by Gordon Jones

My qualifications for accepting this invitation consist of the following: I have a Master's degree in education (from Stanford University); I have been a classroom teacher (11th and 12th grades; I now teach part-time at SLCC); my wife is still an active classroom teacher (6th grade); we educated seven children in the public school system; both of us are products of the public school system; I have been studying school choice, in Utah and elsewhere, and writing about it, for at least 30 years. I was the first Executive Director of the Utah Education Funding Project, which eventually became what is now Parents for Choice in Education, on whose board I continue to serve.

My reasons for supporting Referendum #1 fall into four areas:

1. A philosophic bias in favor of freedom. In general, I think the free choices of individuals in markets produce better results than decisions made in the political system. I believe that the competition that comes with choice produces better results all around.

The research seems to bear out that judgment. Where school choice has been tried, not only do those opting for private schools do better in school, but the students remaining in the public schools also do better. The U.S. Postal Service has vastly improved its service under (fairly limited) competition; no reasons schools shouldn't do as well.

Of course for most choices I do not advocate government subsidies for private choice. But where a decision (to educate all children) has been made societally, the mechanisms used to implement that choice should be as market-oriented and free as possible.

2. The question of an efficient delivery system to attain a societal goal brings up the question of costs. Utah faces a 30 percent increase in the number of K-12 children over the next 10 years. Utah already has the lowest per-pupil expenditures in the nation, and the highest pupil-teacher ratios. Those numbers will worsen inexorably unless we try something different.

On average, Utah spends $7,500 per K-12 pupil per year. The average cost of an education voucher is anticipated to be $2,000. If one can purchase $7,500 in savings with the investment of $2,000, that is a deal one should take.

Anticipating a couple of objections here, let me point out that since we are talking about future growth, the "fixed costs" argument does not apply. (In truth, it never did apply; the growing areas of, say, southwest Salt Lake County have been "draining" students from east-side schools for generations, and taking full funding with them. Charter schools "drain" students from traditional schools in the same geographic area, taking less than full funding but almost twice what vouchers will take. The schools on the east side and where charters exist have managed to make the adjustments just fine.)

Here are some numbers of interest: Total annual education spending in Utah clocks in at around $3.5 billion dollars. First-year cost of the voucher program is estimated at $9 million. Fully phased-in (after 13 years) annual cost of the voucher program is estimated (by voucher opponents) at about $70 million, which would mean that 35,000 students were taking advantage of it (out of a school-age population then of something in excess of 650,000), saving the taxpayers $262.5 million, for a net savings of about $190 million a year.

True, some of those 35,000 would be students whose parents would have sent them to private school anyway, which reduces the net savings somewhat. Total private school enrollment today is around 15,000. That number will also grow, so let's use a number of 20,000 private school students 13 years from now. If we were to subtract out that 20,000 and project a diversion of only 15,000 students as a result of the voucher program, the savings would still be $112.5 million, or a net $42.5 million per year.

Sidebar: My recollection is that Utah has about 20,000 teachers. Those annual savings could mean more than $2,000 a year to those teachers. Alternatively, you could take the savings and hire 1,400 new teachers, reducing class sizes from 25 to 23. Per pupil expenditures would go up by $65. We'd still be last, nationally, but we'd be better off than we are now.

No doubt there will be some wealthy families that will take the $500 voucher to reduce the cost of Waterford from $13,000 a year to $12,500. Another sidebar: The argument is often made that this program will take from the poor and give to the rich, but that is obvious nonsense. The poor don't pay taxes, particularly if they have children. The rich are already paying far more in taxes than they are ever going to be able to recoup with a $500 voucher. The program might take from the childless rich and give to the fecund rich, but the current system already does that. End sidebar. Far more numerous will be those stuck in the worst schools on the west side, who will be able to take a voucher of $3,000 and use it at a private school, increasing their range of choice and saving the rest of us money.

3. Those are the people at whom this program is aimed, those without the resources to exercise choice today. After all, if one is a millionaire, one can already send one's children to private school if one wants to. But if one is trapped by economic status in an area of failing schools, one has few options. And the persisting gap between majority and minority achievement rates is one of the most glaring failings of the public schools. That gap would be worse were it not for a dropout rate that also impacts most heavily those of limited income.

