As the school year approaches, Park County School District 1 is anticipating new opportunities and changes with optimism. While the district enters a period of transition, leadership remains confident that students and families can continue to count on the same strong commitment to quality education that the community has come to expect.

There is a notable amount of turnover this year following the retirement of several veteran teachers and members of the support staff.

“We’re welcoming a larger than normal class of new employees this year. We have 16 new certified staff coming in which is not an unusual amount of turnover,” Superintendent Jay Curtis said. “We have 180 teachers so 16 is still under that magical 10% number.”

One such vacancy is that of Powell Middle School teacher and basketball coach, Dale Estes, who retired following a 42 year career at PMS.

“Obviously, it’s pretty hard to say goodbye to some of the people that left and there are certainly some big shoes to fill,” Curtis said. “But we’re really excited about the people we’ve got hired.”

Attesting to the complexity of finding quality replacements, Curtis spoke about both the challenges and opportunities the district takes into consideration.

“Special education continues to be a tremendous challenge to fill but that’s why we started our Learn and Grow Your Own Teacher Program several years ago, where we are able to hire good people and then train them and provide them the schooling that they need to get certified,” he said.

Curtis also pointed out how just under half of the incoming staff replacements are originally from the Big Horn Basin.

Another major concern highlighted by Curtis was the nationwide drop in enrollment that has been observed.

“We’re starting to see it in our lower grades, our last two years of kindergarten classes have been on the smaller side and if you were to look at our enrollment on a graph, you’d see that we’re at maybe a ten-year low,” Curtis said. “There are certainly more people taking advantage of school choice now more than in the past, there are more options available for students in the form of virtual schools.”

The state legislature changes to the funding model following the recent recalibration effort have hit student activities funding particularly hard. Following a bipartisan effort to steer budget allocation away from the previous bloc funding system, the new arrangement establishes a silo framework that restricts how funding is distributed. Although funding for student activities, which falls under the category of operating costs, dropped, funding for areas like teacher and support staff salaries increased in the new method.

“We’ve made some meaningful reductions without impacting programs. We didn’t cut any programs and we’re not cutting any services to students,” Curtis said. “We’ve always operated at a deficit in activities. We’ve funded them more generously than the model provided us, but we got to the point where we had a $600,000 deficit so we had to take some steps to right the ship.”

Curtis cited taking advantage of attrition following some of the spring resignations to assist in keeping costs in line with the new funding model. Instead of being placed in a position where the district would have to lay staff off, Curtis talked about the decision to let some of those vacancies remain as a form of course correction accompanying reduced enrollment across PCSD1.

“It was a balancing act between those two things, and now, we have a little bit of flexibility in the model that we weren’t expecting,” he said.

Despite the hurdles, the school year remains on track for success.

“I always joke with people that by the time May rolls around, I’m ready for everyone to go home for a little while. But by the end of July, I’m pretty much ready to have everyone back and have that energy in the building.” Curtis said. “The reason that we do what we do is because of the students and the families that we serve. The job is not nearly as much fun without them in the building.”

More information regarding events and announcements from across the school district can be found online at pcsd1.org.