During his two decades on the Sweetwater County District 2 school board, Steve Core witnessed damaging impacts pile up as a result of the state’s funding model, he said.
Some years, the board could only offer staff raises of $100, which was not well received. District salaries didn’t match the cost of living in Green River, he said, and that resulted in a steady decline in the quality of teachers helming its classrooms. More and more educators weren’t certified or hadn’t completed student teaching.
When Core drove to Cheyenne last summer to testify in a trial over the constitutionality of Wyoming’s education funding, he recalled on Friday, he knew he would be asked if his district provided quality education.
“And I thought, ‘How do I respond to that?” Core told WyoFile.
After weighing the question during his drive down Interstate 80, he ended up likening it to buying a car. His district offered a “quality preowned car education,” which the district “keeps running” and maintains, he later testified from the stand.
“But we need to offer a quality new-car education,” he said, “and our hands are a little tied with funding.”
That could change significantly, thanks to last week’s court decision following that trial. Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher ruled the Wyoming Legislature has been unconstitutionally underfunding the state’s public schools and ordered the state to fix that.
How precisely the 186-page ruling will impact classrooms serving Wyoming’s 92,000 public school students remains to be seen. But superintendents and educators told WyoFile they hope to gain the ability to hire mental health counselors, fund better nutrition programs and pay for safer buildings. Maybe more than anything, they hope to be able to offer better salaries to return Wyoming to a state that attracts and retains the highest-quality teachers, which many say is key to an excellent education system.
In his decision, Froelicher wrote that the Legislature had violated the state constitution on several accounts — from not properly adjusting for inflation and not funding school resource officers to failing to provide salaries sufficient to recruit and retain the personnel needed to deliver the quality of education guaranteed in the Wyoming Constitution.
“The State’s failures have affected Wyoming children’s right to a proper education,” the judge wrote. He ordered the state to modify its funding model in manners consistent with his order “to assure the school financing system for operations and for school facilities are constitutional.”
The effects of the order could be long-lasting and significant. Already, lawmakers signaled intent to abide by the judge’s ruling, when senators voted Friday to restore the full $66.3 million external cost adjustment — a temporary amount designed to reflect rising costs of living — for teacher and other school staff salaries.
That amount had been recommended and supported by Gov. Mark Gordon but whittled down by lawmakers. Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, introduced the funding restoration as an amendment to a school recalibration bill two days after the court ruling.
How we got here
The Wyoming Education Association, an educator advocacy group with 6,000 members, sued Wyoming in August 2022. Eight school districts joined the lawsuit as intervenors to challenge the state.
The suit claimed the state violated its constitution by failing to adequately fund public schools and has withheld appropriate funding at the expense of educational excellence, safety and security. That has left districts to fend for themselves and divert funds from other crucial educational activities, which causes further systemic erosion, the suit contended.
Article 7 of the Wyoming Constitution states that the Legislature “shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction.” Landmark court cases further delineated the state’s obligations in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
The more recent of those, the Campbell cases, set the stage for Wyoming’s current school funding obligations. Those cases culminated in 1995 when the Wyoming Supreme Court ordered the state to determine the cost of a high-quality education, fund public schools, adjust funding at least every two years for inflation and review the components of the school funding model every five years to ensure resources are keeping pace with needs and costs.
But Wyoming hasn’t held up its end of the bargain, the WEA suit alleged.
A six-week bench trial took place this summer in a Cheyenne courtroom to deliberate the issue, with plaintiffs bringing a parade of school staffers and education experts who testified on topics ranging from major maintenance projects to school lunches, campus security and staffing.
Froelicher summed up much of the testimony in his ruling, which offered glimpses of school districts struggling to keep up services with insufficient funding. The judge described the following in his order:
The number of qualified applicants for teaching positions in Campbell County School District 1 has dramatically decreased in the past 20 years. In July 2021, Campbell 1 still had 21 teacher openings for that school year. The district once attracted 10 to 12 applicants for special education teaching jobs, but now only sees 1 or 2, if any.
