jason Perry: I want to talk about technology in the classroom for just a moment, and then get to the, sort of, the COVID rebound, what's happening in school too.

But maybe, Sarah, let's start with you for a second on this, because one of the things that keeps coming up from our governor, and some legislators, and even on the federal level is, should we have mobile phones in schools?

That seems to be a recurring issue, maybe talk about that for just a moment, because they're not banned yet.

Sarah Young: They're not, and I'll say, this is not a position of the state school board, but it is a personal position.

I think, yes, 100% those cell phones need to be out of our classrooms.

When we look at the way that a cell phone is playing a role in our students lives, especially in their adolescent years, it's concerning.

You know, they are receiving negative feedback, and, you know, just a lot of mental stressors through the phone, whether that's through social media or other types of, kind of, social platform communications.

That is not only a distraction to the learning, but it's actually creating very unsafe opportunities for our kids in the classroom.

You think about when I was in school and we didn't have cell phones necessarily as prolific as they are right now, I may have a disagreement with a peer and be able to go home and kind of separate myself from that disagreement, be with family, be in a supportive environment, and then come back to the school the next day from a more level set area.

Now our kids have it 24/7.

They're carrying those, you know, challenges with them, and I think we really need to be thoughtful about when and where cell phones are appropriate, and I don't think classrooms is one of them.

Jason Perry: Do you have a comment on that?

Karen Peterson: I agree, but I also think that every school and district should be making their own decision.

I wouldn't be in favor of the legislature saying no cell phones in any classroom, in--anywhere, because I'm such a local control person.

We have locally elected school boards, we have charter boards, and I hope that they talk to their communities, and they have a discussion about what that policy looks like, and they work with parents.

I know at the same time we're talking about school safety and a lot of parents feel like, "I want my kid to have a phone on them," when we have all these conversations around school safety.

So what does that look like, does that look like, we check in our phones when we get to school, does that look like-- I don't know.

Is it--you know?

We'll have to see, but I think that's important part of the conversation is how parents can engage with this, so they also can have a say in how that looks in their schools.

Jason Perry: Commissioner, talk about technology in higher education, we certainly have a lot of efforts to push some classes remotely.

Conversation is happening with our legislature and other places about buildings themselves, if this is even the future of higher education.

Geoff Landward: Yeah, you know, what's almost frustrating, but also--if you're not laughing, you're crying--because higher education, we're always talking about how expensive it is, and, you know, we're building these buildings, and the labs, and all of these things that are so critical to having high quality higher education, but at the same time, especially the pandemic, people saw what was like, "Okay, this is gonna be the new way to deliver higher education, it's gonna all be online and look how great this is going to work, and this could reduce cost, we don't need buildings."

And what we're discovering is that what students really want is both.

They want a hybrid version where they have some online options, but they also want to be on campus, and so we have to figure out how to provide both in a high quality, high outcome manner.

And that doesn't really save us money, what it does is present some real challenges for us, but this is also really helpful because, what this does is this gives us new pathways and new avenues to reach out to people who we would consider non-traditional students.

These are maybe returning adults, these are students who are in the workforce, these are students who have families or other pressures that they can't do the traditional route of going on campus all day long.

This gives them, and us, an opportunity to provide them what they need in order to earn a degree or certificate, but do it in a much more flexible way, I think that's worth the investment, especially if we can get more people coming to college and getting a certificate or degree.

So it is a challenge, it is an expense, but I think we're looking for innovative ways to try and meet that challenge.

One of the things that you may have been seeing in the news in the last few days is one of our efforts to be a little more innovative because, look, I mean, higher education has never been accused of being the most innovative educational model.

I mean, look at our graduations, look how we dress, we're wearing robes, and hats, and tassels, and all sorts of things, we love tradition, but when it comes to innovating the educational delivery model, we're like the Titanic, we just take forever to move.

The Board of Higher Education in particular is--we've appointed people that are innovators, we've appointed people who are change agents, and they wanna see the same thing for our education.

So we're trying to create-- what we're looking at is like sandboxes, people to play in and just try new ideas.

