The Utah school system suffers from an increase in number of students and fewer funds. The State Board of Education is deciding how to equally distribute the funds across all areas of the educational school system. However, with the increase of students, it looks like not all areas will be reached. Some services may have to go, because of the lack of funds.

Courtesy of usm photos on Flickr

This fall, student enrollment has risen by 12,260 students, according to the enrollment data released by the State Office of Education. That growth came despite a net cut of 5.2 percent in state’s education budget for this school year.

Utah state officials expect even more students to enroll in the Utah school districts in the fall of 2010, with as many as 11,000 more students, State Superintendent Larry Shumway told The Salt Lake Tribune. But there’s not nearly as much money for those students, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

A lot of BYU students who are going into education to teach are encouraged by the Utah school districts to not get a master’s degree primarily because the school system doesn’t have the funds to pay the increase in salary to the teachers. Even the demand of hiring is not as good as past years, probably because of the economy.  My neighbors are all employed teachers in local school districts in Provo, and they say they love their jobs but the pay is not as good as other states because of the shortage of funds from the government.

Utah has the lowest base per pupil spending in the nation. If the Utah state school budget doesn’t increase with the number of students enrolling in the schools, the  money per student could drop.

Minority enrollment in charter schools has increased as well — about 6 percent of Utah students are enrolled in charter schools. Alpine and Jordan school districts are among the top 50 in the nation for the number of their students enrolled in charter schools, according to The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

More minorities are moving in the state of Utah, by about 3 percent in the past year, with more than one-fifth of Utah Students being minority students.  The three school districts where minority students make up the majority of student body are Salt Lake, Ogden, and San Juan.

We definitely need to come up with ideas and resources to help fund students in their education. Only with education can we overcome poverty and crime. It may not solve it all, but it does help in a lot of areas. Maybe with an increase of taxes we can have the funds to provide for the new enrollments in schools. Utah is definitely growing, but are we ready for the rapid growth? Our government may need to really reconfigure its statutes and regulations in order to incorporate the growth of the state. Even if the state of Utah has an increase of minorities, that does not mean the students should lack educational experiences from lack of funds.