Logan Stefanich is a reporter with KSL, covering southern Utah communities, education, business and tech news.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah State Board of Education is grappling with how to navigate recent directives from the Utah Legislature to trim or reallocate $163 million of the state's education budget.The board last week received a letter from the chairs of the Legislature's Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee, asking members to come up with recommendations to reduce the budget by 5%, or $295.
8 million, by Friday — ahead of the subcommittee's Jan. 21 meeting.The letter said it was "important for the public education community to participate in the budget process for the coming year, as other areas of the state budget do.""Broad community support will help the subcommittee identify areas where funding adjustments are needed or where changes pose lower risk to maintaining student outcomes in public education," the letter continued.At Thursday's meeting, Scott Jones, USBE's deputy superintendent of operations, explained to the board that the recommendations only had to total around $163 million.Laboriously, the board began deliberation that lasted over five hours and resulted in approved reductions just shy of $30 million, well shy of the requested $163 million in ongoing funding.Jones clarified that the recommendations are less "cutting" from the budget and more "reducing and then reallocating.""If, for example, you say, we want to reduce the entire amount of state funding that currently supports this program, then later, or at your direction, or however the board wants to take that process, you can make the recommendation of where to reallocate that money to," Jones told the board. "Cut implies that the money will completely go away, right?"Nearly $9 million in Thursday's reductions and reallocations came from the Utah Private Course Choice Empowerment program. While it's 100% of the program's budget, James said the board is now asking the Legislature to allocate it to one of the board's funding requests. This table shows a comprehensive list of reductions and reallocations of the state's education budget approved Thursday by the Utah State Board of Education. "When they sent this request to us to put together these recommendations for reductions and reallocations, it was communicated to the board that there will be, essentially, no new money, like a net zero ... especially for ongoing funds from the
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