The appeal of school choice is driving leadership at the national level to the minority community. Leading voucher proponents have included Polly Williams, Floyd Flake and Bernice Gates, leaders in their minority communities, and now the irreplaceable Howard Fuller, with his Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity.

In years past, many "liberals" recognized the advantages of school choice for minorities. Hubert Humphrey said "I favor the creation of a tax system where parents would be able to receive a tax credit when their children attend approved private schools."

Pat Moynihan: "I do not think that the prospect of change in this area [education] is enhanced by the abandonment of pluralism and choice as liberal ideas and liberal values. If that happens it will present immense problems for a person such as myself who was deeply involved in this issue long before it was either conservative or liberal. And if it prevails only as a conservative cause, it will have been a great failure of American liberalism not to have seen the essentially liberal nature of this pluralist proposition."

Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White (who is black, BTW): "We've got to stop having a knee-jerk opposition to school vouchers and charter schools. . . . For all the African-American officials that have come out against vouchers, you will never find my name."

Robert B. Reich: "The only way to begin to decouple poor kids from lousy schools is to give poor kids additional resources, along with vouchers enabling them and their parents to choose how to use them."

The Salt Lake Tribune supported school choice until a couple of years ago: "One way to [stop UEA bullying] would be to offer Utahns educational choice. Let state education subsidies accompany each child to whatever school the child happens to attend, regardless of whether that school is public, private or parochial.

"This way, UEA members will be focused on improving the schools in which they teach in order to keep children in them. This way, whatever resources come their way will be based on how well they teach, not their ability to bully."

Democrats in Utah often argue that they are unfairly stigmatized as "liberal." Here's a chance for them to use a truly "liberal" issue to illustrate their case. But though Bill Orton favored school choice when he ran for governor, not a single Democrat in the legislature supported it (including Duane Bourdeaux, who sent his children to private school).

But aren't private schools likely to be segregated? How can minority leaders and parents support that? It would be hard to find schools more segregated than Utah's, but studies nationwide indicate that private schools are in fact more integrated, and that the behavior of their students is less racially-motivated. That is, they voluntarily mix more in lunch rooms and at recess.

And this might be a good time to address the "creaming" argument, that private schools will siphon off the best students, leaving the "dregs" for the public schools. After all, the public schools have to take everyone, and private schools can pick and choose.

Again, the facts don't bear out this fear. While there are no doubt some "exclusive" private schools, private schools as a whole have a more diverse student body on any metric one could care to name, from race to economics to physical and mental handicaps and behavioral problems. The public school system already contracts with a number of private schools to educate students with certain mental and physical handicaps, and with certain behavioral problems. These arrangements constitute, by the way, a "voucher" program, just as the Carson Smith Scholarship program does.

Voucher opponents try to have this "creaming" argument both ways. Harvard researcher Caroline Hoxby has found that when choice is increased, academic performance goes up both for the students moving from public to private schools and for the students who remain in the public schools. Since these are aggregate numbers, she notes, some might try to argue (some in fact have) that the reason public school scores go up is not because the public schools improve, but because the worst students take advantage of choice and leave, causing the average of the remaining students to jump. Hoxby somewhat dryly notes that critics can make this "anti-creaming" argument if they want to.

4. Social tensions. My fourth reason for supporting school choice is really a derivative of the first: my belief that markets avoid social tensions in ways that politics cannot. Politics is a zero-sum game. When a decision is made politically, one side wins and one side loses. In markets, both sides win.

Translating that idea to education, consider "Investigations Math," as implemented in Alpine School District. Some parents swear by it, others swear at it. But when the decision is made politically, one is either going to have it or not have it, and one side is going to win and the other side is going to lose. The bitterness of the battle has been prominently on display in recent years.

With school choice, both sets of parents can win. Those that want Investigations Math can have it; those that want Saxon math can have that. Tensions are lowered and civility can prevail.

