A report released Monday by the Utah Foundation details how the additional money sought by recent governors, and appropriated by successive sessions of the Legislature, may sound like a lot. It amounts to about $100 million a year.
But, the Foundation calculates, the rapid growth in the number of students and the growth in the cost of educating each one of them rapidly eats up all but some $22 million of each year’s additional funding. Or annual hikes in overall spending of some 0.8 percent.
This as schools along the Wasatch Front are trying to keep up with not only the need for more teachers and books, but for fleets of new schools. And as schools in rural areas are dealing with declining populations and stagnant tax bases.
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