State legislators should increase the tobacco tax to at least the national average and utilize the Rainy Day Fund to protect public and higher education from budget cuts. That was the message from the Salt Lake Chamber, Utah’s largest and longest-standing business association, at the State Capitol today.
“Funding for education is so critical to our long-term economic strength,” said Lane Beattie, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber. “We have money put away to protect our interests in tough times and we have a way we can generate more revenue in a targeted manner. This plain just makes sense.”
Chamber leaders said they are pleased that legislators are protecting public education from further budget cuts, but they are deeply concerned that higher education faces cuts in the range of 20 percent. Higher education budget cuts in Utah dramatically exceed the cuts in other states for the last few years. The consequence will be falling behind in workforce training and research spinoff.
“Higher education is the chief economic engine in the state,” said Jake Boyer, president of The Boyer Company and chair of the Salt Lake Chamber Board of Governors.
“Our colleges and universities are developing our workforce; they are exploring new frontiers of knowledge and creating new industries. Businesses know that hard times are the time to invest in core strategies to position for future prosperity. We must maintain our investment in higher education during these difficult times.”
The Chamber calls for $50 million of the Rainy Day Fund to offset the lower than anticipated revenue projections released last week. This would still leave $203 million in the Rainy Day Fund. Mark Bouchard, the chair of the Chamber’s Education Task Force and senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis, says using the Rainy Day Fund for public and higher education is an investment in the state’s future workforce and prosperity.
“One of the things that makes Utah a well managed state is our Rainy Day Fund — money set aside to protect us in difficult times,” Bouchard said. “The rainy day is here, and we need to show the courage to tap into it for education. If we make dramatic cuts in higher education we are putting the core missions of our colleges and universities at risk. They are our economic engines. We can’t shut down the engine when we need it more than ever.
Increasing the tobacco tax from its current rate of 69 cents per pack of cigarettes to the national average of approximately $1.40 would generate an estimated $40 million for the state. That money offsets health costs to the state directly attributable to tobacco use and ultimately makes more money available to fund education.
“As a business community, we feel it would be irresponsible for us to simply pontificate on the importance of education without providing a plan to pay for it,” said Randy Shumway, president of Cicero Group. “Increasing the tobacco tax has overwhelming support from both the public and the business community because it has nothing but upside.”
Strengthening Utah’s education system is a top priority of the business community. Efforts this year have centered primarily around protecting funding but the overall vision is to increase investment and innovation. Utah must improve its high school and college graduation rates to compete in the global economy. Investing in human capital is the path to prosperity.
By Anne-Marie Wright
Vice President of Corporate Communications, Merit Medical Systems, Inc.
Every year, hundreds of students graduate from Utah’s high schools and colleges. And every year, hundreds of Utah manufacturers create jobs. The problem is that few of these graduates are qualified to fill those jobs due to the disconnect between their education and industry needs. So the jobs go elsewhere, or qualified workers come to Utah from other states.
Throughout its history, the United States has achieved success through innovation and making things. Despite health care concerns, currency issues and increased regulatory and compliance costs, U.S. companies – including many Utah companies – continually come up with new products and high-tech innovations, with manufacturing companies leading the way. But we as a state and a nation are not giving manufacturing training and education the attention it deserves, and therefore we are not producing the skilled workers we need to thrive.
As the economic environment becomes more challenging and the world market becomes more competitive, states and countries are competing for jobs. This increased competition will likely last well into the future.
Despite difficult economic times, some businesses are prospering. However, their ability to prosper is directly related to their ability to attract qualified workers. Over the last few decades, the United States and Utah have experienced a general redirection of capital to service-oriented businesses. Consequently, manufacturing-based businesses have suffered. That is unfortunate given the fact that manufacturing jobs pay 143 percent of the average wages of the other three major industries, which are retail, education and health care.
According to some Utah education officials, only 25 percent of Utah’s college students will land the high-skill, high-wage jobs they work at least four years to achieve. That is because Utah’s educational system is not adapting to the dramatic changes in technology and how those changes are affecting occupational skill requirements not only in Utah’s job market, but also in the nation’s and the world’s.
