Hillyard says the trend of student population growth is on the decline

School is starting soon and as chairman of the Utah Legislature Public Education Committee, Republican State Senator Lyle Hillyard is starting to count the numbers.

He says the number of students in the state has grown to 10,000-12,000 a year, but the trend recently has been downward.

“Last year we only grew about 3,000 or 4,000,” Hillyard claims. “It was less, which is interesting. One of the key problems is we as people in Utah are having less children. Our birth rate has gown down.

“We still have a pretty healthy inflow of people coming from outside the state of Utah, moving here, which adds to this growth. Some people will say, ‘if you have 10,000 more that doesn’t mean you have 10,000 grow up and graduate.’ No, we have 10,000 more coming in.”

Although the pay is not the best, Hillyard says teachers like to come here and we are fortunate to have some great teachers.

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