Wyoming Lawmakers Hope $3.9 Billion School Spending Package Good Enough For Courts

For the Wyoming lawmakers who've spent months forging a roughly $3.9 billion, two-year spending plan for K-12 schools, questions about how the courts would view it loomed like a specter.

Senate File 81, a bill cementing a nearly wholesale reassessment of what public K-12 education costs into law, is now headed to Gov. Mark Gordon’s desk after clearing the Legislature on Thursday.

A key driver of the Legislature’s late changes to the bill, Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, was optimistic in a Friday interview.

“I just think it’s a great outcome for Wyoming education. I appreciate the fact that we came to consensus between the two chambers,” said Rothfuss. “And the other point I would make is, I’m confident the court will look very favorably on (these efforts).”

Rothfuss said an amendment he fielded made the bill constitutional with respect to an earlier court order, that the Legislature furnish counselors for elementary schools.

Other things Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher ordered the Legislature to do last February include filling funding gaps in the school lunch or nutrition programs, supplying school resource officers, and providing one computer or tablet for each child.

Though a temporary grouping of lawmakers, the Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration is prolonging its life until the 2027 session year to consider those requirements in greater detail.

But Froelicher’s order is not necessarily the last word. The Wyoming Supreme Court has paused that order while the high court reviews whether the district court judge made it correctly.    

House Appropriations Chair John Bear, R-Gillette, addressed the issue from the House floor Tuesday.

“This is something that has not been done as scheduled per the courts for 15 years. We must do this,” said Bear.

“Should we not pass this bill and this amendment, it could be another branch that makes these decisions for us,” Bear added. He was arguing at the time to simplify the bill’s regional cost adjustments for salaries. “Let’s put this bill into the best shape possible to win in court, so we can go forward with our responsibilities and our duties.”

Wyoming’s courts are involved in the Legislature’s education spending because the Wyoming Supreme Court has held over a series of cases that education is a fundamental right in Wyoming, and the state Constitution demands a well-funded K-12 system. 

In The Sausage

The state Senate on Thursday approved the House’s many changes to the bill.

The House removed from the bill a provision that would have capped superintendents’ compensation at 233% of the average teacher compensation.

It kept and clarified a provision Rothfuss had advanced, letting school districts choose their own insurance programs as they have in the past, but tightening their insurance payouts to their actual, rather than recommended, quantity of employees.

The final version lets schools create an overflow account for teacher funding if they wish, but doesn’t require them to do that.

For the next three years, school districts can’t increase spending on teacher compensation by more than 10% per year. That’s an increase from the Senate’s earlier cap of 5% - and a provision meant to prevent a bidding war between districts as the new teacher raises spark a potential hiring frenzy.

Money to districts will now be rooted in an average daily attendance of the prior two years – or from the prior year; whichever is greater. That’s a metric likely to fluctuate more than the earlier measure, which drew from the greater of a three-year or prior-year average.    

This bill recommends an average teacher salary of $75,863 per year – an increase from about $67,000.

The “teacher silo” remains. Bemoaned by multiple local school district leaders and some lawmakers as rigid, the silo groups wages teachers, paraprofessionals, tutors, paraeducators and instructional aides into one part of the state grant.

Districts won’t be able to pull from that part to fund other things like equipment, administration or support staff.

The House had removed a compromise regional-cost-adjustment method for teachers living in areas of great wealth, replacing it with a simpler funding method that uses just one test rather than the best of three tests. But, the House undid that maneuver one day later.

Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, praised the recalibration committee’s work throughout this session, but lamented the bill’s cost.

Unsuccessfully, Scott had urged the Senate to pare the bill’s spending.

“I lost that argument,” he said Thursday when the Senate voted to adopt the House’s changes. But overall, the bill “is one that is going to work very well. It’s something we needed to do to make our finance system work.”

Scott asked the Senate to adopt the concurrence and thank the recalibration committee members.

The Legislature has not passed a full recalibration bill since 2011.

While many lawmakers see this as a failure, Rothfuss argued from the floor last month that in 2015, the Legislature made a calculated decision not to recalibrate: the school districts didn’t want to see change at that point. 

Unpacking The Argument ‘Lost’

The argument Scott “lost” started on Feb. 19, when he told the Senate that the historic investment returns Wyoming enjoyed this year likely won’t recur, and the Legislature should take a more sober look at “the spending in this education area” and whether it’s improving student success.

He said he doesn’t believe it will.  

The Legislature this session advanced around $290 in biennium spending to the $3.6 billion K-12 package. 

Some districts have prioritized connecting individually with students, which is a key to success, Scott continued. But, he said, other districts priorities are “creating a sports empire, or a bureaucratic empire.”

“I don’t see this (increase) doing anything about that,” he said.  “It’s a big enough spending measure there’s some virtues in putting this on the record: as to who will be responsible for the future tax increase that I think ultimately will occur if we pass this sort of thing.” 

Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, tried without success to remedy what he saw as a defect in the bill: that some small schools sitting a great distance from their school district centers may be short teachers under the new model.

Albany, Carbon, Johnson, Natrona and Platte County districts each have “co-located” schools, which are multiple schools grouped into one building.

The bill allows even small districts to enjoy a minimum of 17 teachers rather than a lesser, student-proportionate quantity that may winnow their topics scope.

But small, far-flung schools within larger districts don’t enjoy that same minimum, which Crago called a “hold harmless” feature of this bill’s predecessor.

“They’re going to lose funding for a handful of teachers,” Crago told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday phone interview.

Ultimately he voted to accept the House’s changes to the recalibration bill, but not without voicing his concerns Thursday to the Senate.

Rothfuss told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that as just one member of the recalibration committee, he’s open to vetting Crago’s concern ahead of the 2027 lawmaking session.

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.