The range of tension-inducing subjects is large (and growing) and frankly, I see school choice as the only way to avoid broad unrest and increasingly bitter political battles. Some of these are subject matter-related, such as mathematics and reading instruction methods; others are sex education, creationism v. evolution, drivers' ed, the presence or absence of music (and whose music---John Cage or Mozart?) and the arts (and which arts---Vagina Monologues or Mark Twain Tonight?), vending machines and campus demonstrations.

Conclusion

In one sense, the majority of Utahns have had the best of both worlds for a long time. Education has been provided at taxpayer expense, and yet it has essentially been delivered by a relatively homogeneous school system closely mirroring the dominant socio-religious culture. That is less true today, and in my opinion less true than most members of that dominant socio-religious culture think.

In the final analysis, school vouchers are likely to have less of an impact than either side imagines. Right now, fewer than three percent of Utah's school children are in private schools. The national average is 13 percent. No matter what happens, for the foreseeable future 90-plus percent of our children are going to be in the public schools. If we can use vouchers to effect some modest savings, and at the same time introduce some innovation through competition, it seems to me that we should do so, even if there is no immediate, measurable benefit to the vast majority of us.

For the children of the less fortunate, this is not a small matter.

by Richard Markosian

Utah is graduating more dummies every year and it seems very few are willing to do any thing about it. According to ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) the ever increasing learning gap between graduating high school students in the U.S and graduates from nearly every other developed country is caused by several factors, including school board apathy and their reluctance to change the status quo. The recent refusal by the State Board of Education to enact the voucher bill is case-in-point.

In my own experience high schools fail to educate at competent levels because of a combination of teacher apathy and grade padding. Many teachers I had didn't want to put forth the effort to give students a heavy workload or demand rigorous study habits because they didn't want to put forth the effort themselves in correcting, planning and extra work. Teachers are paid too low and there is no benchmark for teacher compensation based on student success.

UtahStories.com has done extensive research on school vouchers and contains many links to great sources on other voucher studies. The site also has video highlights from the original passage of the universal tuition voucher bill from the Utah State Legislature. Hear from both supporters and opponents and read my personal account of how public schools in Utah need a new measuring stick; not just by other state standards but instead by how many foreign students kick Utah students behinds in basic competency.

The SL Tribune blog is talking about another "inappropriate use" of BYU resources for political purposes:

Ed Snow, director of development for BYU's Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, sent an email to various people, including others at BYU, last week with an attached picture of 64-year-old potential candidate Fred Thompson and his wife who is 25 years his younger. The subject line was, "Fred Thompson's trophy wife."

"From the attachment, you can see that Fred Thompson and his wife Jeri (25 years his junior) may not wear well on many conservatives," Snow said in the e-mail.

"When making their final decision before entering the voting booth, I think many conservatives will in their minds compare this attached picture with a mental picture of Mitt Romney with his lovely wife of 38 years, their five handsome sons, five beautiful [daughters]-in-law, and darling grandchildren. I hope so."

From Tribune Blogs -- Out of Context: The Tribune's political writers' blog
Referenced Mon Jun 25 2007 18:54:28 GMT-0600 (MDT)

Does anyone else see a difference between an associate dean sending a note to a school maintained alumni mailing list that directly solicits support for a candidate and someone sending a note to some friends from their BYU email account? I imagine that in every election since email was invented, BYU faculty and staff have sent email messages to each other and others outside the university, from their BYU accounts, about political candidates. No one cared until there as a Mormon in the race. Now, such actions are "inappropriate."

Of the 1,483 UTAH Republican party members straw polled, 282 (19.02%) like a candidate other than Mitt Romney. Does 1,201 votes (80.98%) votes leave much doubt that Utah Republicans love Mitt Romney?

But I wonder, if the candidate’s name were left out of the question, and only his political platform was available-- identifying some of the candidate’s past record and beliefs as well as points he is running on today, without providing anything else to tip off the voter—would Romney score so high, or might other Republican candidates gain more support from Utah Republicans?

If the results of such a poll weren’t within three or four percentage points, it might seem that many Utah Republicans are casting their votes based on something other than the issues. Could it be religion? I certainly hope not after seeing so many Mormons criticize or crucify non-LDS members for saying they’d vote against Romney because of his religion.

