Doge

[Seattle or Bust]

You miss the part about $1.2 BILLION that wasn't even approved? Or did that just not fit your narrative?

The article (and you) said it wasn't reviewed. Not sure that's the same thing, but sure, if there is 1.2B (or even 1% of that, or even $1) for casinos and strip clubs, I'm against it and I support fixing things so it doesn't happen in the future.

Great.

So maybe now you libs can shut up and let them do their work to trim budgets before deploying any further faux outrage over cutting waste just because it's "Republicans" accomplishing it.

Has nothing to do with being Republicans. It has everything to do with them being morons who apparently don’t know how to translate their findings.

[Michael K.]

If true? This is ridiculous. I am sure the Casino money was spent on rooms, and probably at a Convention, but that isn't COVID relief!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/caesars-pala ... 03020.html

Renting a baseball stadium?

[Donn Beach]

School district responds

. The district listed the following reasons defending the use of funds:
The funding in question was used to pay for hotel rooms for 123 educators from our district to attend a three-day professional educational convention hosted by Solution Tree in Las Vegas in 2022. Solution Tree is a highly reputable organization that provides effective professional development for educators from across the nation.

In advance of getting approval for use of these funds in this way, the district conducted a comprehensive needs assessment and submitted our plan which was accepted by Utah State Board of Education (USBE). Our plan outlined that we would spend these funds on professional learning.

While the host hotel had some resort functions, our participants had standard rooms at the government rate. The average hotel cost for each participant was $220 per night.

At the time, the closest available conference location was in Las Vegas, which was also the most cost-effective option being only several hours from Salt Lake City. Other locations offered at that time were much further away and would have resulted in more costs for participation.

To replicate the quantity and quality of speakers and resources provided at the conference in-house would be significantly more expensive than sending our educators to this nearby conference.

This was a successful and beneficial conference for our educators. Due to positive feedback from attendees and continued high interest, we were able to convince Solution Tree to bring the conference to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2024, allowing more local school districts to participate and providing even more teachers access to this valuable instructional training.

Prior to today, we have not been contacted by any members of the media with respect to this expenditure and refute that the district has not been transparent with our budgets and expenditures. The Fox News national story contains many factual errors and no one from their organization has ever contacted us to verify the facts of the report.

To be clear, there is no investigation into the use of these funds, which were approved by the Utah State Board of Education in full compliance with all applicable state and federal guidelines. Granite School District has NOT been contacted or questioned by any state or federal regulatory agency about the use of these funds. We first heard of this concern on social media. As such, we were surprised to be accused of fraud without having some contact from anyone to verify the legitimacy of the expense.

[gil]

School district responds

. The district listed the following reasons defending the use of funds:
The funding in question was used to pay for hotel rooms for 123 educators from our district to attend a three-day professional educational convention hosted by Solution Tree in Las Vegas in 2022. Solution Tree is a highly reputable organization that provides effective professional development for educators from across the nation.

In advance of getting approval for use of these funds in this way, the district conducted a comprehensive needs assessment and submitted our plan which was accepted by Utah State Board of Education (USBE). Our plan outlined that we would spend these funds on professional learning.

While the host hotel had some resort functions, our participants had standard rooms at the government rate. The average hotel cost for each participant was $220 per night.

At the time, the closest available conference location was in Las Vegas, which was also the most cost-effective option being only several hours from Salt Lake City. Other locations offered at that time were much further away and would have resulted in more costs for participation.

To replicate the quantity and quality of speakers and resources provided at the conference in-house would be significantly more expensive than sending our educators to this nearby conference.

This was a successful and beneficial conference for our educators. Due to positive feedback from attendees and continued high interest, we were able to convince Solution Tree to bring the conference to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2024, allowing more local school districts to participate and providing even more teachers access to this valuable instructional training.

Prior to today, we have not been contacted by any members of the media with respect to this expenditure and refute that the district has not been transparent with our budgets and expenditures. The Fox News national story contains many factual errors and no one from their organization has ever contacted us to verify the facts of the report.

To be clear, there is no investigation into the use of these funds, which were approved by the Utah State Board of Education in full compliance with all applicable state and federal guidelines. Granite School District has NOT been contacted or questioned by any state or federal regulatory agency about the use of these funds. We first heard of this concern on social media. As such, we were surprised to be accused of fraud without having some contact from anyone to verify the legitimacy of the expense.

Thanks for posting this. I was wondering if there was some explanation. I suppose it's pretty easy to make wild statements and grab headlines that fit your narrative. Hearing an explanation makes things messy.

[bpj]

Are you guys saying there's a good reason the federal tax dollars should pay to send Utah's teachers to Las Vegas?

If Utah wants to use their own money on a las vegas conference for their teachers, be my guest.

Seems like a great cut from the federal taxes...

[gil]

Are you guys saying there's a good reason the federal tax dollars should pay to send Utah's teachers to Las Vegas?

If Utah wants to use their own money on a las vegas conference for their teachers, be my guest.

Seems like a great cut from the federal taxes...

That's a great question, bpj. I don't know why it developed, but it does seem like all sorts of things are paid by the federal government rather than by the individual states. National defense seems like a no brainer federal expense. Otherwise, it seems that state and local governments get money from the feds that gets spent on keeping normal operations going (such as road construction and supporting education; probably also things like police).

Even thought I don't have kids, I'm generally in favor of public support for public education. Whether that is on my federal (income tax) or state tax (property tax) bill doesn't make much difference to me. (I suppose if I were more selfish, I'd say let parents decide if they want to pay for their kids' educations, but leave my money alone.)

[bpj]

Are you guys saying there's a good reason the federal tax dollars should pay to send Utah's teachers to Las Vegas?

If Utah wants to use their own money on a las vegas conference for their teachers, be my guest.

Seems like a great cut from the federal taxes...

That's a great question, bpj. I don't know why it developed, but it does seem like all sorts of things are paid by the federal government rather than by the individual states. National defense seems like a no brainer federal expense. Otherwise, it seems that state and local governments get money from the feds that gets spent on keeping normal operations going (such as road construction and supporting education; probably also things like police).

Even thought I don't have kids, I'm generally in favor of public support for public education. Whether that is on my federal (income tax) or state tax (property tax) bill doesn't make much difference to me. (I suppose if I were more selfish, I'd say let parents decide if they want to pay for their kids' educations, but leave my money alone.)

That's a good point, there are federal dollars for education obviously. I don't have any idea whether the conference was worth it.

I suspect they wouldn't use their own budget dollars to do it if the fed dollars weren't available, so immediately I'd question whether it's necessary. There's not much you can't learn in a zoom meeting now, so it seems more like a working vacation, but I don't know.

My experience was 75%+ of the time spent in school was wasted time, so I'm not the most sympathetic to it all to begin with.

The best answer I've heard seems to be letting the dollars allotted per student follow the student to whatever school they choose. I think public schools would be empty pretty fast.

[gil]

Gimme 5 bullet points summarizing what you did this week.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elon-m ... rts-resign

I'm sure everyone already has annual goals and objects, periodic reviews, etc. How is this "what did you do this week" anything other than another layer of bureaucracy?

[Mel Bradford]

DOGE Washington State
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LELfTp4Yn8

[gil]

Gimme 5 bullet points summarizing what you did this week.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elon-m ... rts-resign

I'm sure everyone already has annual goals and objectives, periodic reviews, etc. How is this "what did you do this week" anything other than another layer of bureaucracy?