Park County officials finally made the decision they were loath to make.

After six months of lobbying from state and local education leaders, Gov. Matt Mead and others, the Park County District Boundary Board voted 5-1 on Tuesday to let the state of Wyoming begin paying for the education of students living in the northern half of Yellowstone National Park.

The board — made up of the Park County commissioners, assessor and treasurer — made the same recommendation in June, but that was contingent on getting more assurances that there wouldn’t be future problems between the federal government and the Powell school district. When those concerns weren’t addressed to the board’s satisfaction, it scheduled Tuesday’s meeting.

Board members continued to express consternation about potential clashes with the federal government down the road, but this time, they gave in and recommended expanding the boundaries of the Powell district to include northern Yellowstone without any conditions.

If the state board of education accepts the Park County board’s recommendation, roughly three dozen students in Mammoth Hot Springs will join Park County School District No. 1. However, the Mammoth students will continue to be educated in Gardiner, Mont., and generally have nothing to do with the Powell district. Money for their education will flow from the state to the Powell district and then be passed straight to Gardiner.

Wyoming is being forced to take over the students’ education because the federal government — after decades of footing the bills — announced earlier this year that it can no longer do so.

Wyoming has a constitutional obligation to educate the children in the state, but where things got complicated for Park County officials is that Yellowstone is an exclusive federal jurisdiction — basically having control over everything that happens there.

“We’re talking about the state’s obligation to educate versus the historical federal government’s responsibility ... to educate those kids and you mix it up with the authority to educate,” said Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric. “So if you feel you have the legal obligation to educate, can you go in there and do that without the actual authority given to you to do it?”

Local school officials and Yellowstone Park Superintendent Dan Wenk continued to insist at Tuesday’s meeting that the jurisdiction issue is not that unusual or problematic: there are roughly 230 other places where students live in national parks and are educated elsewhere and no record of that kind of conflict, Wenk said; school officials in Gardiner, Mont., have never had problems with jurisdiction in roughly 70 years of dealings with the Park Service, said Gardiner Superintendent JT Stroder; and the southern part of Yellowstone already lies within the Teton County school district.

“I don’t know what we’re trying to solve,” said Wenk of the concern, adding, “We’re not doing something that hasn’t been done in other places in other parks across the country.”

Gov. Mead and the attorney general’s office have similarly said they don’t see the legal hang-ups that Park County officials do.

Boundary board members and Skoric continued to argue that the situation in Yellowstone is different. Skoric believes that’s why the northern part of the park is not already in a Wyoming school district; he’s also found no evidence that Teton County has ever educated students from the southern part of Yellowstone.

“I understand nothing has ever happened, but that doesn’t mean nothing ever will,” said Commissioner Lee Livingston of potential jurisdictional problems. Livingston, who cast the dissenting vote, said it would be relatively easy for the federal government to formally give Wyoming concurrent jurisdiction over education within Yellowstone, though there’s been no indication that the federal government is willing to do so.

The prime example of potential trouble was if future Powell school board members decided it was necessary to build a school in Mammoth.

Wenk said park officials would be open to negotiating with Powell officials if that’s what was best for the children. He said park officials comply with Wyoming regulations on things like sewage systems and underground storage tanks despite not granting the state jurisdiction over those topics.

“Every time we turn around, we’re trying to be good neighbors. We’re trying to comply with the state in terms of the laws, the regulations that they have,” Wenk said. “I don’t know what else we can do.”

Livingston and Skoric, however, said the fact that Powell district officials would have to ask for permission before building a school in Yellowstone means it wouldn’t be a fully functioning school district.

“We shouldn’t have to sit down and negotiate with the federal government to build a school in our own school district,” Skoric said.

Before voting to recommend the expansion and allowing the process to move forward, the board discussed turning it down and encouraging state lawmakers to instead find a way to funnel money directly to Gardiner, Mont. That would eliminate the need to put northern Yellowstone into a Wyoming school district.

However, Park County School District No. 1 Superintendent Kevin Mitchell questioned why the board would ask that of lawmakers, who are advised by the attorney general’s office.

“Not everybody’s seeing that there’s a problem,” Mitchell said. “You’re trying to force somebody to say, ‘We’ve got a problem,’ and they’ve already told you we don’t have one.”

As a part of their recommendation, the boundary board did ask lawmakers to find a way to directly fund Gardiner, but acknowledged the request likely won’t go anywhere.

“As far as we’re concerned, there’s large issues they haven’t addressed,” said Commissioner Loren Grosskopf, adding, “Even though they don’t think it’s important, we do.”

A couple board members acknowledged an undercurrent of federal distrust in their deliberations along with continued frustration over the way the federal government dumped the students’ education onto the state. Commission chairman Bucky Hall said the board was representing constituents and business owners who haven’t liked other federal decisions.

It was the board’s third meeting and apparently will be the last.

“We’re sorry everyone’s stress has gone up,” Hall said as he closed the meeting. “But our stress level’s been up, too.”