The price of knowledge: Utah continues to wrestle with thorny school-funding issues

January 21, 2017 (Herald-Journal)

Utah businesses leaders agree. In November, Our Schools Now — a collection of executives from the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, Zion’s Bank, Questar, Inovar, Rocky Mountain Power, the Salt Lake Chamber, former legislators and school administrators — proposed a 2018 ballot initiative that would raise the income tax from 5 percent to 5.875 percent, an increase of 17.5 percent in what Utahns would pay.

This would bring in an estimated $750 million annually for education, with about $16.7 million going to Cache County schools and $5.9 million for Logan City schools.

A Utah Foundation report has painted a clear picture of the past 20 years of education funding. From 1995 to 2015, Utah’s education funding effort dropped from seventh in the nation to 37th, with an estimated annual reduction in tax effort amounting to a $1.2 billion loss to education.

The Utah Foundation has also reported that public schools have taken on the burden of tax cuts since the ’90s.

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