Education

Education is the greatest investment we can make in our society, providing people with opportunities for stability, higher paying jobs, and self-dependency. Beyond providing the technical skills people need to succeed in jobs, a good education system helps people understand the world, helps them develop critical thinking skills and information literacy, helps people gain self-confidence, and enables people to become better, more productive members of society. As an educator myself, I understand this issue first-hand and will advocate strongly for our kids.

 

We have 30,000+ teachers in Utah, and I have the deepest respect for the contributions our teachers make. We should be supporting them, but the Legislature has only made it harder for them to do their jobs. Utah currently has the lowest per student funding, some of the lowest teacher pay in the US. This problem was made even worse recently with the Legislature's voucher programs that divert public funding for schools to other entities, without any meaningful accountability. Utah also has one of the worst (#48) student:teacher ratios (over 21 students per teacher). And extremist legislators have been overreaching into classrooms with their personal agendas in recent years. 

 

As your representative, I will

1. Advocate for increases in education funding at all levels, pre-K, K-12, community and technical colleges, and all universities throughout the state.

2. Work to ensure that teachers, parents and students, not legislators, decide what gets taught in our classrooms.