As the movement for Smaller Districts expands north into Davis District, south into Alpine District, and continues to gather support in Granite and Jordan Districts, we welcome many new subscribers to Utah Small Districts Coalition.  During the 2006 legislative session, parents and lawmakers in our grass-roots coalition, with a $50.00 expense account and an unknown bill introduced late in the session, managed to pass HB77, a watershed law that enables communities to band together to form smaller school districts.  Our impetus for breaking up Utah's enormous school districts, some of the biggest in the United States, stems from  academic research that clearly shows smaller school districts provide better education, are more cost-effective, and better represent the needs of local communities.  Studies conclude the following:

• Smaller districts create local control, responsiveness, and the ability to change and adapt quickly.
• Smaller districts produce better academic results: higher academic achievement, especially for poor students; better curriculums; more extra-curricular opportunities; higher attendance and graduation rates; lower incidences of violence and crime.
• Smaller districts are more cost-effective, with more money going directly into the classroom and teachers' salaries and less going into administration.
• Smaller districts avoid building enormous, mall-sized schools, instead focusing on smaller, optimally sized community schools.
• Smaller districts produce more parental/community involvement, better cooperate with civic authorities, use taxes raised for the betterment of the community, and are less likely to experience fraud and waste.
• Smaller districts have school boards that actually reflect the desires, needs, and expectations of their communities.

As various cities in Granite, Jordan, and Alpine Districts commissioned feasibility studies in 2006 to determine the viability of forming their own school districts, many financial arguments emerged, primarily the concern that established communities could leave growing communities without adequate funding for their much-needed new schools.  Senator Carlene Walker (Cottonwood Heights) and her ad hoc legislative committee spent a great deal of time and effort during the past year in dealing with these concerns.  They have prepared SB30, a bill designed to improve on HB77's inadequacies, one which would ensure that all communities receive adequate funding should they decide to form smaller districts. 

We need your support during this legislative session!  Emails, letters, and phone calls from constituents state-wide enabled HB77 to become "The Little Bill that Could" in 2006; we need you, your friends, your neighbors, and your relatives again for 2007.   Collect emails, plug them into our web site.  As always, when contacting legislators, our reasons for wanting to create smaller districts must always rely on well-reasoned arguments and research found in the attachment.  Please download it and use it to educate our lawmakers, so that we protect and improve upon the right of all Utahns to smaller, more responsive school districts.