This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
SOUTH JORDAN - Legislators who held a public meeting Tuesday night to promote education vouchers emphasized that their support for the program was "not an indictment of the public schools."
"Don't walk away thinking we hate public education," said Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper. "We do not."
The lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, and Reps. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, and Merlynn Newbold, R-South Jordan, however, made it clear that they do like vouchers for private education.
Still, Giles and Ann Florence, Salt Lake school teachers who attended the meeting, weren't comforted by the lawmakers' assurances about vouchers or even how the so-called town meeting was put together. The gatherings are being organized around the state by the Informed Voters Project, a political issue committee of lawmakers who support vouchers. Democrats are not invited, nor is anyone from the organized voucher opposition.
The Florences complained they spent all day trying to find one of the meetings, calling newspaper and lawmakers' offices, before they found a listing in The Tribune.
They found the town meeting at Daybreak development's community center a disappointment.
"There was no open discussion - it was definitely loaded in favor of vouchers," Giles Florence said. "It was not a town meeting."
The voucher discussion began with a slick promotional film, paid for by the Milton Friedman Foundation, that presented the voucher program as necessary to prepare Utah for an expected onslaught of 155,000 new students over the next five years.
The short video that included cameos by Hughes, Rep. Aaron Tilton, R-Springville, and Senate President John Valentine made a case that Utah's recent prosperity is not assured and an economic downturn similar to one in the mid-1980s is possible. "Then, Utah is really in trouble," says Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, in the film. "Everyone agrees something has to be changed," says Tilton.
Utah's stalled voucher program, which must survive a referendum next month to be implemented, is the change needed, the film maintains, because it would reduce the number of students in classrooms while leaving additional money for public schools.
"We've got to do more than just hope," Valentine says in the film.
Despite the promotional film, pro-voucher handouts and the assurances of the lawmakers, several of the 15 citizens at the meeting remained skeptical. Their reasons ranged from a distaste for using tax money to support religious schools to not wanting government control creeping into private education. Some feared vouchers would further expand the social and religious divisions in Utah.
"Our only hope tonight is that you are very clear as to the legislation," said Newbold, who offered copies of the bill to the audience. "There's a lot of misinformation going out. It's not an indictment of the public schools. It's another school alternative that might be better for your child."