Everybody loves fantasies. Daydreaming about becoming a millionaire and buying out Saks Fifth Avenue, being elected president or retiring to an island paradise can spice up an otherwise dull day.

Lately, I've engaged in a bit of fantasizing - don't laugh now - about education. Later this month, after five years as a Deseret News education writer, I'll move on to a new assignment, trading in my reporter's notebook for an editor's computer terminal.So, I've wondered how I'd change Utah's public and higher education, if they - and I - didn't face the usual constraints.

I think I would:

- Ban the word "boundary" in the Salt Lake School District. When I attended my first Salt Lake Board of Education meeting in March 1988, the board members were haggling about high-school boundaries. Now, thousands of words and hundreds of weeks later, "boundaries" and their accompanying acrimony still clog board meetings.

- Boost teacher salaries. Then I'd decree a gag order on whining about low salaries.

- Impose a quota on the number of lawyers who can serve on any appointed or elected board. What about getting a different perspective? How about more women? More minorities? Why not name a faculty member and a staff member to sit on the Board of Regents, which already has a student member?

- Institute equity in education funding. That would mean throwing out the "Robin Hood" law in favor of SB199. (Don't veto it, governor. A phased-in, 2-mill tax increase spread statewide is a lot fairer than burdening only the taxpayers in Salt Lake, Murray and a few other districts as happens under "Robin Hood.")

I'd also buy a copy of Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities" for Gov. Mike Leavitt, the Legislature and the state's 40 school boards, particularly Salt Lake City's. Kozol's fascinating and disheartening book about America's inner-city schools should be a must-read for Utah's education policymakers. A major premise of Kozol's book is that equal funding for unequal needs is not equity. While Salt Lake City's and Utah's problems may not be as extensive as those in San Antonio, Texas; Camden, N.J.; or East St. Louis, Ill., we too have incredible inequities among our schools.

If they read it, maybe Salt Lake Board of Education members would think twice before they let a school in an affluent neighborhood buy an extra teacher while an inner-city school uses closets for tutoring or has students who have never owned a book.

- Toughen up the regents. Two years ago, when higher education got only 70 percent funding for enrollment growth, they cried foul. Last year, when that amount dropped to 28 percent, it was disastrous, and regents imposed enrollment caps. Now 70 percent enrollment funding from the 1993 Legislature is acceptable, even though the colleges will have to squeeze in more than 3,000 students without state funding next fall. Would public education quietly agree to 70 percent funding of the WPU?

- Muzzle the education gadflies whose simplistic solutions to complex problems only confuse the issues.

- Replace educational jargon with English.

- Save the nation's forests by introducing the concept of brevity to educational-report and agenda writers.

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- Ensure that "site-based management" in the public schools isn't a synonym for "control" by influential parents with their own agendas.

- Award the college and university "merit" pay raises to the dedicated faculty who give their lives to their students instead of to the flashy stars and institution insiders. I'd also repeal the law that exempts higher-education salaries from disclosure.

- Wipe out the notion that "throwing money at education won't solve its problem." Unless I'm mistaken, it does take money to buy textbooks, hire teachers to reduce class size, purchase computers, etc. I'm not suggesting pork-barrel schools, but it would be nice to live in a state that spends more per student than Mississippi.

Because no one crowned me czar and I wasn't bequeathed the Midas touch, my wish list doesn't have much of a chance. But I'll be watching from the sidelines, just in case.

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