Carbon County School District 1 started the school year with six unfilled certified positions. In the district, 90% of certified positions are typically filled with certified teachers; however, in the last two years, it has only been able to fill 70%.
Laramie County School District 1 has cut programs due to a lack of funding. Laramie 1 eliminated driver’s education, reduced offerings for gifted and talented students, eliminated elementary athletics, reduced professional development and reduced personnel. The district has eliminated graduation coaches, instructional coaches, curriculum coordinators, a music and art coordinator, a physical education coordinator, world language coordinator and a data analyst.
High school graduation rates have dipped and elementary test scores have been disappointing in Sweetwater 2 as the district has had to hire more teachers who aren’t fully certified. The district competes against the trona mining industry, which pays better, making it harder to find and keep staff.
Albany County School District 1 is experiencing significant difficulty hiring and getting applicants for special education positions, including school psychologists, teachers, paraeducators and vision and hearing service providers. This past school year, Albany 1 had no applicants for special education paraeducators because the salary of $14 to $15 an hour is so low.
What they are saying
The ruling represents a triumph for Wyoming’s public school system and a better future for its students, superintendents from the districts that intervened as plaintiffs told WyoFile.
“If the Legislature funds districts in accordance with the Court’s ruling, students and staff will no longer have to worry about critical programs being reduced or eliminated due to financial constraints,” Lincoln County School District 1 Superintendent Teresa Chaulk said in an email. “Instead, we can continue to provide a stable and enriched educational environment that meets the needs of all learners.”
Better facilities could also come as a result, Albany County School District 1 Superintendent Jonathan Goldhardt told WyoFile.
“You will see dilapidated and obsolete buildings replaced, and infrastructure designed for today’s learners with access to modern technology,” he said. “Too many students in the state are in inadequate and unequal buildings. In Albany County, it would be a dream for us to rebuild Laramie Middle School and have a facility that is not sinking, has wide halls, lots of natural light and is designed specifically for young adolescent learning needs.”
Teacher and staff compensation likely will improve, others said.
“With proper funding, we can offer more competitive wages, reducing turnover and ensuring that our students learn from experienced, dedicated professionals,” Sweetwater County School District 1 said in a statement from its legal counsel and facilities department.
Sweetwater 1 intervened in the lawsuit because “the state’s continued underfunding has made it increasingly difficult to provide the high-quality education our community expects and our students need to succeed,” the statement said.
“Importantly, the responsibility now shifts to state leaders to act. We urge them to take this decision seriously and work swiftly to implement a funding model that truly supports our schools, our educators, and, most importantly, our students. Wyoming’s future depends on it.”
Campbell County School District 1 Superintendent Alex Ayers called it “a very strong ruling in support of public, K-12 education.” Noteworthy in it were both the acknowledgement of the state’s top witnesses as credible, Ayers said, as well as a note that the court will maintain jurisdiction over the case until the constitutional violations have been fully remedied.
Legislative onus
So what does this mean for the Legislature?
2025 is what’s known as a recalibration year in Wyoming. That refers to the process wherein state lawmakers assess and update Wyoming’s school funding model.
“The Court notes, because 2025 is a recalibration year, there is an excellent window of opportunity to address these issues,” the judge’s order concludes.
If lawmakers fulfill their duty with recalibration, WEA President Kim Amen said, “that it should mean that our class sizes remain at a smaller class-size level. It should mean that we have the resources we need [for] mental health counselors and [school resource] officers. We should see support staff in our schools, which is very very needed at this moment.”
Amen called the ruling a major win for education.
“I am hopeful that our Legislature will do the right thing and that they will follow the constitution … and make sure that we are fully funding our schools, because our schools are the heart of our communities,” she said.
Recalibration won’t take place until later in the year.
Meantime, Nethercott’s amendment passed by a vote of 19-12. The bill it was attached to also passed the Senate. If House members concur with the Senate’s amendments, the bill will go to the governor’s desk for his signature.
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