Planning was the buzzword at a state education committee meeting Wednesday.
With a projected student population of 1 million looming 35 years from now, lawmakers were warned they had better start thinking about how to handle all of those kids.
Former House Speaker Nolan Karras said Utah has failed to follow the example of business. A successful organization, said Karras, plans for the next five years and forecasts the next decade.
But in Utah public education, he said, the state is lucky to have a two-year forecast.
“It’s a joke, in my mind,” said Karras, co-chairman of the advocacy group Education First. “There’s nobody that looks beyond the current [legislative] session.”
Karras’ comments follow a recent report from the Utah Foundation, which predicted that roughly 1 million students will be enrolled in the state’s public schools by 2050 — up from 622,000 last fall.
And enrollment at the state’s public colleges and universities is projected to swell by an additional 30,000 students in the next six years — the equivalent of another University of Utah, according to the Utah System of Higher Education.
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