Utah lawmakers set aside $190 million to reduce class sizes this year. What happened to the money?

Every year when school starts, teachers start reaching out to Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay.

“They always say, ‘My classes are bigger than ever,’ " Moss, a retired educator, told members of the Utah Legislature’s Education Interim Committee earlier this week.

Sen. Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, said last school year, she was in two kindergarten classes of 32 students each.

“Now that’s crowd control,” said Riebe, who is a teacher. “If we’re going to say that 50% of our kids are reading a grade level by third grade, let’s put some money where it counts in K through two and give them the strong foundation.”

Moss said when she hears that some kindergarten classes have 30-plus students each, she starts to question what has happened to the class-size reduction funding the Utah Legislature appropriates annually. The current program dates back to the Legislature’s 1996 general session.

“So where is it going? How much effect (is it having)? I think those are really important things that we need to have more data on,” she said.

One Utah father recently contacted media outlets upon learning fifth graders at his daughter’s elementary school in Davis School District would be in two classes of 37 students each this fall. One of those students is his daughter. “Utah is already known for having the largest class sizes in the nation, but 37? That is outlandish, even for Utah!” Jeffery Keller wrote in an email.

Under state statute, school districts and charter schools receive class-size reduction allocations based on their prior-year average daily membership in grades K-8 plus a growth factor. According to state statute, they must use 50% of their allocation on reducing class size in grades K-2.

During the 2024 general session, lawmakers appropriated $190 million for class-size reduction. Some lawmakers said they need more information to understand if the funding is being used as intended.

“If we’re going to put $190 million into something, we should be able to measure it. So maybe that’s something this committee can look at. I’d love for us to be able to say, ‘Yes, we’re actually helping’ or ‘No,’” said Rep. Candice Pierucci, R-Herriman, House chair of the Education Interim Committee.

Earlier in the week, one superintendent asked if lawmakers could roll up class-size reduction funding into the weighted pupil unit, the basic building block of K-12 education funding in Utah, “which makes me question if it’s even being used for class-size reduction,” Pierucci said.

Rep. Karen Peterson, R-Clinton, said the committee clearly has questions about the purpose of the class-size reduction funding, how it is used and whether lawmakers need to make policy decisions about the program. She made a motion to open a committee bill file, which the committee passed unanimously.

“Right now, it’s pretty much like a block grant for elementary schools, and maybe that’s what we want. Maybe that’s completely fine. Maybe that’s what we want, and that’s how it’s functioning, and that’s that’s OK. But if we want something different, then I think we need to have a conversation about what that is and how that distribution formula works, and what expectations we might have for those dollars,” Peterson said.

Three superintendents addressed the committee, among them Anthony Godfrey, superintendent of the Jordan School District.

Reducing class size has been a priority for Jordan District, which has been one of the fastest growing districts in the state, he said.

“Jordan School District currently puts about 30% more toward class-size reduction than we receive from the state. That’s been a priority of the Board of Education, and in keeping with the 50% requirement, about 64% of that money is spent on reducing class size in the lowest grades, K-2 so we track that very closely as a district,” he said.

Godfrey said the district school board allocates funds for “high enrollment hot spots,” which are classes where head counts have markedly increased before the school year starts.

“Because I have that hotspot money allocated by the board, I’m in a great position to say, ‘You know what? We have a real issue with this class. Let’s add a teacher here so that we can reduce that class.’ If the board just allocated money broadly for the district to lower class size, it risks getting watered down and not having the impact that hot spot money can have,” he said.

Todd McKee, superintendent of Cache County School District, said funding for the class-size reduction program started with an initial influx of funding “it’s simply been a matter of maintenance of effort. Every year the funds come in, we roll it into our overall budget and allocate FTEs or teaching positions from that.”

This past year, Cache District received about $5.4 million allocated through the class-size reduction funding. “That equates to about 45 teaching positions in my district that spread out across 20 schools. That’s about 50% of it focused on K-2, the other 50% is focused on third grade through eighth grade,” he said.

About $400,000 is carved out of that initial funding and combined with other funds to hire paraprofessionals or aides to provide additional support in classrooms, specifically for reading and math.

The school board has a policy that defines staffing ratios “so we staff our schools from grades K-3 at a 1 to 23 ratio, grades four through eight, we staff at a ratio of 1 to 28.”

Nebo School District Superintendent Rick Nielsen said funding for the state’s class-size reduction program “is is more like class-size maintenance funding at this point in time, as opposed to class size reduction money.”

The district has done a good job maintaining its class size since the current program started, other than a bit of an increase right after the recession, he said.

“Our average elementary class size 18 years ago was 24.95 across the board. Our average elementary class size this year is 24.39 so again, fairly flat, with just some rise and fall over each each year over time,” he said

Class sizes are also influenced by special programs schools offer such as gifted and talented programs or dual language immersion classes, where students are instructed in English half of the day and in an international language the rest.

Riebe said the impact of DLI programs on English-only classrooms is a statewide phenomenon. “English-only classes get burdened with higher class sizes,” she said.

According to legislative policy analyst Micah Wixom, there is guidance in state statute how class-size reduction funding should be spent and for whom “but there’s no oversight or reporting requirement, so we really don’t know what effects this money is actually having beyond keeping pace with those efforts that started in the 90s. Hiring and compensating teachers, it’s ultimately a local issue.”