In this climate of change and uncertainty, it would be wrong for legislators to adopt a fiscally risky and philosophically demoralizing tuition tax credit policy that rewards families for abandoning public schools and risks damaging the state's ability to teach the 95 percent of its children who will continue to count on getting a good education in Utah schools.

Granting tax credits for private school tuition would do nothing to improve education for the vast majority of Utah children and could decrease tax revenue available to public schools without decreasing their costs. But, more important, it would allow a group of Utahns who dislike the public school system to avoid at least a portion of their vital civic responsibility to support and fund public education, just as they support other public institutions from which they benefit, directly or indirectly.

Proponents of House Bill 39, the Legislature's latest tuition tax credit proposal, contend that subsidizing the choice to move children to private schools would help public schools in the coming decade by diverting some of the estimated 145,000 to 200,000 new students. But an analysis of the fiscal impacts of the bill show that in fiscal year 2007, the first in which the tax credits would be in effect for a full taxable year, the plan would cost the state $133,800.

Whether that estimated negative impact might grow or decrease in subsequent years seems to be anybody's guess. The State Office of Education predicts a much larger loss in revenue, $11.7 million, in fiscal 2007 and more after that. A Utah State University study that took months to complete could only guess that tuition tax credits could save schools $1.2 billion over 14 years, or might cost them $179 million in the same period.

The actual outcome would be determined by factors that can't be predicted, particularly how many public school students would leave for private schools and whether the likely minuscule reduction in the influx of new students could have the unlikely effect of reducing the need for teachers, supplies and buildings.

Proponents of tuition tax credits also cite the right of parents to choose where their children are educated, but parents already have choices within the public school system. Charter schools offer great flexibility. Parents also can send their children to a school outside their neighborhood or district.

If they are dissatisfied with those options, parents may choose private schools or home schools and have their children taught what and how they wish.

HB39 would unwisely send substantial tax dollars to private schools and let families opt out of contributing their fair share toward the public school system. The system is charged with the constitutional responsibility of teaching all children, regardless of aptitude, income, resources, disabilities or disadvantages.

A majority of Utahns, polls show, understand the importance of well-funded public schools and do not support tuition tax credits. We hope most legislators are as thoughtful and will vote against HB39.

A well-educated populace improves life for all Utahns. Tuition tax credits would benefit only a few.