Because secondary education focuses more on college-prep courses and less on vocational exposure, manufacturing suffers from a lack of skilled workers. Dave Sorenson, executive director of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, told Utah Business that out of the 3,900 manufacturers in Utah, about 450 go out of business every year for a variety of reasons, including the inability to find adequately trained labor. Of the 20 industry sectors that cover all aspects of Utah’s economy, manufacturing is one of the largest, employing more than 100,000 workers.
With hundreds of manufacturing companies located in Utah, more focus should be given to tooling and technician work to meet their needs. According to a recent New York Times article, the auto industry’s demise has led to a slew of new companies looking to take advantage of the skilled, yet recently unemployed, workers who live in Michigan.
It is hard to believe that Utah, and other states, are competing for jobs with Michigan, but that’s the truth. Businesses locate and expand in areas with qualified potential employees.
Over the years, the United States has experienced real estate bubbles, the Internet’s boom and subsequent bust, and other cyclical events. But in the medical device area, the United States has been able to maintain its innovation and world leadership position. In order to support medical device and other manufacturing, Utah needs more technical high schools and colleges that offer a curriculum relevant to the jobs the industry offers. We need to build engineering, technical and polymer science bases on several levels.
Recently, Merit Medical considered moving one of its business segments to Utah. Despite the higher health care, insurance and tax costs of its current location, Merit was unable to relocate more than 300 jobs to Utah because of the lack of skilled workers in extrusion and polymer science. The business stayed elsewhere. Furthermore, Merit often has to bring people to Utah from other states to fill jobs that pay between $80,000-$120,000/year and offer great benefits. Merit is creating the jobs, but our own citizens cannot fill them because they do not have the skill sets Merit needs.
Merit Medical’s need for skilled employees is not an aberration, but part of a statewide dilemma. There are not enough skilled workers to meet current demand, and there are no plans to produce any more. The gap will grow, especially as thousands of baby boomers retire. Few qualified young workers are available to replace them because our K-12 educational system often leaves graduates ill-equipped for available careers. At the same time, the number of students earning degrees in technical fields is declining. We need better education and training.
With different training offered in Utah schools and different priorities placed on funding, Utah could greatly improve its chances of attracting and securing well-paying manufacturing jobs. Some argue that rising productivity, automation and a growing share of output being made in low-wage countries are responsible for the inattention given to manufacturing jobs in Utah and nationwide. The fact is, many goods, including medical devices, are too high-tech and complicated for a low-wage environment. So the jobs will stay in the United States, specifically, those states with qualified employees.
Future economic opportunity hinges on educational preparedness, particularly in manufacturing. All the job opportunities in the world won’t help our state if our workforce is unprepared for them. Public investment in education that includes high-tech literacy is vital to the kind of sustained economic development we need to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive world.
Funding for education is a priority of the business community and will be the focus of a multiyear effort. This legislative session our efforts have been focused primarily on maintaining funding levels. We continue to call on legislators to hold education harmless as they make necessary cuts to make the budget balance.
Utah’s public school and higher education enrollment growth should be funded if updated state revenue projections next week yield any good news about economic improvements. The state’s rainy day fund and other tools for funding enrollment growth should also be considered.
There are some numbers we know already. Utah public schools will see an increase of 11,000 students and higher education will see an increase of approximately 12,000 students. Taking the same amount of money that was appropriated for public and higher education last year and rolling it over to this year is a good start, but it is essentially a cut.
Education is the key to a first-class workforce that will attract business to Utah and strengthen out state economy long-term. If we can find the money, funding for enrollment growth should be a top priority.
The recent financial crisis has made policy wonks argue about short- and long-term solutions to the challenges we face. Philosophical debates about our independent banking system, stock market regulation, and federalism itself lace the halls of Congress, monopolize the water cooler chatter at our workplaces and overwhelm the blogosphere. However, there is one long-term solution to our economic situation with which very few informed individuals disagree.
Investing in a better educated and more skilled workforce is the most viable long-term strategy for helping America and Utah emerge from this crisis in a stronger and more competitive global economic position than we entered it.
Consensus about better educating our children and producing better prepared graduates is not difficult to achieve; how to create that better educated citizenry is where the debate begins. We recommend the Utah Legislature take a comprehensive reform approach to improving our public schools. This will require strategic thought and planning, and likely several years. For this legislative session, however, we recommend a simple first few integrated steps that signal a longer-term commitment to improving Utah’s schools.
