Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Utah's largest teachers union urges lawmakers to prioritize education funding, including a 3% increase in the weighted pupil unit.
- The union opposes funding for private school vouchers, citing harm to public schools.
- Reducing educator stress and class sizes are also emphasized as priorities.
MURRAY — Ahead of what's shaping up to be a busy 2025 legislative session in the education realm, Utah's largest teacher's union on Monday unveiled the issues it wants lawmakers to prioritize this year.
Representing 18,000 public educators across the state, the Utah Education Association also released findings from its latest members survey that reinforces the group's legislative priorities.
"As the most established and trusted voice for public educators in Utah, we are committed to ensuring every Utah student has access to a high-quality public education," said Utah Education Association President Renée Pinkney. "Our legislative priorities reflect the voices of our members, who work in classrooms every day and are dedicated to building a brighter future for our students, public educators and communities."
Above all else, Pinkney said Utah's educators want lawmakers to prioritize funding for long-term staffing solutions by providing at least a 3% increase to the value of the weighted pupil unit above the statutorily required inflation adjustment and enrollment growth.
This request closely mirrors the top prioritized funding request of $306 million from the Utah State Board of Education, which is asking for a combined increase of 6.8% to the weighted pupil unit.
Also under the funding umbrella, Pinkney said the association is seeking an increase in paid professional hours for all licensed educators, to continue funding the Stipends for Future Educators pilot program to support student teachers, establish a sustainable and growing long-term revenue source to ensure sufficient funding for K-12 public education and support the Healthy School Meals initiative.
The State Board of Education is also prioritizing providing more access to meals for Utah students, requesting $5 million to increase the number of public K-12 students who can qualify for free breakfast and lunch.
Additionally, a pre-legislative survey that gathered input from over 1,400 Utah Education Association members showed that 93% surveyed oppose increasing funding for private and religious school vouchers, which Pinkney said "divert essential resources from public schools."
"We have had a resolution at UEA since 1971 opposing vouchers. Now that we have decades of research that has been released, we know that vouchers harm students. Anytime you are siphoning off funds from public education, you are harming students in public schools. We know that 90% of our students attend public schools in Utah," Pinkney said.
Iin May 2024, the association filed a lawsuit against Utah's new school voucher system, known as the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program. Over the past two years, the Utah Legislature has appropriated $82.5 million for the program that started this fall, with 10,000 students receiving scholarships for private schooling.
Pinkney also expressed concern over the sheer amount of education bills set to be discussed during the upcoming legislative session. According to the State Board of Education's bill tracking, that total is 81.
"There, many times, are solutions to problems that don't really exist, and we really have a request that those education bills are decreased. It seems as though our legislators pass bills, and then the next session and maybe a few sessions after, they're trying to fix the bills that they passed because it was so fast, and they just didn't have enough time to really deliberate and go through the process the way it's supposed to happen," Pinkney said.
The association is also looking to reduce educator stress and burnout, with 44% of survey respondents identifying doing so as crucial.
One avenue could be reducing class sizes or having more teachers to handle the larger classes.
"We have 36 kids in one class. We have an abundance of extra things we have to do based on what kinds of kids are in our class and it's exhausting," said Colette Memmott, a teacher at Sunset Ridge Middle School in the Jordan School District.
"The ideal situation would be to always have two adults in a classroom to help with behaviors," said Becky Bissegger, a teacher at Meadowlark Elementary in the Salt Lake City School District.
A full rundown of the Utah Education Association's legislative priorities can be found here.
