“Beginning with the 2011-12 school year, a student served under this section in a regional applied technology college shall continue to be counted in the average daily membership of the sending school district or charter school.” (House bill 258)
In the starting of the current Legislative Session, two bills contest against each other in the effort to affect Utah's funding and enrollment for applied technology colleges. If passed, Curriculum Options for Secondary School Students (HB 206) will increase student enrollment in trade and technical colleges while the Education Funding Amendments (HB 258) works to decrease funding for these vocational programs. The passing of one or both of these bills will no doubt have an impact on not only the funding for applied technology colleges, but also the students enrolling in these programs.
Sponsored by Representative John Dougall, Curriculum Options for Secondary School Students (HB 206) proposes to allow secondary school students to fulfill their high school CTE (Career and Technical Education) requirement at a regional applied technology college. As of right now, Utah law states that only school districts can decide where a student may fulfill his CTE requirements. In an interview, Representative Dougall stated that the motivation for sponsoring HB 206 comes from his belief that the parents, not the school districts, are in charge of their children's education, “I come from the perspective of where do you expand the choice for students, . . . and I don't like the concept that a school district can hold that kid hostage.” In its introduced form, HB206 gave the authority to decide to the students or their parents. Later, the bill was amended by the House Education Committee to state that the parents must always be involved in the decision-making process.
Each year, the state appropriates fundings for a school based on the number of students currently enrolled at the school. Education Funding Amendments (HB 258), sponsored by Representative Kraig Powell, modifies the provisions for education state funding.
Representative Powell's bill lets secondary schools that currently send its students to applied technology colleges retain those students in the schools' head counts, which means they will also get to keep the funding allocated based on that head count. When asked of his opinion on HB 258, Representative Dougall (the sponsor of HB 206) responded that, although he was not originally aware of the bill, “From my perspective, we should be counting the students that are actually attending the school. We should not be counting kids that are not attending the school.”
It is clear that these two bills are in conflict with each other. The proposals of both bills center around one key commonality: the Utah statute that gives school districts the sole authority to regulate where a student might go to fulfill his CTE requirements. This state law is a key component central to the future enactment of HB 258 if the bill were to pass. If HB 206 were to be successful in transferring the authority from the school districts to the parents, HB 258 will become obsolete, and its language need to be re-drafted because school districts no longer have the power to send its students to applied technology college. Currently, either bills meets little opposition in the House. If one or both bill passes, however, the state will need to think beyond the legal language and seriously consider future funding for vocational programs. Last year alone, funding for programs that let high school students enroll in applied technology colleges experienced a five million dollar decrease. With the passage of HB 206, applied technology colleges will surely encounter a surge in enrollment. Without more funding to accommodate the influx of new students, it is hard to say that these institution will be able to maintain the same quality of education. HB 206's purpose toward providing better CTE options for students is then defeated. While HB 258 will have less of a direct effect on trade school enrollment, its retaining state funding from applied technology colleges will no doubt leave the same negative impact on the quality of education that these career and technical institutions offer.
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