By Lisa Schencker Salt Lake Tribune
I told her so many times Dont quit" said Andrea a Salt Lake City high school student whom The Tribune agreed not to identify because she is not a U.S. citizen. Are you serious? You have a better opportunity than me and youre going to give up?"
Andrea who moved to the U.S. from Mexico as a child doesnt take her education here for granted. She wants to be someone" and knows an education is the way to do that.
But as the immigration debate in Utah heats up a number of Utahns find themselves wondering whether paying to educate Andrea and other students like her is taxing the public school system to the point that the children of legal residents suffer.
Its a question that doesnt seem to have an easy answer though schools must educate students regardless of their legal statuses per a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case.
The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that about 8 percent of Utah students in kindergarten through 12th grade had an undocumented parent in 2009 a figure higher than the national average of about 6.2 percent. And a 2007 legislative audit estimated that it cost Utah between $55 million and $85 million in fiscal year 2006 to educate just undocumented students.
In July of 2007 members of the Education Interim Committee voted to send a letter along with the audit to the federal government asking it to reimburse Utah
for those students.
Sen. Margaret Dayton R-Orem said at the time We as a state are asked to absorb large numbers of costs that result from failed federal immigration policy."
If you isolate the cost of illegal immigrant children in the classroom we could have forgone taking that federal money" said Eagar referring to $101 million Utah recently accepted to help schools.
But others say its not enough to look just at the cost of educating children of undocumented immigrants. Some for example criticized the 2007 audit for not including estimates of money paid into the state by such immigrants.
Utah schools are funded mostly through income tax which undocumented immigrants generally dont pay unless they have a Social Security number. But about 30 percent of total education funding comes from property tax which undocumented immigrants pay if they own homes or may help pay indirectly through rent. Some education funding also comes from the federal government and other local sources.
As to the question of whether undocumented immigrants pay enough into the school system to support the costs of their childrens educations Jeff Passel a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center said its his sense that parents as a whole group generally dont pay enough to cover those costs. The population as a whole not just parents pays to educate children. Yet he said the question of whether parents are paying enough into the school system for their own kids tends to be directed at undocumented immigrants.
We dont ask that for other kids" Passel said.
Also Utah would likely still have the lowest base per-pupil spending and highest student-to-teacher ratios in the nation even without children of undocumented immigrants.
About 8 percent of Utahs students are likely children of undocumented immigrants but Utahs per pupil spending was about 17 percent lower than the next lowest state in 2007-08 according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
And Utahs student-to-teacher ratio was about 26 percent higher than the next highest state in 2008-09 according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
