Governor Bangerter Education records, 1987-1992.

This series contains materials collected primarily by Governor Bangerter's education policy advisor, Colleen Colton. The Bangerter administration viewed education as a key to Utah's future and tried to emphasize enhancing educational opportunities for youth. The series reflects the office's development of public education policies and projects. The series includes correspondence, minutes, awards applications, proposed legislation, and background materials.

Approximately half of the materials are 1992 applications for the Governor's Awards for Excellence program, a program for "rewarding schools which demonstrate excellence or continuous improvement over past performance toward excellence." The applications contain extensive narrative on individual schools, their demographics, educational philosophy, morale, and activities.

Other programs are also documented here. A pilot project for distance learning of Spanish via satellite television is covered. In 1991 and 1992 The NationalGovernors' Association created a number of education initiatives to reach national educational goals. Correspondence included in this series expands on those initiatives and shows how Utah fit into their state level goals. Another national program begun in 1991, known as the America 2000 Education Strategy, lead to the kick-off of Utah 2000 to meet the six national educational goals.

Various issues generated correspondence and legislation. In 1991 a bill was passed appropriating funds to reduce class size. Concurrent enrollment programs, for qualified high school seniors to attend high school and college simultaneously, generated a file of background materials, correspondence, and proposed legislation from 1987 to 1989. Indian education, to a limited extent among the Goshute and to a greater extent among the Navajo, generated correspondence over the years. In 1990, the legislature passed a set of bills dealing with testing and accountability; a file of correspondence and educationalassessment materials is included here. Background material on school fee waivers is also present.

The Governor set up several committees to deal with educational and correlated issues. A member list for those committees is present. There is also a folder on the Governor's Conference on Families, which dealt in part with specific education and learning issues. Another folder contains committee correspondence and speeches from Governor Bangerter and the committee set up to acquire the Union Pacific Depot for a fine arts museum. The most extensive folder deals with the Teacher Advisory Committee. Governor Bangerter selected a group of individual educators from around the state to meet and discuss educational issues and keep the Governor briefed on educational needs. Dr. Colton chaired the committee and the file contains copies of the agenda and minutes of the meetings plus correspondence and background materials on topics discussed.