Please pass HB 342- Powers and Duties of the State Board out of committee. The State Board has delegated their constitutional authority over education standards to outside interests in their adoption of Common Core (renamed Utah Core). While there is much misunderstanding on this issue at this time, I believe it behooves the Utah legislature to shore up local control over education by requiring the State Board to develop its own standards with transparent input from Utah teachers and taxpayers. In the event that Utah does not pull away from Common Core standards, this will allow the State to provide concerned parents with a path to college that is truly a Utah-designed path that Utah parents can trust.

While there will be costs associated with writing our own Standards, it has been well-documented that the costs of further Common Core implementation and federal mandates are high, and not fully known. President Obama's Equity and Excellence Commission is effectively running the US Department of Education and their charge is to find ways to redistribute wealth using America's education system. If 80% of Utah's budget will be used to administer Obamacare by 2022 (as noted in a flier from Representative Derek Brown), and 50% of our budget is currently used to fund Utah's education system, then we are in for a rude awakening when Common Core's federally mandated expenditures begin to ratchet up.

Please pass HB 342 out of committee.

Thank you.

JaKell Sullivan

Sandy, UT