Utah’s public education leaders spent hours considering what they could cut from the state’s K-12 schools budget, working to follow a Utah Legislature mandate for state agencies to reduce expenses by 5% across the board.
But after more than five hours of deliberation, the Utah State Board of Education had voted to recommend cuts amounting to a fraction of the $163 million the Legislature seeks to eliminate. Board members struggled to understand which reductions would count toward the Legislature’s goal. Several board members expressed frustration at the tight timeline under which they were told to make those decisions.
“This whole process has been totally unfair to the board,” said board member Erin Longacre. “We found out six days ago that we’re supposed to make a cut of almost $300 million. … There’s panic across the state because of this.”
Thursday’s meeting was tense from the beginning, when Scott Jones, USBE’s deputy superintendent of operations, told board members that they didn’t have to cut as much as they originally were told. A pair of proposals released to the public Wednesday had suggested cuts that would eliminate $295 million in expenses — 5% of the state’s $5.9 billion budget.
Instead, Jones said, legislative officials told him the board would only need to cut about $163 million. The change left board members scrambling to decide what to do.
The recommendations, once complete, will go to the Utah Legislature — and legislative leaders reminded the USBE in a letter that lawmakers, not the board, have the ultimate say on state spending. The Legislature’s 2026 general session starts Tuesday and runs for 45 days.
The meeting started some minutes after noon, and was scheduled to run until 2 p.m. Instead, board members adjourned at 5:33 p.m.
Some of the cuts the board did approve, totaling $29.5 million, were:
• $10.6 million for software licenses for early literacy, to help students in grades K-3 who are reading below grade level.
• $8.9 million for private online courses to foster teacher empowerment.
• $6.1 million to reduce Utah Fits All, the voucher program that allocates money to students in private schools or being homeschooled, by 5%. One of the proposals released Wednesday suggested eliminating the voucher program entirely, which would have saved $122.6 million.
• $3.8 million to cut out 92% of the budget for special needs opportunity scholarship administration.
• $45,000 for administrative funds for UPSTART, a digital program that helps young children prepare for preschool.
One of the cuts the board voted down was $18.4 million for the state’s digital teaching and learning program, which helps educators fund ways to use technology in the classroom.
Near the beginning of the meeting, Longacre made a motion asking the board to delay any budget decisions until members could meet with the legislative subcommittee that oversees the K-12 schools budget. The delay was necessary, Longacre said, so “we have had enough time to think about this and not make any rash decisions.”
Longacre’s colleagues shared her frustration, but voted down the delay. Board member Christina Boggess said that if the board delayed its decision, the Legislature is “just going to tell us what they want and going to push us out of the conversation altogether.”
Board member LeAnn Wood agreed that she wanted more time, but said it would be a disservice to walk out of the meeting without showing what programs the board was not willing to defund.
After voting on which budget items to reduce or eliminate, Jones urged board members to include where they want the money reallocated.
Board member Joseph Kerry said he was distraught that the board was spending time crossing out expenditures and budget requests, only to turn around and ask for that same money to pay for USBE priorities, though often more vaguely.
Kerry also wondered how effective it was to reduce costs by redlining funding requests that USBE has made to the Legislature.
“If we’re reducing money that we don’t have, does that even count towards the [$163 million]?” Kerry asked. “We’re putting on this dog-and-pony show. … All we’re doing is saying we’re going to not ask for money we don’t have.”
The board also voted on other cuts — reallocating $145 million in one-time funding for a program that adds to salaries of top-performing teachers, and cutting a funding request of $2.25 million to continue statewide access to Adobe software in schools — but Jones warned those would not directly fulfill the Legislature’s request for cuts to ongoing funding.
Groups advocated for their preferred programs after the initial recommendations were released Wednesday. Kerry said he knew when the recommendations were posted at 2 p.m., “because then all of our phones at this table started to blow up with people emailing and texting and calling, saying, ‘Wait, you are cutting suicide prevention?’”
Emails from groups as varied as Prevent Child Abuse Utah and Repertory Dance Theatre urged people to contact board members. Wood said that by noon Thursday, when the meeting started, the board had received some 1,500 calls and messages.
Board member Randy Boothe said that by midnight on Thursday morning, he was getting seven comments or emails every minute. He said he went to bed, woke up again at 4 a.m., and saw more messages that had come in after midnight. “At 5:15, they were starting to come again,” Boothe said. “They were every 3 minutes, then 7 and 9 every minute.”
Among the programs that were suggested for elimination in Wednesday’s proposals:
• Student mental health screenings, a program the Legislature created in 2024 to improve students’ well-being: $1 million.
• A suicide-prevention program the Legislature created last year, to help prevent student suicides and track schools’ efforts: $1 million.
• Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships, which are available to students with disabilities who attend private schools: $8.6 million.
• Dual immersion programs that allow students to learn a second language through classes that are half in English and half in another language: $7.9 million.
• A program that helps school districts with construction, renovation and debt service of new buildings: $27.6 million.
• A program that adds $4,100 to the salaries of qualifying secondary math and science teachers: $26 million.
• Software licenses for early literacy, to help students in grades K-3 who are reading below grade level: $10.6 million.
• A program aiming to strengthen human trafficking and child sexual abuse education in elementary and secondary public schools: $1 million.
• Software that evaluates the reading level of elementary school students: $2.8 million.
Longacre, who apologized that she was fighting back tears, said during the meeting, “we need to make sure when we vote for these cuts, you look at these kids in their faces. … I want the legislators to walk through the halls of these schools and tell those kids what programs you’re going to cut.”