And the opposite might prove interesting. If two groups of voters outside Utah were polled—one group questioned with names and the other without—we might see that some of the voters against Romney based on his religion might actually favor his politics. Than again, maybe not.

Utah Republican Party Straw Poll Results:
(http://home.utgop.org/page.php?page_id=4)

Mitt Romney 1201 (80.98%)
Ron Paul 84 (5.66%)
Rudy Giuliani 63 (4.25%)
John McCain 58 (3.91%)
Tom Tancredo 23 (1.55%)
Tommy Thompson 17 (1.15%)
Mike Huckabee 14 (0.94%)
Duncan Hunter 12 (0.81%)
Sam Brownback 11 (0.74%)
Total 1483 (100%)

by Jim Ferrin

The citizens of Utah will vote on school vouchers in November. But, unfortunately, they aren't yet getting much good information on which to make the decision. It seems all press coverage has been mired in the "two bill" controversy -- a controversy that must be resolved - and it certainly will. But, the real question for the public to decide is whether or not Utah's new school voucher program is good policy. The public deserves to hear the merits of the policy -- not just the controversy surrounding the "two-bill" issue.

Utah voters should understand that a voucher sends public money to a private school. But, that's not all - it also sends a public student to a private school. Since the voucher is cheaper than what we spend to educate that student in the public school, there is a savings to the state public education budget for every student that uses it. That savings can only be spent on the students who remain in the public system. So, the voucher is a sure way to increase our spending per pupil on those who remain in the public schools. Higher spending per pupil is the only way to increase teacher salaries and to reduce class sizes. The voucher is the surest, cheapest way to increase per pupil spending and to reduce the size of your student's class.

The voucher lets parents choose the school that will receive state funding to educate their child. All of a sudden, public schools become more responsive to parents as they seek to win that student and the funding that follows him/her.

Increased competition among public and private schools can't help but foster greater excellence in both -- and the children are the winners.

But, perhaps the biggest winners with school vouchers are those children who are not succeeding in school but whose parents can't afford an alternative. The school voucher gives more parents the tools they need to help their children to succeed.

To make an informed vote, parents, citizens, and voters should be hearing about these points more than the "two-bill" controversy -- a controversy that will get worked out while the citizens are still left to decide the real policy.

An editorial in last Thursday's Deseret News got a little hot under the collar over the current debate over what to do with electronic voting. It said, in part:

The concern is understandable, of course. New inventions make nervous Nellies of us all. People once feared that microwave ovens would make them sterile or that garage door openers might lead to cancer. Humorist James Thurber recalled that his mother would never leave light sockets open in the house because she was convinced electricity would leak out, costing her money and threatening her health.

Such things are often the source of urban folk legends. Trepidation before the unknown is a natural human reaction.

Overcoming that trepidation, however, is the mark of education and understanding.

Right now, some people are worried there are gremlins in the current voting machines --- that electronic voting is unreliable and open to tampering. They spout anecdotal evidence of irregularities here and there to fuel their fear and want paper ballot backups to fend off any conspirators. It's the same kind of itchy-witchy thinking that leads people to hide bags of money under their mattresses.

And dare we say that almost all of those those skittish souls are likely older than 40? The younger generation sees the outcry for the tangible comfort of paper ballots as a hallmark of the fuddy-duddy. The notion sounds, to young ears, like people demanding election results be chiseled into granite for security.

From deseretnews.com | Vote 'no' on paper ballots
Referenced Tue May 29 2007 08:44:57 GMT-0600 (MDT)

The Deseret News would do well to check their facts before they fly off the handle on this one. The fact is that the people most worried are computer scientists--the people least likely to be afraid of computers merely because they're new.

Jay Lepreau of the CS department at the University of Utah and I published an Op-Ed piece on eVoting in the Salt Lake Tribune in 2004. In that piece we noted "The consensus of computer and security experts is overwhelming: In a poll of members of the ACM, the premier organization for computing professionals, over 95 percent of the respondents felt that voting systems should provide a recountable physical record, e.g., paper." In other words, the people most educated in this area are the ones most concerned.