First, we must define the problem that we need to solve. America’s public education system is not in trouble because it lacks innovative ideas – it is in trouble because those ideas often act as solutions in search of problems. Initiatives that work in Japan or Massachusetts won’t necessarily work everywhere. Prior to implementing interventions, some key questions need to be answered, such as:
- What are leading indicators that effectively predict dropping out of school?
- In what ways are students most ill-prepared for high school and college?
- What skills are required to specialize in careers that will be in the highest demand in the coming years?
Second, we must set milestones at key intervals throughout the student lifecycle. These milestones will be informed by the answers to the key questions above. If we continue to determine the success of our school system solely by the standards of high school completion and college readiness, we will continue to be effective coroners – diagnosing problems after it is too late. Setting milestones, or leading indicators, which might include 1st grade readiness, reading proficiency at the 3rd grade, and completion of Algebra 1 and Biology 1 by the 8th grade (all found to be “gatekeeper” indicators in various states and districts), will enable policymakers, thought-leaders, and practitioners to address problems of Utah’s education system before it is too late.
Additionally, we must match our high school graduation requirements with the entrance requirements of our state universities. Through milestones we can ensure better prepared high school entrants, which will pave the way for stronger graduation requirements. Currently, only 54 percent of Utah high school graduates attend college, and a full 75 percent of those students require some degree of remediation during their first year in college. Most problematic is that only 27 percent of our young people (ages 25 – 34 years old) have obtained their bachelor’s degree, ranking Utah 31st in the country for the number of college graduates in this age group. This figure is most alarming when put in context that our older age groups (ages 45 – 64 years old) rank 12th in the U.S. for the total number of college graduates. At a time when higher education is most needed for professional success, Utah is declining. We must graduate better prepared students, and we can do that by strengthening our high school graduation requirements. This would not pigeonhole all students into going to college. On the contrary, it would increase graduates’ choices by equipping all graduates with the credentials to pursue higher education if they choose to do so.
Finally, we must better integrate the high school and higher education experience. Integrated career pathways should be developed to take a student from the 11th grade through the first two years of college. The process will not only offer direction and goals for our students, but will provide them with the certification and specialized training to obtain the high-demand, high-value careers that will propel our state’s economy. An associate’s degree will be awarded and the credits will fully articulate to Utah universities, enabling the graduate with options – a specialized, high-paying job, the ability to continue his/her higher education, or both. Additionally, the institutions of higher education must collect information surrounding student achievement in their first two semesters and share that data with the high schools from which they originate; thus communicating with their education partners the areas in which student knowledge needs to most improve.
We urge the Utah State Legislature to consider comprehensive education reform in the state of Utah. For starters, the Utah Legislature can send a clear signal to our state and the country by taking the first few steps delineated above. Deriving key indicators of future success and creating clear interim milestones throughout students’ K-8 experience will help better prepare students for high school. Strengthening graduation requirements for students will equip more students to attend college at higher rates of preparedness. And better integrating higher education and higher school will create a more seamless and effective transition.
From these foundational steps, the Legislature can build a series of programs and initiatives that will be better informed and applied to a more prepared student body.
Contributed by Randy Shumway, president of the Cicero Group and Dr. Trent Kaufman Executive Vice President of the Cicero Group
Education is the key to a qualified workforce and a top priority of the Salt Lake Chamber. In a challenging year for the state budget, the business community calls upon the State Legislature to fully fund both public and higher education–holding them harmless as cuts are administered to other programs and funding for enrollment growth.
The Chamber’s focus on education will be a multi-year effort. While the concerns this year are primarily budgetary, moving forward we seek to:
1. Invest in the most important business input: human capital.
2. Create long-term prosperity
3. Act by taking decisive action to ensure all students receive a quality education.
(for more information on the Chamber’s education goals, see the 2010 Public Policy Guide pages 6-8)
This is a video we debuted last night at the Chamber’s annual Legislative Reception.
This morning I had the privilege of speaking at the Annual Governor’s Breakfast at Junior Achievement City. This is a remarkable program supported by the business community to teach real world financial literacy to Utah students.
