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There's never enough money for public education in Utah and probably never will be - the demand is so incredibly great. In making the dollars stretch, though, KSL worries cost conscious administrators driven by budgetary crunches are eliminating programs that are vital to well-rounded education.
Take the Provo School District, for example. According to recent news accounts, the district is in the middle of a three-year process of phasing out certified librarians in its elementary and middle schools. Most of the work can be done by employees with less education, say administrators, and that means less pay. Easier to balance the budget!
Provo's not unique. In fact, the district is one of the last holdouts on certified librarians. Most districts have already gone the cost-cutting route, opting for less qualified media people.
This follows the disappointing trend in recent decades to do the same with arts education. Fewer band and orchestra teachers, for example, means less exposure to the discipline of practice and refining beauty of ethereal musical sounds.
Without sufficient emphasis on edifying things, society is likely to raise a generation and more of cultural illiterates, defined more by their ability to read curt text messages rather than Shakespeare and to play Nintendo instead of Mozart . . . and that ultimately might prove more costly than we can imagine.
