Equalizing School Building Funds

The report examines Utah’s current school facilities financing situation, focusing on equity and adequacy of facilities funding across Utah’s 40 school districts. It also evaluates a number of reform concepts for how they would impact adequacy of school facilities and equity for students and taxpayers. Finally, it provides a model, showing how eight potential funding reforms would impact each district in the state, compared to the current funding system.

Utah Foundation found that policies designed to cope with these problems should address four key objectives:

1. Ensure that growing districts have adequate funds to build new schools to house additional students.
2. Ameliorate the negative effects of splits on newly-formed districts that lose substantial resources.
3. Ensure adequate funding for renovations or rebuilds and maintenance across districts as well as for new facilities.
4. Ease the burdens on taxpayers in lower taxable-value districts so that their property tax rates are more equivalent to other districts with higher taxable values.