Here are the education issues that divide Utahns

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K-12 education in Utah is like a story problem.

The state is famous for having a lot of children — with nearly 675,000 students enrolled in public schools. And it also spends among the least in the country for each of those kids — averaging around $8,000 in per pupil funding.

What do you get when you also add a historically conservative culture to that equation?

The answer: A school system with quite a bit of division over how best to teach all of those kids.

Here are some of the ways that will affect your child’s education: There are limits on how to talk about sex in health classes. Teaching about race and racism also has restrictions. And books, flags and testing are always being debated.

Let’s not talk about sex

Sex education has always been a flashpoint in this red and religious state.

Utah law requires that public schools approach teaching about sex with a strict “abstinence-based” program.

That means chastity must be promoted as the single most effective way to prevent pregnancy or disease. And teachers are prohibited from encouraging “premarital or extramarital sexual activity.”

The state allows for brief instruction on contraception. But it’s up to individual school districts on whether to include that — and many don’t.

There’s no information given about consent, which a Democratic state lawmaker has tried for years to get added in without success. And some students, frustrated by the lack of instruction, have taken it upon themselves to teach each other about the topic.

It’s not likely that the setup here will change. (It took 20 years before the sex education standards were even minimally updated last in 2019.)

Parents are written into Utah’s Constitution as having the “fundamental right” to be the primary educators of their children. That comes up the most with sex education, with many insisting that the topic is private and sensitive and best left for at-home discussions.

An FAQ on the Utah state school board’s website emphasizes that: “Parents should be the primary source of sex education instruction and values relating to this subject.”

Parents must decide whether to “opt in” their kids for the sex education units in middle and high school. Utah is one of only three states with that requirement — which is more stringent than “opt out.” Parents are required to explicitly sign a paper to agree that their child can take part in what’s usually a one-day discussion about sex and anatomy in their health classes.

Still, more than 90% participate, on average, in the limited lessons, according to self-reported numbers from districts, said Jodi Parker, the health education specialist for the state.

Meanwhile, many advocates point to the lack of comprehensive sex education for the high number of sexually transmitted infections in Salt Lake County. And the state’s rape rate has been consistently higher than that across the U.S., according to the Utah Department of Health (with that statistic considered an undercount, too, because rape is an underreported crime).

Meanwhile, other parents have also pushed back on social-emotional learning — which also comes up in health classes — where students are taught about empathy and respect and how to process their feelings. Some see it as indoctrination and not the role of schools.

Questioning the science of climate change, evolution

Science is probably the single school topic here that raises the most eyebrows from those outside the state.

Conservative members on the Utah State Board of Education have long spoken out against what should and should not be taught in classrooms, particularly around global warming and evolution.

Most recently, the debate has centered around climate change. In a spring 2023 meeting to discuss the standards, Jennie Earl, a Republican board member moved to replace the words “climate change” with “cataclysmic earth processes,” and remove references that say humans have contributed to the damage to earth’s atmosphere. She also asked that classes look at theories that “counter” the well-proven greenhouse effect.

Another member, Natalie Cline, wanted to change the language on how different rocks are were formed to “how they may have been formed.”

And Cline also proposed adding “scientific theory” or “it is hypothesized that” before anything related to when life first appeared on earth.

Previously, when the standards were last updated in 2019, some board members said they were worried schools were going to teach evolution by saying humans “are like pigs.” They said everything in science should be presented as debatable instead of as fact.

One said: “Galileo was mocked and ridiculed” before he was revered, she added. “If we shut down that discussion, that’s not critical thinking.”

Parents have also been outspoken on the topic. Some have argued for the Bible to be incorporated into lessons. Others have called the lessons indoctrination and politically driven.

Science educators have tried to push back but are often outnumbered.

Utah students had held countless rallies on climate change, and filed a lawsuit over the state’s responsibilities in fossil fuel production that leads to higher emissions.

Controversial book bans — including, for a time, the Bible

While those on the right have targeted books in schools across the nation, the movement has particularly burrowed in here in Utah.

The effort has largely been led by the conservative parent group Utah Parents United. They’ve targeted several titles across multiple school districts in the state, beginning in fall 2021, arguing that the books include sexually explicit content and aren’t appropriate for kids.

Most of the titles they want removed — and have successfully lobbied to have pulled — have centered around the LGBTQ community and communities of color. Those include “Gender Queer,” a graphic novel about the author’s journey of self-identity, and “The Bluest Eye,” by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison about an 11-year-old Black girl growing up in Ohio.