Congress forced the hands of states in dumping their old voting systems and buying new ones. Most went with so-called DRE touch screen systems like the State of Utah. Utah was smart enough to pass a law requiring a paper audit trail, but apparently the equipment Utah bought won't comply with new Federal regulations in this area.

It's unfortunate that State election officials had to make decisions and spend money before the paint was dry in this debate. The standards are still evolving and experience is showing that the electronic machines do have problems accurately recording votes. Even with paper audit trails, there are problems that are prohibitively expensive to find with audits.

It may seem that as the Feds change the rules, the states have no choice but to continue to change out their electronic voting machines over and over again to comply, but it turns out there is an alternative to the DRE voting machines. Florida recently scrapped it's touch screen machines with optical scan paper ballots. Florida was one of the states that had both--letting the counties decide. After using both, they went for the optical scan system.

That's a safe haven--one that was available to Utah officials in 2004 when they made their decision to go with the current system. Its still a safe haven and the most likely to be future proof as technology and standards continue to evolve. If we do end up scrapping our current machines and having to replace them, let's replace them with something that will stand the test of time.

Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and member of the 9/11 Commission, wrote a brilliant op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday call The Left's Iraq Muddle. As you read it, keep in mind that he's a Democrat and has a pretty good idea what happened on 9/11.

Here's the part that really made me think:

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.

With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

From OpinionJournal - Featured Article
Referenced Fri May 25 2007 09:31:50 GMT-0600 (MDT)

Does that mean that the current strategy is the right one? Of course not. But it does argue for strong continued involvement in Iraq.

Iraq will not be a binary event: victory or defeat. At least it doesn't have to be. Iraq is no more rational country than Yugoslavia was. Accepting that fact leads to many more options for moving forward than we have now. There are options in between chasing an ever receding goal of a unified, peaceful Iraq and just leaving. President Bush and the Congress would do well to explore them.

I don't agree with a lot of things Rocky Anderson says and does, but I'd like to see more cities (not to mention the State) follow his example in establishing a fund for renewable energy technologies.

A few weeks ago, I posted a story on my blog about Google's 1.6MW solar power installation. The project is a money making proposition for them--especially with the financial incentives they got from PG&E. The project breaks even in 7.5 years and has an expected lifetime of 20 years. I think solar is becoming economically viable and government, both as a regulator and one of the largest builders in the state, has a leading role to play.

Of course, this runs the risk of being caught up in the rhetoric surrounding Rocky--and that's a shame. We tend to turn things into partisan issues that don't need to be. This doesn't have to be about evil oil or capitalism or anything else. This is simply being smart--environmentally and economically.

by Dwight J. Barrett, Salt Lake City

The more I see Rocky Anderson the more I think he is despicable individual. I am ashamed of the people who elected him. The people who voted for him should be ashamed of themselves. If the people who voted for him are not ashamed of them selves then I am ashamed for them.

Rocky has no right to use his position as Mayor to promote his personal agenda. Rocky has no right to use our money to promote impeaching President Bush. Rocky spends way too much time chasing down President Bush and not enough time taking care of the business of running Salt Lake City.

The Salt Lake City council should ask Rocky to step down. The city council should enact a city ordinance spelling out the grounds for impeachment so that if Salt Lake ever gets another despicable person in the position of Mayor they can impeach him. If there ever was a Mayor that should be impeached it is Rocky. Rocky doesn't represent me and I hope and pray he doesn't really represent the people of S.L.C.!

Rocky reminds me of what Hitler must have looked like when he ranted and raved. The only difference between Hitler and Rocky is that Hitler didn't drool and slobber when he spoke. Both are as radical. Rocky is so desperate to find someone who will listen to him he must go to the parks and preach to the homeless.

I hope and pray that Rocky will go down in the history books as being the trashiest Mayor that Salt Lake City has ever had. I hope and pray the citizens of Salt Lake City will try to elect a better representative than Rocky. Rocky is an embarrassment to me and Salt Lake City.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that when Energy Solutions wants to bring more low-level nuclear waster into the state everyone from the Governor on down gets all up in arms. But when a new coal-fired power plant to produce electricity for Las Vegas or California is proposed, there's nary a whimper.

Is this just ignorance and a general fear of all things nuclear?