JA was created by the business community to play a significant role in preparing our young people for their future. Today Junior Achievement is the oldest and largest career and financial education organization in the world linking the private sector with education, with no tax dollars being used for its programs.
JA offers more than 20 different programs each operating as part of the curriculum in our schools. With the Junior Achievement programming, we engage our young people in relevant ways, positively affecting their values and attitudes. And we don’t just emphasize business and economics, but also citizenship, ethics, character, work-related life skills and effective financial management.
In its 10 year independent evaluation of Junior Achievement programs, Utah State University found that all JA programs have a significant and consistent impact on student learning, skill development, problem solving and decision making.
The demand for JA’s new High School Financial Literacy program has skyrocketed with teachers up and down the state requesting it. The JA program serves as a supplement for Utah’s required financial literacy course.
A sizeable number of Chamber members are providing their accounting and finance people for the JA classes. Junior Achievement is planning an expansion of its finance supplement that would reach every high school by 2013.
We owe this to Mr. Dick Prows, whose vision has continued to drive JA’s effort in reaching more Utah young people, sparking the fire within them, opening their minds to their potential. With these new partnerships, Junior Achievement’s student participation numbers in Utah will expand from 64,000 to nearly 100,000 in 3 years and JA Volunteer numbers will expand to 10,000.
Scott Anderson of Zions Bank recently said Junior Achievement may just be his bank’s best investment in the state because, he know exactly where the contribution goes. He can drive by schools Zions sponsors and see a banner that says, “Thanks Zions Bank for Bringing Junior Achievement to our School.”
He knows every child in every grade is getting Junior Achievement in that school because of Zions Bank and he can see his own employees are the ones teaching in their classrooms. It’s a perfect investment of their contribution dollar.
JA is doing its part in our economic recovery and preventing another crisis in the future by helping our young people obtain the financial and work-readiness education they need to become smart stewards.
JA programs provide a compelling value proposition to our state’s employers by preparing students to contribute in the workplace, practice teamwork, and demonstrate creative thinking.
After experiencing JA programs, our young people are prepared to help drive economic development in Utah.
If you’re interested in helping Junior Achievement, there are a number of ways to contribute. Please contact JA at 801.355.5252 or log on to ja-utah.org.
By David J. Jordan
Partner, Stoel Rives
It is a foolish farmer who eats his seed corn in tough times. Nothing will be left to plant for a future harvest. Utah students are the seed corn of our economy. If we do not do our very best to teach and train them now, they will not be equipped to create and fill the careers of tomorrow; and we will all be the poorer for it.
In his State of the State address, Governor Gary Herbert called on the Legislature to hold education harmless from further budget cuts. That challenge presents the Legislature with some difficult and critical choices.
Without increasing user fees on tobacco or motor fuel, and barring significantly improved revenue projections, something has to be cut. Should legislators make across-the-board cuts to the entire state budget or should they fund education at the expense of other programs and projects?
The right answer is to follow the governor’s charge to fund education.
The 17 percent cuts that have already been absorbed in the last budget cycle come at a time when enrollments are up both in public and higher education. This is a natural result of both population growth and increased participation. It is a predictable pattern that when the job market tightens, more students seek higher education to make themselves more employable. Consequently, over 12,000 new students enrolled in college this past fall compared to the previous year. In total, enrollments are up by 17 percent over the past two years.
With simultaneous budget cuts and growing enrollments, university and college presidents are facing a perfect storm. While trying to serve more with less, they have already been forced to:
- Eliminate over 900 employee positions, including faculty
- Limit class availability to students because classes are full
- Increase student/advisor ratios
- Reduce salaries and benefits
- Delay infrastructure repairs/upgrades, including building closures
If the additional four percent across-the-board cuts to higher education being debated by the Legislature are enacted, they would have a crippling impact on students and the state including:
- Access to higher education by students statewide will be limited because Institutions at capacity will have no choice but to begin limiting the number of students who can enroll by imposing enrollment caps.
- All institutions will further eliminate numerous class sections, prolonging students’ time in college as they have difficulty obtaining classes they need to graduate.
- Elimination of academic programs ranging from CTE to baccalaureate to graduate degree programs.
