Utahns' support of public education wasn't shaken by teachers' one-day walkout, and few families with kids out of school Tuesday were inconvenienced by closed schools, an overnight Deseret News/KSL-TV poll shows.
But the survey also indicates support for a tax increase to support schools has dropped from where it was last fall.
Fifty-one percent of the 407 Utahns surveyed Tuesday afternoon and evening by Dan Jones & Associates said they strongly or somewhat supported the UEA's job action, which closed schools in all but about a dozen of the state's 40 school districts.
Thirty-nine percent said they somewhat or strongly opposed the walkout. Seventy-one percent said they were not inconvenienced by it, Jones found.
But an overwhelming 89 percent surveyed said schools should receive at least another 7 percent funding increase from the 2001 Legislature. Seven percent said lawmakers should give education less than that, and 4 percent didn't know.
As for a property or income tax increase for schools, the public was split. Forty-seven percent strongly or somewhat supported an increase; 48 percent strongly or somewhat opposed it, and 5 percent didn't know.
Last September, Jones found that 68 percent of Utahns would support a tax hike for public education if the new money improved schools. Only 28 percent opposed an education tax hike back then.
So, at least in the question of tax increase for schools, the UEA's one-day strike seems to have had an impact on citizens, the new survey shows.
Speaking about the overnight poll's results, UEA President Phyllis Sorensen said Wednesday: "I think it confirms what we knew and it certainly makes teachers feel there is public support out there. It certainly shows me we have more work to do to educate the population on what they can do to impact the process. I think (the job action) was exactly the right thing at the right time."
Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, R-Layton, said he's more impressed "with the poll taken Nov. 7 . . . the incumbents in the House and Senate were almost all re-elected. And education funding was the No. 1 issue in every one of those races. So that tells me the public supports" what the GOP-controlled Legislature has done on education funding.
Garn added there will "absolutely not" be a tax increase in the 2001 session, which convenes next month, for education or anything else. Still, with revenues at record highs, Garn expects public education will get "at least what we gave them last year" in way of increase.
"The UEA wants (the state) to go closer to the national average of per-student spending," Garn said. But to go from Utah's approximate $4,000 per student per year to $6,000 — the national average — would mean "doubling one of the major taxes that support schools — the sales, income or property tax. And this Legislature will not go down that road; our economy couldn't take it."
The Utahns who want higher taxes for schools "should go to their local school boards. We've given (the boards) the authority to raise (property) taxes. Let them do it," Garn said.
The 19,000-member UEA called the walkout a week ago, after the Funding of Public Education Task Force presented its plan for long-term school funding. The union's board found the proposal unacceptable.
The task force proposed giving schools $30.6 million for textbooks, $10 million in building aid, boosting state matching dollars for school districts raising property taxes and putting new, low-level hazardous waste fees in school coffers, among others.
The UEA praised the effort but pooh-poohed the plan because it isn't long-term and included building aid that would not be available to all school districts.
The one-day walkout, which included 80 percent of Utah's 22,000 teachers, was intended to emphasize school funding needs such as class-size reduction and bringing teacher salaries up to competitive levels. Union leadership has said another job action is possible if lawmakers don't pony up for schools.
Right now, Utah is in the nation's cellar for per-student funding, despite a relatively high tax burden and giving every cent of state income tax revenue to schools and colleges. One-fourth of Utah's population is school-aged.
The union threatened a strike during the 2000 Legislature, but backed off when lawmakers agreed to form a school funding task force. The Legislature also raised the per-student spending formula by 5.5 percent, more than double the 1999 infusion. When federal and other funds were added in, schools got around 7 percent more this year. Granite District schoolteachers staged a one-day walkout anyway.
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