Before I continue, let me state for the record that I have done quite a bit of graduate level work in nuclear engineering and worked for four years as a nuclear metallurgist, so I know something about nuclear waste.

The kind of waste that Energy Solution would bring into the state has almost no chance of ever doing anyone in the state harm. It's contained, managed, and, as it's name states "low-level." Note that this isn't someone's opinion, classifications like "low-level" have a technical meaning. It's the kind of stuff produced by hospitals, for example. This is very different stuff from spent nuclear fuel like what the Goshutes proposed putting on their reservation.

One the other hand, we have a very real and growing problem with air pollution in Utah this is causing real health problems for people right now.

I don't think we ought to ban coal fired power plants, but I do think we ought to create very strict regulations on emissions, including C02, from new power plants constructed in Utah and enforce them. Let's make sure that the power created in Utah includes all the costs, including those required to make it clean, for the sake of our skies and our health. Anything else is a direct subsidy of someone else's welfare at the cost of our own.

by Richard Markosian

Questions Posed to Salt Lake City Council Representative Soren Simonson Regarding the Sugarhouse Granite Block Redevelopment. Check out the answers to these questions and more at UtahStories.com

Along this block there is something very unique. You almost always see people walking along here and they are spending their dollars not on chain stores like Gap, Old Navy or Footlocker. People who come are shopping at local retail spots, owned by local merchants, who in turn live here locally in Sugarhouse and spend their money locally. Do you know of any other place that is such a truly local spot than this block where are sitting on?

So my question for you is how is it when the City Council decided to rezone this block to allow for a Gateway-type development there was virtually no community involvement. There was no notice given to the tenants here that this might be coming down the pipe? There was no real debate. Why?

I guess the big question I have is this: shouldn't a community that is supporting its local merchants and enjoying such a great little charming retail spot be able to have a say in what the retail landscape around their community should look like?

I ask this because you and I both know that when this development is completed these local merchants won't be able to move back in, the rent will be too high-- we will see bed and body works instead of Orion's Music here, we will have Victoria's Secret instead of Blue Boutique we'll have Gap instead of Pib's Exchange we will have Starbucks instead of Sugarhouse Coffee and this corner will be just like any other Anytown, USA corner, does that really sound like a nice exchange to you?

35 years ago Main Street Salt Lake City was full of local retailers that had been there for many many years. Locally owned places like Aurbachs, Baker Shoes, Keith O'brien. Then 35 years ago the city council voted to allow the building of two giant shopping malls one right across the street from the other. These malls attracted many shoppers, they economically revitalized downtown but killed nearly all the local merchants. Today 35 years later we are tearing down these malls because everyone shops at Gateway. Because the malls have gone out of style. Do you think that city planners making decisions merely in the interest of economic vitality and retail shopping trends are ruining our sense of ownership in a place and reason for involvement?

Here at Sugarhouse people really care about what is happening, people find meaning in this place because we can call it ours, what is going to happen when all we have are Wall Marts and Gaps as far as the eye can see? Do you think people are perhaps so apathetic today because they don't feel like they belong when there is no sense of meaning and provincial locality?

Do you think that there is anything that can be done to stop this trend. I know we live in the strongest economy in the world, our GDP is enormous, but like you point out on your website so much of our landscape is soo ugly because more and more big boxes are popping up and people would rather shop at Wall Mart than a locally owned and operated shop. I don't see anything changing and I'm afraid that things are going to get uglier before they get prettier, what do you think?

by Hal Smith

Utah State House: Still in the 1850s (click to enlarge)

According to the Salt Lake Tribune article "Weird Laws Clutter the Utah Code" Utah parents can give written permission to teachers to hit their children even though none of Utah's public school do it. (Dan Harrie and Judy Fahys, January 18, 1998).

The law was passed in 1992 and says:

"A school employee may not inflict or cause the infliction of corporal punishment upon a child who is receiving services from the school, unless written permission has been given by the student's parent or guardian to do so." (UTAH LAW 53A-11-802)

In other words, who ever a child lives with- be it an adoptive parent, step-parent, or uncle- can tell teachers to hit the child with a thick board leaving redness and welts. The thick board is called a "paddle" and was invented to beat slaves.