- Larger numbers of students for every academic advisor; without good advice students are less likely to make the best choices in course offerings which can also delay their time to graduation.
- Closure of satellite campuses.
- Prolonging time to graduation delays students’ full entry into the workforce as taxpayers and lessens their ability to provide for their families.
- Elimination of approximately 600-700 full-time positions— mostly through involuntary lay-offs.
- Reducing the number of students trained and educated for the workforce by Utah’s public colleges and universities through enrollment caps.
- Undermining the capacity of our research universities, resulting in negative economic impacts for the state as adequate support for research is lost, reducing competitiveness for research grants which provide thousands of high-paying jobs and the ability to develop technologies that spin-off into new businesses.
If you terminate the faculty and discontinue an educational program, you can’t just turn the spigot back on next year. Once an educational program is dismantled, it takes years to rebuild. In the meantime, the opportunity to teach students in that program and train a work force that builds our economy is lost. If you cram more third graders into an already over-crowded math class because you can’t afford to hire another teacher, you can never give those students back their third grade year.
Our students are the seed corn of our economy. In lean times we must be prudent in our expenditures but we must also be smarter than the foolish farmer. Now is the time to sow the seeds of future economic strength.
By Lane Beattie, President and CEO, Salt Lake Chamber
Some interesting messages about education were delivered on Capitol Hill this week. The private sector is expanding its investment. The public sector is trying to decide.
Weber State University supporters gathered in the Capitol rotunda to announce a great new program, Dream Weber, which provides a free college education to thousands of needy students. Dream Weber is possible because of generous donations from private citizens. The private sector knows that investing in education translates to a great workforce, a strong economy and a healthy society.
Meanwhile, the Legislature is measuring whether this very difficult budget year enables them to maintain our state’s investment in public and higher education. Discussions started Tuesday about the possibility of five percent cuts for next year. Utah’s largest statewide business association, the Salt Lake Chamber, has a clear message for elected officials: despite difficult budget times, Utah must protect our investment in public and higher education.
An investment in education is an investment in the future.
Utah has long held bragging rights about our well educated population. Times are changing. Startling statistics show our young people are getting less education than their parents. In 1992, 41 percent of 18-24 year olds had some postsecondary education. Today, only 34 percent of people in the same age group have job training or a college education. Among 45-64 year olds, Utah is 12th in the nation for bachelor’s degrees, but we are 31st among 25-34 year olds.
Being smarter than our children may feel nice around the dinner table once in awhile, but do we really want our kids going out into the world with less smarts than we have? Do we want them to have less earning power than we do?
Businesses go where they find smart people. The smarter the people, the more businesses pay. Do we want businesses going elsewhere to give high paying jobs to someone else’s children and grandchildren in other states? In other countries? We must invest in education now or embrace that kind of a future.
In addressing legislators this week, University of Utah President Michael Young put it another way. “Twenty years from now, do we want to have terrific prisons and terrible universities?” President Young asked. College and university presidents painted a picture of enrollment caps, slashed programs and research, larger classes and other preludes to mediocrity. Salt Lake Community College President Cynthia Bioteau has described it as cutting to the bone. These aren’t exaggerations. Business leaders know that quality suffers when we don’t invest enough to cover the basics.
In public schools, not investing means not laying the foundation for higher education as an option. I talked to a grandmother last week whose grandson attends a kindergarten class in the southwest valley with 53 students. Does anyone think 53 children can learn to read from one teacher? No five year old I know would thrive in such an environment. Some children have the safety net of parents who read to them at home. But more and more of our children don’t have that luxury. Many go home to parents who don’t speak English. Our minority population is expanding dramatically. By 2050, Utah’s population will consist of 30 percent minorities. We must find a way for all our children to achieve success.
We have under-invested in education for many years. The consequences are starting to show. Only 25 percent of Utah students who take the ACT meet the benchmark score that predicts they will earn Cs in college. This means paying for remediation in college, or worse yet, never acquiring the skills they need to achieve success.
We are well aware that the Commissioner of Higher Education and the Superintendent of Public Education have agreed to budget reductions. From the business community, we ask the Legislature to do more. Our future is at stake.
