In defying constitutional school funding mandates lawmakers hurt teachers and students

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature Covenes

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When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to become a teacher. But by my late teens I realized I didn’t like being in school all day, so why would I spend my adult life working in one?

I don’t know how I would have done if I had walked down that career path. What I know now, after watching and writing about education for many years in Wyoming, is that I admire the teaching profession.

But if I was a teacher in this state today, or studying to be one, I’d look at how legislators fund public schools and question how serious Wyoming lawmakers are about improving, or even maintaining, our educational system.

Wyoming has lost every lawsuit over school funding since the 1980s. In a landmark 1995 decision, the state Supreme Court declared the entire K-12 funding system unconstitutional and established a “basket of educational goods and services” that forced the state to calculate the actual cost of education, rather than appropriate the amount of money legislators deemed available.

Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher ruled last February that the state is again unconstitutionally underfunding education. The state is failing to adequately pay teachers and staff, properly adjust for inflation and provide sufficient funding for mental health counselors, school safety resource officers, nutritional programs and computers for students.

Beginning in 2005, the state Supreme Court ordered the Legislature to conduct a “recalibration” of its school funding model every five years. Froelicher wrote that the iteration of that cycle set to begin in summer 2025 was “an excellent time” to fix these problems.

The Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration unanimously approved a $1.8 billion bill ahead of the budget session that begins Monday. On Jan. 23, when it began its final meeting, the committee had cut the state consultant’s evidence-based funding recommendation for a $100 million increase to only about $12 million.

That’s not unusual, given that lawmakers often toss the private consultant’s findings aside and do whatever they please. But on the heels of Froelicher’s meticulously detailed 186-page ruling it seemed purposely defiant, so educators and others told the committee it wasn’t doing its job.

Several amendments added $30 million, but the Wyoming Education Association — which sued the state, leading to the judge’s order — isn’t buying the committee’s claim that it reasonably compromised on the issues. Neither am I.

The bill initially cut 600 core-subject teaching positions. The committee eventually reduced that cut to about 300. But the final version of the draft bill passed by lawmakers increases student-teacher ratios for middle and high schools from 21:1 to 25:1.

More students equals more work for teachers, especially with fewer of them in the classrooms. 

The average salary paid to teachers by districts was $65,265 for the 2024-25 school year. The recalibration bill would raise the average teacher salary to $70,560. 

But the state’s consultant heard testimony from education experts that said a liveable starting salary for Wyoming teachers would be $70,000. One of the primary reasons is the high cost of housing in the state. I’ve heard school districts complain they’ve tried to hire teachers who turned down the jobs after they realized they couldn’t find an affordable place to live.

Legislators have inconsistently approved “external cost adjustments,” or temporary funding increases, in recent years. In fact, the Legislature didn’t even consider an “external cost adjustment” last year until a day after Froelicher’s ruling.

The recalibration bill would allow for such an adjustment every two years. But the Wyoming Education Association called it a two-year salary freeze with no guarantees for future adjustments. If future Legislatures fail to provide for a full and ongoing external cost adjustment after two years, the result would be a four-year salary freeze, a significant loss of purchasing power for teachers and staff. 

Another significant objection to the bill came from legislators’ insistence that all 48 school districts in Wyoming must get on the state health insurance plan, now only used by Natrona County School District No. 1.

Currently school districts work with employees to design benefit packages that meet their needs. For example, Sheridan County districts use some of their insurance funding to support salaries above the state model and offer benefits to offset the cost of living. 

Chase Christensen, a Sheridan high school principal, said many employees pay little or nothing toward their health insurance premium and may receive district contributions to health savings accounts. But under the state plan, employees pay 18% of their premium.

“Under the proposed change, employees could see their costs increase by several hundred dollars per month,” Chase noted. “For many, that increase would effectively erase the raise being promised. On paper, salaries rise. In reality, take home pay barely changes.”

In it’s current form bill now says the Legislature will study the impacts of adding school districts to the state insurance plan. It’s a bone of contention that could once again become heated as the measure advances.

But what concerns Wyoming teachers is more than just salaries and benefits. 

Last year the state expanded a school voucher program that would provide parents $7,000 a year per child in state money to pay for private and religious school tuition and homeschooling expenses. While the program is on hold pending a lawsuit, the fact Wyoming legislators voted to take a lot of money away from the public schools that they’ve already been judged to be underfunding is mind-boggling.

The state is appealing Froelicher’s ruling, so the Legislature bought itself more time to recalibrate during the 2026 interim. “We just don’t have a silver bullet to fix everything within one fell swoop, and it’s going to take time to hear all the testimony,” claimed the committee’s co-chair, Rep. Scott Heiner, R-Green River.

But Albany County School District No. 1’s business manager, Trystin Green, shot Heiner’s excuse down stone cold.

“Another thing that’s a little bit hard for us to see is how we can pass a gun law in three months and allow guns in schools for kids,” said Green, “but we need 24 months to determine if we need extra counselors or [school resource officers] or extra support staff to address our mental health issues?”

There’s plenty of reasons to agree with the WEA’s conclusion about recalibration thus far: “The committee offered no real fixes and instead dangled scraps from the table.”

Those scraps are teacher pay raises that seem far less significant than when they were first dangled last summer. And they don’t begin to make up for not addressing critical school funding shortages identified by the judge that Wyoming cannot afford to put on the backburner.

Whatever your stake is in public education — teachers, students, parents, staff, administrators, trustees and members of the public — please let your legislators know that Wyoming needs to fully fund our schools. If lawmakers don’t listen, they will inevitably find themselves back in court, spending yet more money on lawyers instead of education.