In short, a ''perfect storm'' of major and minor injustices left her questioning her career choice and drove her out of Utah.
Within weeks of starting at a Boston public high school, she fell back in love with the job.
Meanwhile, Carol McLean, a Granite School District teacher before she moved to Florida, returned to Utah and considered substitute teaching. But then she learned the job paid $7.50 an hour ($9 if she renewed her certification). She realized she could make more money delivering pizzas.
"It's such a slap in the face, I wouldn't go back," she said. "If we can't support our families, we'll go where we can make a living, either out of the state or out of teaching."
Comments such as hers demonstrate a problem in a state that sees roughly 15,000 new students each year. Utah's already crowded classes will continue to swell until the state can figure out a way to attract more teachers to its classrooms. But in the past few years, Utah has issued a declining number of new teaching licenses to graduates, new residents and professionals from other disciplines.
Some say the solution is pay raises. Others want to bring more market forces into play. But they all seem to agree there is no obvious answer to Utah's looming teacher shortage.
"Increased funding is not the sole solution," said Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo. ''It's important for us to step out of the box and say, 'What other things can we do to try to address the problem?' ''
Utah ranks near the bottom compared with neighboring states in both starting and average teacher salaries, according to American Federation of Teacher figures from 2003-2004, the latest available. New teachers can make roughly $6,000 more a year in New Mexico, while veterans can average a $4,300 raise by moving to Colorado.
Hunter High's Elliott said moving to Boston translated into a $10,000 raise - the same boost it took her six years and a master's degree to earn in Utah. In her West Valley days, she would have wanted funding increases to go toward improving classroom conditions, but now she realizes what a huge difference a decent raise makes.
"It's hard to understate the importance of salary," she said. "Going into teaching, you know you're not going to make millions, but you like to have a good cost-of-living increase, be rewarded and know you're respected."
Although state education funding influences how much teachers are paid, school districts negotiate their own salary schedules. So Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s latest budget request, which includes a big boost to per-pupil funding for districts, could bode well for Utah teachers. But debates among legislators and heavy competition for district education dollars make hefty raises far from certain.
Better in Boston: While many teachers wish they were better paid, the bigger issue for most is respect. Teachers are sick of being saddled with more students, limited resources and matter-of-fact references to ''failing public schools.''
Elliott said the poor conditions in underfunded classrooms drove her to explore options in other states and to consider leaving teaching altogether. Classrooms bursting with more than 30 teenagers reduced most lesson plans to lectures and crowd control. Parents questioned why their kids had to write so many essays or demanded to know why their children earned poor grades. The library was understocked. And then there was the photocopier.
"It was a serious source of stress," she said. "You could never count on it working and you'd have to spend half your planning period waiting for it."
Yet all those battles might have felt worthwhile if she got more public appreciation. When Elliott talks about how her situation has improved since moving to Boston, public discourse is no small factor.
''I just got tired of seeing people on TV insulting my profession,'' she said. ''It's stunning here to open the paper and hear legislators saying, 'We need to protect teacher benefits because they're the ones dealing with our kids.' ''
The best present: Utah policymakers spend a lot of time talking about how to prevent teachers such as Elliott from leaving Utah classrooms. Like the teachers' problems, suggested solutions are diverse.
Because school funding flows mainly from state tax revenue, funding gripes tend to land at the feet of lawmakers who set the budget. When education funding falls short of expectations, educators assume public schools aren't a priority.
"The best present I could receive for my classroom would be a visit from a legislator so he/she could see how much our students are learning . . . and how much better they could be doing if the legislators could realize that my students are indeed more valuable than roads, prisons and tax refunds," Debbie Stewart-Najera, a Jordan School District teacher, wrote to the Utah Education Association.
While legislators don't doubt the value of Utah students, many believe more money isn't the answer. Bramble, for example, said significant funding increases over the past 15 years haven't solved Utah's problems. He intends to sponsor a bill next month to create a voucher system for Utah schools, he said.
Market forces? Vouchers would allow parents to send their children, and the state tax dollars that go with them, to any school they wanted. If that happened to be a private school, or one in another district, funding would flow there rather than automatically going to the child's district-assigned public school.
Supporters say the market forces inherent in such a system would benefit both students and teachers. As money flowed to the best schools, all districts would better themselves by luring students back. The system, proponents say, would improve classroom conditions for both teachers and students and reduce bureaucratic waste.
Teacher groups tend to disagree. They say such a system would drain money from cash-strapped public schools. Instead of spurring schools to improve, teachers worry a voucher system would hobble them.
"Lots of politics at the district level would come into play, not market forces," said Rita Heagren, a math teacher at Cottonwood High School in Murray.
She is not the only teacher to express frustration with education bureaucracy. Many cite administrators or district policies that make it harder for teachers to do their jobs. A common complaint is principals who don't deal effectively with discipline problems.
Building incentives: Discipline is one of several problems the Utah Office of Education hopes to address with a new professional excellence program called ProExcel. If funded by the Legislature, one aspect of the program would provide training and mentors for new principals, who often take such jobs with little experience.
The program also could include a pay-for-performance component and encourage districts to ease the path to classrooms for professionals without formal teaching licenses.
ProExcel also would build incentives to lure teachers to hard-to-fill positions. Some districts already use such incentives - Tintic School District in Juab County, for example, provides modular homes for teachers who are willing to work in its rural schools, said Ray Timothy, state deputy superintendent of public schools.
But he would like to see a statewide incentive program for teachers in shortage areas, such as math, science and special education. Utah rewards signing bonuses and tuition reimbursement for some teachers in those fields, but Timothy envisions an accelerated salary schedule that would reward them annually.
Getting the message out: Teacher education programs also are attuned to the need for more math and science teachers, said Mary Burbank, a teaching and learning instructor at the University of Utah. The U.'s College of Education appeals to college math and science majors to consider teaching. The school also gets that message out to kids as young as elementary school, she said.
With teacher training programs striving to recruit people to the profession and the state working to keep them there, it will soon be up to the Legislature to decide what it can do to make Utah classrooms more attractive to teachers. Funding for teachers, many say, would be one step.
"Another would be any kind of recognition or whatever we can do to enhance the image of the profession," Timothy said. "We've turned a lot of people away by talking about the failing schools . . . we've actually discouraged people from entering the profession."
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* NICOLE STRICKER can be
contacted at nstricker@sltrib.com or at 801-257-8999.