They’ve challenged 52 books in one district. And filed a police report against another.

Their efforts spurred a state lawmaker to run a bill, HB374, that was passed in 2022. The measure created a process for parents to complain about books and banned any titles containing “pornographic or indecent” content from Utah schools, both in libraries and in the classroom.

Based on that code, something is indecent if it includes explicit sexual arousal, stimulation, masturbation, intercourse, sodomy or fondling. According to state attorneys, material doesn’t have to be “taken as a whole” in those situations or left on the shelf during a review. If there is a scene involving any of those acts, it should be immediately removed.

Other flagged materials are reviewed by committees in each district to determine if they should remain available for students to check out.

Under the law, parents have submitted hundreds of complaints. In the 2022-23 school year, more 280 books were removed from shelves across the 41 public K-12 school districts and among the charter schools in the state, according to numbers from the Utah State Board of Education.

Some have pushed back, calling the bans censorship. That drew national attention to Utah when a parent, frustrated by the titles being taking out of libraries, decided to use the code to challenge the Bible.

If the other books were being removed, the parent said the Bible should be, too, for containing scenes of incest, bestiality and rape in the King James edition.

A review committee in Davis School District, where the complaint was filed, originally found that the religious text did not violate the law for containing pornography. But a second part of the new code encourages a committee to review if it is age appropriate.

Because of “violence or vulgarity,” the group decided it should only be available for high school students — removing access to it for younger grades. That decision caused immense backlash from conservative parents and lawmakers. The Davis school board reversed the decision, but still pending is a challenge of the Book of Mormon, the seminal text for predominant faith here, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Leaders attack critical race theory, while students experience racism

Izzy Tichenor, a 10-year-old Black Utah girl, died by suicide after her mother said she faced extreme bullying over the color of her skin. A football player said he was the one to be expended from a game after standing up to another player who called him the N-word.

A biracial student said his bus driver purposefully pinned him in the doors and drove with him dangling outside. At a basketball game, white students shouted racist slurs and barked like dogs at Asian American and Polynesian players on the opposing team.

History packets at one learning center for high school students claimed that “most slaves were generally treated kindly.” One school assigned students to be fictional slaves and plantation owners.

Another school allowed parents to opt their students out of learning about Black History Month.

Utah is a predominantly white state. And students of color say that often leads to these types of experiences, where they’re commonly encountering racism in the classroom.

The atmosphere was so severe in Davis School District in northern Utah — what many advocates see as just one microcosm of the problem — that the U.S. Department of Justice investigated.

In the findings released in October 2021, the department chastised the school district for failing to address “serious and widespread” racism.

Investigators found that district administrators had brushed off hundreds of reports from Black students after they had been called slaves, the N-word, and heard threats that they would be lynched. Some employees, the report said, participated in the discrimination.

At the same time, though, Utah leaders have been on the forefront in the push against critical race theory being taught in schools — which there has been no evidence was happening here.

The Utah Legislature banned any discussion of the college-level framework — which pinpoints racism as the defining feature of most systems in the United States — in public schools here.

Under that direction, the Utah State Board of Education adopted rules banning teachers from saying any race is “inherently superior or inferior” or that people’s moral character is influenced by their race. They also cannot instruct that students bear responsibility for the past actions of any individuals of their race, such as blaming white people today for slavery.

Some board members wanted to go further. One proposed prohibiting teachers from uttering a list of more than 100 words, including “equity,” “anti-racism,” “empathy,” “racial justice,” “racial prejudice,” “white fragility,” “conscious and unconscious bias” and “cultural awareness.”

One lawmaker also proposed letting parents vet all social studies lessons “in light of controversial topics arising in objectionable ways within the classroom.” That measure did not ultimately pass.

The debate over LGBTQ+ pride flags

Utah law instructs teachers to never mention their political or religious views. School districts and charters here have interpreted that differently when it comes to allowing for the display of pride flags.

Salt Lake City School District embraces the rainbow flags and allows teachers to hang them up in classrooms and hallways.

“It’s intended to be comforting and reassuring and validating,” said one principal in the state’s capital district. “I want students to see that they are wanted here and seen here for who they are — every part of who they are.”

Outside of the more blue-leaning Salt Lake County, though, districts have formally banned them under their policies, calling them “politically charged.”

Davis School District, Utah’s second largest district, has taken a hard-line approach, prohibiting the pride flag and most flags other than the American flag. The district has said that it wants schools to remain “neutral” on all issues.