The Salt Lake Chamber has organized a coalition of business leaders to build our workforce and our economy. Our purpose is simple: Improve educational outcomes. For a prosperous 21st century economy, we need more and better-prepared high school graduates, more students getting postsecondary training and college degrees. We must improve outcomes for our skyrocketing minority population. Yes, improvements can be made in the way education is delivered. We must hold our educators accountable to innovate and improve, just as we do in business. And businesses know that providing the resources to make things happen goes hand-in-hand with holding people accountable to generate results.
Like the private sector donors who enabled Weber State University to launch the Dream Weber free tuition program this week, the public sector must invest in education, our future workforce and our future economy. Let’s keep public and higher education whole this budget year, and think long-term about investment and innovation that will improve our educational outcomes. Let’s make sure that Utah businesses hire our children and grandchildren, and that businesses from other states make the Utah choice as well.
The Legislative session is a long and difficult process. Thanks to great leadership, the Utah Legislature has a great track record of managing our state budget prudently and positioning Utah for economic success. Now, more than ever, we need legislators to make the right choices for Utah’s future.
By Lane Beattie, President and CEO, Salt Lake Chamber
Editor’s Note: These remarks were given to the Utah State Board of Education and Utah State Office of Education Board-Legislative Dinner
The great composer Mozart once made a wager with another composer that he could not play at sight a piece which he had composed earlier that day.
When the composer accepted the bet, the score was placed on the piano and he began to play.
After the first few bars, the composer suddenly stopped. As it turns out, the composition required that the hands play at opposite ends of the keyboard while a note was struck at its center.
Not having three arms, the man conceded defeat and Mozart took his turn at the piano.
He began to play the piece and when he reached the impossible note, he bent forward – and struck the key with his nose.
From my years in the senate, I know legislators face a difficult task. Balancing the state budget—particularly in lean times—may make legislators feel as though they are required to play notes on opposite ends of the keyboard and in the middle.
It will be difficult.
It may seem impossible.
And it can be done.
The strength of Utah’s economy tomorrow is directly tied to the quality of education we provide today.
Business leaders have a considerable interest in education because what happens in classrooms across our state directly affects their companies. Students that learn algebra today will be the accountants that balance the books tomorrow. The editor of the school newspaper will market the products that become big sellers. A student taking introduction to civics will be a rising star at a local law firm.
In the last year we’ve seen marquee companies including Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and eBay embrace Utah as a place to grow. The federal government has chosen to build the new NSA Data Center here. And we have some great locally grown companies, as well.
These entities all choose Utah because we have a young, well-educated population. We need to reward the trust they have placed in our ability to produce the best workers. And we need to continue to earn the trust of businesses so they will expand and relocate in Utah, creating jobs for our children and grandchildren.
The famous line from the film Field of Dreams is, “If you build it, they will come.” The same principle applies with education and bringing business to Utah. If we educate our children, the companies and jobs will come.
The business community stands resolute that funding for public and higher education should be funded at current levels as you balance the budget for FY 2011.
As a state we currently spend less of our personal income on K-12 education than all but seven states.
The amount of money we spend per pupil is less than any other state in the union. We’re at the very bottom of the list.
I’m familiar with the same commentary you are:
“Utah educators get more out of every dollar than any other state.”
“Our results are good even with less spending.”
But these old reassurances don’t work anymore. Yes, our educators do a wonderful job considering the resources available.
The world is changing… this country is changing and Utah is changing and we must change the way we educate Utahns.
If you look at any 3rd grade class in the state you see a much more diverse classroom than the one where you learned to write in cursive.
The younger age groups—those in our schools right now—are the most diverse group we’ve ever had in our state. For those over 60 years old the minority population is only between 6.5 percent and about ten percent. But for the age group under five—the next wave of students to enroll in our public education system—one in four students is a minority statewide and in Salt Lake County it’s almost 35 percent.
We are no longer the homogenous state we once were.
From 2000-2007, minorities accounted for one-third of Utah’s population growth and two-thirds of our public school enrollment growth.
Children in 3rd grade classes today are the future of Utah. By 2050, our minority population will double to 30 percent. We must improve educational outcomes for this skyrocketing minority population.
Consider this:
For every 100 Latino students that begin elementary school in Utah, only 40 will graduate from high school. Only four will graduate from college and only one will finish graduate school.
