Families (including taxpayers without children) pay the eighth-highest state taxes in the country - $99.50 for every $1,000 of personal income. On top of that, junior high and high schools charge basic fees per student for textbooks and other teaching materials, activities and technology to cover the gaps left after tax money is spent. And they add special fees if the child is in the school band, plays sports, takes drama or classes that require lab work or wants to buy a yearbook or learn to drive a car.

All told, secondary-school fees per student can easily cost the family $300 to $400 per year - in addition to taxes. Fee waivers are available to help low-income families.

If the Legislature were tapping all sources of education funding, we could accept the inevitability of student fees to pay for the basics, but legislators are ignoring the best source - eliminating the tax exemptions for large families, especially wealthy Utahns. A tax-reform bill sponsored by Reps. Pat Jones, D-Holladay, and Steve Mascaro, R-West Jordan, is a sensible way to do that.

Some student fees are inevitable in Utah, where the tax investment per student is already the lowest among all the states because the state has the largest number of students per taxpayer in the nation. And fees are the most fair way to pay for some costs - families with more children pay more, and those whose children are involved in extracurricular activities shoulder the burden for those costs.

Many parents see the "frills" - music, art, sports, yearbook - as pretty darn basic and they chafe at paying extra when taxes already are so high. Yet a child can get a basic education without those things. Fees are an equitable way for students to pay for the "extras."

But textbooks are not "extra." They are expensive, though, and paying to keep them up-to-date and in good repair has been a point of contention between education officials and legislators.

The 2001 Legislature allocated a supplemental $23.7 million to public schools specifically for textbooks, but an audit has since shown that school districts didn't use all the money as it was intended. The districts said legislative budget cuts and a lack of ongoing funding for books forced them to use some of the money elsewhere. All this is an outgrowth of continual underfunding of education that the Jones-Mascaro bill could help alleviate.

Legislators can't change Utah's demographics, but they could shift more of the education burden to large families and the wealthy, where it belongs.