The issue has become an example of the prejudice LGBTQ+ students say they face in K-12 schools in the state.

A group of kids protested outside Skyridge High School in spring 2023 when Alpine School District, the largest in the state, had started ordering schools to remove the flags.

They stood outside on the sidewalk outside their Utah County school, shouting: “We belong here.” The students said they don’t see the pride flag as political; they see it as a symbol of their identities and a sign that classrooms are safe places for them.

And taking them down, they said, has emboldened classmates who have threatened them, called them slurs and burned rainbow flags on school property since. The district has not responded to the students who have asked to bring the flags back.

In 2021, students ripped down a pride flag that had been hanging in a Cache County school in northern Utah; many cheered as the rainbow fabric fell to the ground. Video of that drew national attention to the state.

But recent outcry from conservative parents across Utah and the country have labeled educators who support the LGBTQ+ community with rainbow flags as “groomers” and “pedophiles,” suggesting the symbols are sexual and don’t belong in schools.

Those parents have found a champion in Utah State Board of Education member Natalie Cline, who has frequently attacked the LGBTQ+ community in her controversial Facebook posts.

The state has also pushed to ban transgender girls from competing in high school sports — which is currently on hold in the courts — and ban gender-affirming care for all transgender youth. Students protested against both of those measures.

Opting out of standardized testing

Each year, more Utah families have been opting their students out of taking year-end standardized tests.

It’s part of a growing movement of parents questioning the exams, the value of taking them, the stress they cause and what they see as attempts to overly monitor their kids through data collection.

Guardians have the right to do that, per Utah law. But it’s been creating a number of challenges.

In the most recent numbers released by the Utah State Board of Education, 5.9% of students in 2017 were opted out of the tests. And before that, hundreds more had been joining the list each year since at least 2014.

The opt-out rate was higher among charter schools, where 13% of students that year were excused from testing. And at five charters, a majority of students declined to participate. And wealthier districts, such as Park City, tend to see higher numbers, as well, of opt-outs.

Utah Parents United has been pushing on its platforms for parents to sign off for their kids to not be tested.

Under federal law, the state is supposed to have a minimum participation rate of 95% of students taking standardized tests each year in grades three through eight and at least once in high school. But that 5.9% measure puts it below the mark. So the board has since been required to count opt-outs as students who took tests but failed.

If the board doesn’t do that, it rejects roughly $120 million in annual federal funding for low-income and special education students in the state.

The low participation also impacts a school’s rating. How schools in Utah are evaluated for performance is based, in part, on standardized test scores. So if more students opt out and are counted as failing, that means their school will be seen as declining in its performance.

Limited funding can lead to large classes

For years, Utah has consistently ranked last in the nation for per pupil spending. It broke that trend in 2021 — when it ranked second to last, behind Idaho.

One of the biggest impacts that stems from the limited education funding is large class sizes. Without more money to hire more teachers, more students sit in fewer classrooms. Teachers have reported classes burgeoning with 40 or 50 kids.

The Utah Education Association has previously said: “When the class sizes are lower, the students perform better in all subjects.” And that’s true. But it’s a perennial issue here.

Utah’s latest student-to-teacher ratio, calculated in 2023 by Public School Review, was 23-to-1. Meanwhile, the national average is 15-to-1, which has actually improved since 2016, when it was 16-to-1. Utah has gotten worse in that same time, when it was previously 22-to-1.

In fact, Public School Review ranks Utah as having the worst ratio in the country.

It was so bad during the pandemic that federal officials changed their recommendations for the state. Teachers were supposed to keep students 6 feet apart to limit spread, but they were told 3 feet was safe enough because that was about all they could manage.

Some areas are seeing it worse than others. There’s been a youth population decline in Salt Lake City School District, for instance, leading to anticipated school closures, but areas in Davis and Tooele are busting at the seams.

A school district gets funding based on the WPU, or weighted pupil united, which is calculated by how many students enroll. About $8,000 is allocated per student here.

Typically, school districts don’t see that as enough to operate as needed. A district can also choose to raise property taxes to pull in more money; a model that creates even more disparities, as poorer areas tend to have the least amount of funding.

Pressures caused by lower funding can lead to issues with teacher retention, which is also a challenge in the state.

Top leaders have said Utah schools do well with the funding they do get, testing about on average with their peers nationwide. So there hasn’t been a hunger for lawmakers to increase the budget. Instead, there have been moves to further dilute the state education fund.