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SALT LAKE CITY — The State School Board had never received so many public comments about a single issue.
Now it's debating how to analyze those thousands and thousands of comments and who should do it.
A committee for the Utah State Board of Education met Friday to discuss the public feedback surrounding guidelines Utah schools can follow when it comes to issues regarding gender-diverse students — including dress code, bathroom use, pronouns, verbiage in sports and more.
The committee completed a draft of the gender identity guidance document at a meeting in September but later determined it needed further review.
In January, the guidance document was released to the public, giving Utahns the opportunity to submit public comments regarding the guidance document.
After public comment wrapped up on Feb. 7, the board had received over 20,000 comments — the most feedback it has ever received through a public comment opportunity.
The committee had initially planned to discuss the public feedback at a special Standards and Assessment Committee meeting that was scheduled for Feb. 23, but decided it needed more time to review all that feedback.
Due to the high quantity of public comments, the committee's discussion on Friday was focused on how to best proceed with an analysis of those public comments, with some comments containing hate speech and vulgar language, according to the committee.
"We're most interested in the qualitative part of this, the quantitative part is kind of secondary," said Aaron Brough, data and statistics coordinator for the Utah State Board of Education.
"We need to know what people are suggesting and what they're thinking," he said. "This is not typical for us at USBE to have 20,000 plus answers on a survey."
After discussion among board members, the committee decided to take more time over the next month to explore options, gather feedback and decide if the best course of action is to conduct the analysis of those public comments internally or outsource the analysis to an external entity.
One of the concerns raised by committee members was focused on the emotional well-being of whoever undertakes the role of data analysis due to the nature of some of the comments.
"I am very saddened by some of the comments that were given that are so vulgar, it's very difficult for myself to read some of these things," board member Laura Belnap said.