Since the end of slavery in 1865 America's schools and institutions have step by step abolished corporal punishment. Hundreds of global and US organizations like the United Nations, the US Parent and Teacher Association, and the National Association of State Boards of Education have passed resolutions against corporal punishment. They believe students have the same right to be protected from physical violence as do wives, animals, and criminals.

According to Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, "the LDS church has consistently discouraged this approach to child rearing." President Hinckley: "called physical abuse of children unnecessary, unjustified and indefensible." He said: "I have never accepted the principle of 'spare the rod and spoil the child.' I am persuaded that violent fathers produce violent sons. Children don't need beating. They need love and encouragement."

Then in 1997 the Utah Senate tried to ban school beatings completely.

The Salt Lake City Tribune wrote an excellent editorial supporting the proposal. It explained that beating students in front of their peers "implies they are less worthy of respect, less human than those whose whose parents say 'keep your hands off my child'." (Hands Off Those Students, 23 January 1997)

But when the Senate sent the bill to the Utah House, the House disagreed and the bill died.

Now 10 years later the state Office of Education has a regulation against beating students but it does not override the law allowing beatings with guardian permission. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance stated in a 2006 report that while it is not practiced, some school districts "do not have a formal ban in place."

While school staff may be under the impression that it is illegal, some districts are still printing handbooks saying teachers can beat students with permission.

For example, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that San Juan School District's school board unanimously opposed the idea of ending school beatings. Its handbook states:

SAFE SCHOOLS POLICY

A school employee may not inflict or cause the infliction of corporal punishment upon a student who is receiving services from the school unless written permission has been given by the student's parent or guardian to do so. This applies to students under the age of eighteen (18), or under the age of twenty three(23) if the student is receiving educational services as an individual with a disability.

Kane School District's handbook has the same policy.

How is beating students with thick wooden board part of a "Safe School?" And safe for who? Teachers who can't handle students criticizing them to their friends? What kind of school lets guardians give permission to beat 22 year old disabled students?

On top of the disgusting policies of certain public schools, Utah's law and State Board regulations have no effect on school beatings in private schools. In fact, the government does not collect statistics on hitting in private schools, so there is no way to know for sure whether it is being used. Several teenagers have died in youth boot camps in Utah.

In 2006 SURVEY USA found that only a tiny minority - 15% - of Utah citizens supported corporal punishment in school. Why should their unfortunate children be humiliated in front of their protected classmates?

The poll's results show that Utah legislators have a responsibility to enforce the will of the overwhelming majority of its citizens and free children once and for all from the threat of school beatings.

NOTES:

Hands Off Those Students, Salt Lake City Tribune, January 23 1997

S.B. 101 to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Public Schools

Utah House Education Committee, Representative Gregory H. Hughes, Chair Republican - District 51

ON THE CHURCH OF LATTER DAY SAINTS' OPPOSITION TO CORPORAL PUNISHMENT:

• On the Matter of Spanking by Glenn I. Latham
• Joseph F Smith's biography
• Parenting the Lord's Way by Allen Leigh
• The Book of Mormon's Opposition to Corporal Punishment, an essay
• Discipline and the Plan of Salvation by Nola Redd

This classified ad announces Dugway Proving Grounds' intention to renovate a de-commissioned testing lab. There are a number of public meetings that you can attend and comment at, if you're interested:

The public is invited to attend a briefing on this renovation project and provide early comments or suggestions for the Environmental Assessment. Comments and suggestions would be considered and appropriately incorporated to the Environmental Assessment document, before it is published for the 30 day public review and comment period. The Public Briefing and Scoping meetings will be held at the

• Tooele County Complex, South Auditorium, Basement Floor, 47 South Main, Tooele, Utah, on March 12, 2007, from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and
• Salt Lake City Library, Conference Room B, first 7Floor, 210 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 13, 2007, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM.

Additional information may be obtained from the Dugway Public Affairs Office, telephone (435) 831-2116 or 3409

I cringe when I think about these kind of public comment meetings. There's usually a lot of emotion, very little reason, and precious little science. Of course, if there's anything we can learn from the legislature, that's the way we govern in America.