Larry Shumway, educational director of state educator quality services, agreed, adding that the recommendations' practicality is "yet to be determined."

The K-16 Alliance, a group of public and higher education officials formed to address issues such as the state's growing teacher shortage, earlier this year recommended "significantly modifying" the school year to more efficiently use buildings, increasing and differentiating teacher compensation, increasing scholarships and loans for teachers to pursue more education and enhancing the capacity of public colleges to educate teachers.

Many school districts have said they are willing to consider pilot programs to accomplish some of these goals, but the Utah Office of Education has not yet created a pilot.

The two biggest holdups in creating such a program are the recommendations that secondary schools hold classes year-round and pay more to teachers who are in "critical positions and hard-to-staff positions."

Shumway worries such recommendations would not work well in small, rural settings where administrators are trying to attract teachers. If teachers start making up to 80 percent more by working in urban districts, he wonders how rural high schools will recruit and retain teachers.

"There are very challenging issues to overcome," Shumway said. "The first part of this is to really carefully think of what any pilot programs might look like."

The board also discussed the ProExcel professional development program it created, which differentiates teacher pay based on qualifications such as college major, performance and experience.

But that program, too, has created controversy.

Last year, though the state Legislature funded several education initiatives, ProExcel did not receive a requested $30 million necessary to implement it despite being approved by the board and the joint Education Appropriations Committee.

"When you talk about performance differentiation with no specifics, no one thinks it's a bad thing. People agree with compensating our most effective teachers," Shumway said. "But when you start talking about programmatic specifics, the agreement all disappears. We want to have lots of stakeholder input and serious consensus building in this process."

The board is inviting legislators to a discussion about ProExcel on Sept. 18 at the Utah Office of Education at 6:30 p.m. to start that relationship building.

"If this is seen as a school board proposal, it will have no chance of passing," Roberts said. "This has to be a legislative proposal."

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* SHEENA MCFARLAND can be contacted at smcfarland@sltrib.com or 801-257-8619.