Those numbers don’t work for Utah!
Utah’s student body is changing and we have to re-think the way we teach our students and the way we prepare them to join the workforce.
There are other issues, too:
n Skyrocketing enrollment growth. You know the numbers. Utah public school enrollment will increase by 10,000 to 15,000 students every year for the next decade. We need to provide some $90 million a year to educate these children.
n College readiness for all students. Many high school graduates are ill prepared for serious college coursework. Only 25 percent of our students who take the ACT meet the benchmark score to show college readiness in English composition, algebra, social science and biology.
Utah must improve educational outcomes. For a prosperous 21st century economy, we need to elevate our performance all the way around.
As a business community we have identified three principles to guide our involvement in education:
1. Invest in the most important business input—human capital:
Education fuels Utah’s economy by turning potential into skill. As we develop the best workforce in the nation we will attract millions of research dollars. We’ll attract companies that are not here, encourage expansion in those that are, and generate income for Utahns.
2. Create long-term prosperity:
As a business community we are committed to acting in Utah’s long-term interest no matter how difficult that may be in the present. Education drives economic development.
3. We must act:
There may be nothing so extensively studied as education policy. Many studies have documented the need for educational improvement and innovation. Now is the time to take decisive action to ensure all students get a sound start in reading and math, to better prepare all students for postsecondary education, and to increase participation in postsecondary education.
The Salt Lake Chamber has made a long term-commitment to education.
We’ve done this, in part, because Dr. Shumway came to us and asked for our partnership. It’s a short walk from the State Board’s offices on 5th South to the epicenter of business on 4th South—the Salt Lake Chamber. For far too long, this distance has been too great! Business has been business and education has been education. But no more. It is our pleasure, as Utah’s largest statewide business association to partner with the State Board of Education, the Utah State Office of Education, school districts, local boards of education, charter schools, teachers, principals, guidance counselors, parents, students and the State Legislature to optimize education in Utah. Like many of you have said, “we have promises to keep” and Utah business leaders want to help you as you lead the way.
For the upcoming session we’re asking the legislature to maintain current funding levels for public and higher education.
The fact is, appropriating the same dollar amount as last year is not maintaining the current funding level. It is still a step-back.
This year, public education enrollment will increase by more than ten thousand students. The same amount of money will have to fund the education of a significant increase in students. Even maintaining funding levels leaves educators spreading themselves thin.
We have grave reservations about not funding public education enrollment growth. So far as we know, this is the first time in Utah history that we haven’t funded public education enrollment growth.
We cannot afford to take a step back in education. In a difficult budget year the best we can do may be to tread water. Funding education at current levels—which means avoiding any cuts to public and higher education while accounting for enrollment growth—may be good enough this year, but long-term it simply isn’t good enough.
The business community will push for unified, statewide goals for education and strategies to improve both public and higher education.
Laying the foundation of Utah’s future economic strength means better supporting Utah educators who are doing more with less. They can do even more with more.
Laying the foundation of Utah’s future economic strength means embracing student diversity.
Laying the foundation of Utah’s future economic strength means improving academic results in every ethnic group.
You may be familiar with the story of a water pump in the sand, isolated in a far away desert. A lonely traveler, thirsty and hot, with only an empty canteen, stumbles across the pump.
Tied to it is a hand written sign put there by someone who came before him.
The sign reads: “I have buried a bottle of water to prime the pump. Don’t drink any of it.
“Pour in half of it to wet the leather. Wait, and then pour in the rest. Then pump.
“The well has never gone dry, but the pump must be primed to bring the water up. When you are through drawing water, fill the bottle and bury it in the sand for the next traveler.”
Having come upon this pump in the desert with this sign and being out of water, what would you do? Would you dig the water bottle from the sand and drink it? Or will you pour every drop of that water down into the pump?
While we sit here it’s easy to say we would follow the instructions. The temptation to think of the immediate would be greater in that moment.
We face a similar challenge today. We can make cuts to get us through the tough spot we’re in or we can prime the pump – invest in education — and reap the rewards for years and decades to come.
Investing in the future of Utah’s economy is not always easy but it is the right thing to do.
