Former Utah legislator: state funding formula leaves Tooele School District among lowest-funded

Howard Stephenson, a former Utah state legislator and long-time school-funding analyst, told the Tooele School District board at a work session that state policy choices have left Tooele with one of the lowest taxable values per student in Utah and a growing gap in per-student funding compared with affluent districts such as Park City.

Why it matters: Stephenson said the imbalance makes it harder for Tooele to pay competitive teacher salaries and maintain instructional programs. He presented state-level data and scenarios that show substantial sums would be needed to bring low-valuation districts up to the levels of wealthier districts.

Stephenson said the 1995–96 decision by the Legislature to cut the statewide basic property-tax levy in half reduced a stable source of school funding and opened the way for widely divergent local levies. “Property tax is the most stable source for funding education,” he said. “To drop the statewide basic levy that far basically made our funding less stable.”

He showed data…