Last month, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that the state Legislature had been unconstitutionally underfunding education and failed to provide K-12 teachers in the state meaningful salary increases to keep up with inflation. However, there remains a critical amount of ambiguity regarding the decision’s effect on the new funding model as well as how the decision will impact school districts like Park County School District 1.

One point of uncertainty is how this decision will affect the new model that was just adopted in March. Following last year’s cost of education study and recalibration initiative and new legislation last session, the new model added roughly $114.1 million (or an 8.6% increase) to the statewide education distribution. This funding increase was able to raise fully certified teacher salaries in PCSD1 by a flat $6,500 base salary increase (pushing starting teacher salaries up to $60,500 from the previous $54,000 base) and an additional $2 an hour increase for all noncertified support staff.

While teacher salaries have improved under the new model, other areas remain in a tight spot. Due partly to budget issues with the new funding model providing less flexibility to move funds around, six positions throughout the district were reduced through attrition and shifting those funds to other areas with deficits. Another example can be seen with technology funding remaining at the same level that it was funded at in 2005 despite the number of devices managed by the district increasing tenfold in the subsequent two decades.

“The Legislature did make great gains on model salaries, which they needed to. They’d been told for years that their model salaries weren’t sufficient,” said  Park County School District 1 superintendent Jay Curtis. “If the Legislature continues with the model as it is and continues to provide us with meaningful inflationary adjustments, then I can see Powell being very successful under the current model.”

Rules of Engagement

The history of the lawsuit filed with the Supreme Court begins in 2010, when the state Legislature began providing more funding for education than was recommended by the consultant advising lawmakers. This relationship continued until 2015 when the costs began to converge with inflation before falling out of compliance in 2017. Instead of the discussion moving towards reconciling the budget shortfall, the opposite happened when lawmakers began calling for a 10% cut to education funding, recalled Curtis.

“At that time, they had no data that would have suggested that costs had gone down by 10%, the Legislature had just decided that they didn’t want to fund education at that level anymore,” Curtis said. “After making some cuts, the Legislature folded two external grant programs into the model to keep the baseline pretty close to what was legal and avoided significant cuts.”

Despite the modifications, another consultant in 2020 found that the Legislature was funding education in the state between $70 and $100 million less than they should have based on consultant-based recommendations, but the Legislature refused to budge. 

In 2022, a lawsuit was filed by the Wyoming Education Association and joined by eight school districts across the state — Park 1 was not among them — arguing that the existing model had harmed students by failing to provide the standard of education mandated by the state constitution. The lawsuit also argued that matters like student safety in the form of student resource officers, one-to-one technology and nutrition are necessary components to modern, adequate public education.

In 2024, the Laramie County District Court found that the Legislature violated the equal protection rights of students by failing to provide teachers and staff salaries consistent with the model and failing to follow state law regarding inflationary effects on school funding. The district court also ordered the state to fund SROs, one-to-one tech and nutrition.

The Supreme Court’s September decision produced mixed results, affirming the district court’s findings that the Legislature had indeed been underfunding the education system but rejecting and reversing the orders to provide for school safety, tech and nutrition, arguing that those programs are innovations and shouldn’t necessarily be part of the Legislature’s funding model.

Curtis noted that while Powell’s breakfast and lunch program was exceptional for operating close to break-even, most school districts in the state are supplementing their programs to the tune of several tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Nutrition is not self-funding. Because of the economies of scale at play in a lot of cases, somewhere like Meeteetse would have to charge $15 a meal just to break even,” Curtis said. “It just doesn’t make sense, it isn’t feasible.”

The Equalizer

Another point for deliberation at the Legislature’s Recalibration Committee later this month is going to be addressing other issues with the new funding model, especially as student activities are concerned. Curtis spoke about the substantial pushback from parents and communities after activities funding was severely reduced due to losing the previous, flexible block grant system in favor of a more restricted silo funding model.

Following the adoption of the new funding model, statewide student activities funding decreased from $46.3 to $42.4 million, or by 8.4%. Another oddity within the model was its lopsided nature. One example that Curtis provided was how Cody, despite having 200 students more than Powell, received $30,000 less funding for activities. 

“None of that makes sense when you’re on an average daily membership model,” Curtis said. “I think what we have is that there is a significant calculation error in some way, shape or form that they’ve got to fix.”

While Curtis does expect a bill related to activities to come out of the recalibration process, he was uncertain what specifics it might include. His expectation remains that the committee will respond to the backlash, but to what scale remains to be determined. For now, Curtis plans on continuing to attend the meetings, listen to what proposals legislators bring to the table and continue to communicate with the residents of Powell with children in the district.

“Ultimately, my hang up is that we’re asking people to do more with less and we don’t know the long term impacts of that. We don’t know if this is going to burn people out and start some vicious cycle of trying to replace people,” Curtis said. “I don’t know if we’re going to need to be deciding which things we shouldn’t do anymore or how this is going to impact students. It really is too early to tell but we’ll see. The next step for us is just to remain part of the process and tell our story.”