One of the things that we've been talking about is a three year bachelor's degree, for example, and this is something where we're looking at bachelor's degrees, and the question we asked first was, why does it take four years?

Is that a requirement somewhere, is that a requirement for accreditation?

The crediting bodies came back and said, "Well, no, it's never been about hours, it's been about competencies."

And a bachelor's degree is you have to have a certain level of competencies in these areas in order to earn the degree.

Traditionally, that's taken 120 hours, so with that answer, we're saying, "Well, is there a way to get the competencies that are still valued in a bachelor's degree but do it in fewer amount of hours, saving time and saving money, and also giving us some opportunities to look at these new and hybrid ways of delivering degrees?"

And the Board of Higher Education, last week, changed some policy to say to the institutions, "You now have the ability to develop these sub-120 bachelor's degrees, these bachelor's degrees that could be completed in less than four years."

We're gonna start looking at what those might look like and looking at some proposals, this is a way for us to marry technology and marry innovation around what does industry need from a bachelor's degree, what do students need from a bachelor's degree, and let's create something new that's never been done before.

We're hoping that these kind of changes will change the way people perceive higher education and know that it's still valuable, it is still meeting their needs, and it is different than their parents' higher education experience.

Jason Perry: One of the issues that we've seen in higher education, Sarah, but also particularly in public ed, we're hearing a lot about this, is about participation, people showing up for class.

This chronic absenteeism issue seems to be front and center, that was the front page of "The New York Times" just today.

Talk about that and some of the issues that you are working through, kind of, with this backdrop: the definition of chronic absenteeism is 10% of school days for any reason, which is about 18 days in a school year.

Sarah Young: Yeah, so we continue to see higher rates of chronic absenteeism ever since the pandemic in K-12 education.

That's significantly concerning, because we know that in order to, you know, reap the benefits of education, you need to be in school.

And that part of that is having that opportunity to interact with your peers and your educators, to be able to really get a robust educational experience.

When we talk about chronic absenteeism in K-12, we kind of divide it into two different age groups.

The first age group is going to be, you know, our high school students.

And for us at the State Board, we're really working on making sure that our schools have a clear value proposition to those students.

"Why am I here, what am I learning, how does this help me, you know, pursue my future in higher ed and in other places?"

So that's a really key aspect for the secondary space.

For the elementary space, it's a different situation, because we're really talking about students, you know, who may be eight to ten years old, who, it's not necessarily a personal decision that they're not coming, and for those families, we really need to partner with the parents.

We're doing that through home visits, creating those relationships between the local school teachers and the local families, to be able to make sure that our parents understand that getting their kids to school is best for everyone, and that if they need help or support, be it through transportation or finding solutions related to additional needs for child care, that we are here as a K-12 system to support them, because we want their children in the classroom.

Geoff Landward: Sarah, let me ask you a question if that's okay, on this chronic absenteeism, you mentioned earlier phones, for example, and the impact it's having on mental health for students.

I mean, my own experience as a parent, we've really struggled with getting kids to school when they're battling things like anxiety or depression, and some of these other mental health challenges, I mean, how big of a role is that playing in chronic absenteeism?

Sarah Young: So it definitely has an impact, I will say, though, the thing that I would share with you and other parents is that our schools are really the resource hub and center for any of our students who are experiencing challenges with mental health.

We have invested as a state, and I'm sure the representative can speak to, a lot of resources into making sure that we have counselors, clinical social workers, and other experts that can really meet our students where they are, and help them create systems of strategies and plans to be able to help overcome some of those issues.

All of those resources exist at the school, so being able to help bring those children to the school, to be able to access those resources is just an incredible imperative.

Geoff Landward: Well, that's been my experience.

I mean, I have to tell you, at least in Davis County, the level of support that's available is overwhelming and really impressive, I think sometimes it's just a matter of you don't know that that's there.

And then when you inquire and seeing all those resources, they've been very helpful, so I think that you're right.

Jason Perry: It's gonna have to be the last word tonight, this is so insightful, thank you for being with us.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast on PBSUtah.org/HinckleyReport or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

announcer: Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is provided in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Foundation Fund, Merit Medical, and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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