What's happening: Utah philanthropists Tim and Joan Fenton are backing the University of Utah's new $5 million “Founders Fund.”

Why it matters: The program aims to accelerate promising student and university-connected businesses at earlier stages than might typically be of interest to traditional venture capital funds.

How it works: Students will be involved in finding, vetting and proposing the projects coming out of the University of Utah network that are most worthy of financial backing from the new fund, giving them real-world business experience.

Paul Brown, the James Lee Sorenson Presidential Endowed Chair and Professor (Lecturer) of Entrepreneurship at the Eccles School, will oversee the Founders Fund, working with the Fentons on making final investment decisions.

Funding amounts will vary, but a likely ballpark on individual investments will be $50,000-$250,000, according to Brown.

Why teachers and a parents rights group are clashing over these 2 bills

What would the bills do?

SB114 would require involving parents on the front-end of the curriculum selection process and would allow them to make recommendations to the local board. The proposed curriculum would be available online for the public to review it and then the school board would conduct a public hearing before voting whether to adopt it.

HB234 would require all Utah public school teachers to post all learning materials and syllabi for each day of instruction. 

What are people saying about the bills?

“Oftentimes we have bills where I think we’re looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist." — Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork

"If we truly care about reinforcing principles in the home, wouldn’t we want parents and taxpayers to see what was going on in the classroom before it happened?” — Nichole Mason, president of Utah Parents United

“This bill is insulting, burdensome and will not succeed in increasing transparency, but will certainly succeed in driving people from our profession." — Heidi Matthews, president of the Utah Education Association

Read more from Marjorie Cortez about the debate over the two bills.

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• Does Texas’ plan for a ‘Parental Bill of Rights’ put schools and parents in battle mode? (Deseret News)

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COVID

• Why this Utah doctor says rampant COVID-19 is a pandemic of ‘personal moral character’ (Deseret News)
• Experts already have a prediction about the next COVID-19 variant (Deseret News)
• Utah undercounted COVID hospitalizations by scores of patients, new data reveals (The Salt Lake Tribune 🔒)

Faith

• BYU, other Latter-day Saint schools will require temple recommends for new Latter-day Saint hires (Deseret News)
• ‘Reppin’ the Y.’: Holmoe, Darger on unique roles of BYU sports, student-athletes and the Honor Code (Church News)
• Missions and mental illness: New film shows one missionary’s journey with depression (Deseret News)
  

Southern Utah

• ‘Lesser of 2 evils’: Santa Clara council approves additional fee for power bills (St. George News)
• ‘If we lose East … we lose a neighborhood’: Iron County school board decides fate of East Elementary (St. George News)

Northern Utah

• Cache County School District shortening school day amid 'unprecedented' absenteeism (KSL.com)
• Salt Lake attorney sent to prison for taking money from clients, lying to bankruptcy court (KSL.com)
• Woman accused of stealing luggage from Salt Lake airport (KSL.com)

The Nation

• Biden will get a chance to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Here's what to expect (NPR)
• Crazy winter weather might hit the Northeast this weekend (Deseret News)

The World

• U.S. rejects Russia’s demands in new written response. What’s next? (Deseret News)
• N.Korea confirms latest weapons tests as Kim visits 'important' munitions factory (Reuters)

Trending

• Post Malone, who lives in Utah, is on the cover of Billboard magazine (Deseret News)
• Tesla moving away from making new car models to making robots (Deseret News)
• Iguanas are falling from the sky in Florida (Deseret News)
  

‘I was meant to be here’: Eric Weddle on decision to make NFL encore

The Rams needed help in their secondary heading into the playoffs, so they called the former Utes great and 13-year NFL vet to see if he’d pause his retirement for a run at the Super Bowl.

The rest is history.

Read more from Doug Robinson.

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• Utah Utes: Utah basketball: Historic losing skid shows Utes have no room for error