School board approves draft of plan to begin dealing with budget deficit

The Utah State Board of Education has approved a draft of the Fiscal Year 2021 Base Budget Reduction Scenarios that outlines staff recommendations for possible 2 percent, 5 percent and 10 percent reductions to education funding necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of the record education money budgeted by the legislative session that ended in March is now subject to change, according to Mark Huntsman, chair of the Utah State Board of Education.

“At this time, they don’t know exactly the budget shortfalls for this next year,” Huntsman said, “so they’ve asked for these three scenarios.”

These possible cuts would cause between $76 million and $380 million in reductions for state education funding. With regard to the budget, state board superintendent Sydnee Dickson said they have all experienced whiplash, referring to how they went from thinking they were getting extra money to an economic shortfall.

“We all remember standing in the rotunda getting ready to celebrate our good fortune of a banner year of education funding,” Dickson said. “While we can always use more, it was certainly a banner year of $403 million of new money.”

She said they had all been advocating for new programs and were excited. But within 24 hours, everything flipped due to the impacts of the coronavirus.

“As we watched the economy slide during that time, we were anticipating that we would not see some of those new things come to pass, and it’s been very difficult to just have to tuck all of that funding, hopes and dreams aside,” Dickson said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t continue on with some of the work.” She said that for now, they will have to table some of the previous vision.

Some of the recommendations from the board for meeting the shortfall include reductions or total elimination of programs, such as an elimination of the incentives for effective teaching in high poverty schools, special education intensive services and acquisition of library books and electronic resources.