The time to act is now. The business community views the improvement of education and the improvement of the workforce as a long-term goal—but not an effort with long-delayed successes. We can begin today to make the system better.
As a state, we face unprecedented fiscal challenges. You can leave the legislature but once you’ve been involved in the state budget process, you never can leave it alone. I spend a great deal of time thinking about the challenge we all face as Utahns and the specific challenges you face as public servants and elected officials charged with the duty of balancing the state budget and making decisions with far-reaching ripple effects.
But you and I know… there is more to this than simply balancing the budget. That part is easy. You could simply make a cut across the board at a certain percentage and call it a day. But that’s not in anyone’s best interest. If a business did that… it wouldn’t be in business very long.
The challenge this session is to balance the budget in a way that best positions us, not just for an economic recovery, but to emerge from the “Great Recession” stronger than we were before… better positioned for growth than we were before… and stronger than the competition. We can do that by maintaining our investment in education.
Our future is bright. I firmly believe Utah’s best days lie ahead.
By Mark Bouchard
Senior Managing Director, CB Richard Ellis & Chair, Salt Lake Chamber Education Task Force
Education is the key element to our long-term prosperity. The Salt Lake Chamber has challenged the legislature to hold both public and higher education harmless as it works to balance the FY 2011 state budget. Further cuts will hurt our students now and the larger state economy in both the immediate and long-term.
Recently a group of business leaders had the privilege of hearing from Dr. Pam Perlich, a world renowned researcher with the University of Utah who provided us a view into Utah’s workforce future based on compelling research analyzing our existing demographics.
The implications are far reaching and compelling. The “New Age” workforce will dramatically change the landscape from what the “Current Leadership Generation” is confronted with today. As Dr. Perlich suggested, visit any 3rd grade classes in any part of the state and you’ll have a better understanding of what the workforce will look like within the next two decades. These 3rd grade classes are more diversified and require a re-engineered approach to education. From 2000-2007, the number of minority students enrolled in Utah public schools increased by 65 percent, nearly double the rate of white, non-Hispanic students. For every 100 Latino students enrolled in elementary school, only 4 will earn a bachelor’s degree compared to 26 white, non-Hispanic students. As our population becomes more diverse, we must either work to improve both rates or we will be inadequately prepared for the future economic challenges. This “New Age” workforce requires added attention both in funding and in other resources. We can only depend on the volunteer community for so much and our educators require real world solutions.
Utah’s demographics are changing. We face new challenges and new burdens, on an already taxed education system, both Higher and Public.
There are consequences for being last in the nation in our spending per student, having the lowest paid educators (K-12) in the country, potentially capping enrollment in higher education and eliminating programs and eliminating opportunity for so many. We simply cannot afford to ignore the statistics and research provided us by some of the finest minds in the country.
Experienced business professionals appreciate what increased demand for services coupled with the elimination or reduction of available capital to run a business produces. The result is a reduction in quality and a taxing of your workforce impacting culture and effectiveness.
We should never confuse efficiency with quality. Statistics suggest no one in the country is more efficient than Utah educators at providing quality education. Our test scores, although declining, are still some of the best in the country (we score particularly well on Advanced Placement and SAT). We are efficient; what we risk is quality. Increased demand by way of 12,000 students per year in grades K-12 and 12,500 in higher education, in conjunction with the increase results in a dramatic reduction of our spending in education, creating the perfect storm. The logical result is the erosion of the very foundation of our workforce future.
Over the next few months, through the end of the legislative session, there will be many ideas tossed around as the legislature meets its constitutional obligation of balancing the state budget. As options, plans and variations of plans are debated we emphasize our firm belief that education—both public and higher education—are too critical to the long-term prosperity of our state to face further cuts.
A highly educated workforce is the most critical long-term strategy for a vibrant economy and healthy society. Like other state funded departments, education absorbed cuts last year. These cuts in education coincided with an increase in demand as enrollment increased to the point that many Utahns who wanted to return to school found there was simply no room for them.
Balancing the budget is the immediate concern but the long-term requires an investment in our human capital. A well-trained workforce is the single most important element to maintaining and enhancing Utah’s reputation as a great place to do business. Further reductions in public and higher education put our workforce at risk.
Education funding must be protected as we balance the state budget.
