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Panel debates directing new education funds to teacher pay instead of smaller classes

1990 Utah Legislature · January 16, 1990
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Lawmakers and education officials debated whether this year’s extra education dollars should go to higher teacher salaries or to reducing class sizes, with administrators describing schedule compression to lift starting pay and unions signaling 6% alone may not win ratification.

A legislative education panel heard debate on whether increased state education funding should be used this year primarily for higher teacher pay or for reducing class sizes. Speaker 2 told legislators that classroom size in Utah has been largely flat and that, based on studies he reviewed, a reduction of “a half a student or 1 student may or may not be very dramatic immediately,” and recommended, “this year that the money goes to salaries rather than classroom size reduction.”

Legislators and district officials described efforts to raise starting pay by compressing salary schedules. Ferdinand Wittenberg, addressed in…

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