Beau Fulton, a parent and school board member in Park County, remembers when his Powell school district used to receive dozens of applicants for educational staff positions.
The pool has diminished in recent years as Wyoming salaries have fallen in comparison to other states, he said.
“Now sometimes it is in the single digits,” Fulton told lawmakers Tuesday.
It was a recurring theme during the Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration meeting in Casper.
“The hiring environment in Wyoming right now is absolutely the toughest I’ve ever seen in my career, and that’s 31 years in administration,” Carbon County School District 1 Superintendent Mike Hamel said.
Two years ago, Sheridan County District 2 Superintendent Scott Stults said, “for the first time this has ever happened in the 27 years I’ve been in Sheridan District 2, we went without a teacher. We had a machining teacher [position] that we could not fill for a full year. That speaks a little bit to the quality and to the quantity of applicants out there.”
His district, he continued, experienced a 72% decrease in elementary school applicants between 2016-2025. Lagging salaries certainly factor into that, Stults said. “Salaries matter.”
A string of parents, teachers and educators testified before the committee, many urging lawmakers to properly fund education staff salaries — be it veteran instructors, janitors or classroom aides.
At the end of the two-day meeting, committee members, who are tasked with overseeing Wyoming’s public school funding “recalibration” process, appeared amenable to the salary pleas. Lawmakers directed legislative staff to draft a recalibration bill that would set average weighted teacher salaries at $70,000, a bump from the model’s current weighted average of under $60,000. Other suggestions for a draft include paying substitute teachers more, providing more resources for career and technical education programs and setting a cap on how much superintendents get paid based on district teacher salaries.
However, lawmakers may delay funding decisions for school nutrition programs, school resource officers, mental health counselors and other facets. That’s because committee member Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, asked legislative staff to hold those topics over for further study during the next legislative off-season, or interim.
“There are certain things that we just need more data on,” Bear said.
The committee’s co-chair, Sen. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, stressed that it’s still relatively early in the exhaustive process of assessing the state’s funding model.
The draft that comes out of this week’s meetings, Salazar said, “is a beginning.” He expects there will be some tweaking, he said, and promised more public comment opportunities at the committee’s next meeting in January.
Ultimately, the process will shape what Wyoming’s public school landscape looks like, with significant implications for the state’s students. Lawmakers, many of whom are parents, said it’s not a task they take lightly.
“This has been a heavy lift,” said co-chair Rep. Scott Heiner, R-Green River. “For many of us, this is one of the most difficult committees we’ve been on.”
Mandates and court rulings
The recalibration process is required every five years to ensure the Legislature fulfills its constitutional duty to “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction.”
To do that, the state’s consultants, Picus, Odden and Associates, have been holding meetings with Wyoming educators, analyzing data and making recommendations over the course of many months.
The consultants presented their preliminary findings to the committee in September. Amid the minutiae and acronym-heavy language of education, several issues emerged as topics of high interest for educators and lawmakers — including teacher retention, school resource officers, school nutrition programs and technology.
Many of those overlap with areas identified in a February district court ruling that found the Wyoming Legislature violated the state’s constitution by underfunding public education and must amend that. The ruling, which the state is appealing, is the latest in a string of court cases that have further delineated the state’s education obligations.
In his 186-page order, Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher found the Legislature failed to properly fund the “basket of quality educational goods and services,” that the Wyoming Supreme Court in 1995 ordered lawmakers to set, update and fund every two years.
The judge also found the state failed to properly adjust funding for inflation; failed to provide funding for adequate salaries for teachers and staff; and failed to provide sufficient funding for mental health counselors, school safety resource officers, nutritional programs and computers for students. Lawmakers also have failed to properly assess school buildings for “educational suitability,” and have allowed inadequate facilities to exist for too long without repair or replacement, he ruled.
Though much of this week’s meeting was spent on those provisions the judge identified, some lawmakers cast skepticism on the ruling, portraying it as one person’s opinion that won’t necessarily stand.
The issue of pay
Consultants brought Dr. Christiana Stoddard, a Montana economics professor, to present a report on Wyoming’s teacher and nonteacher labor markets.
Stoddard, who has studied the issue in Wyoming for 20 years, noted that “labor markets really matter because they affect the quality of teachers.” The body of research, she continued, shows that “a high-quality teacher makes a big difference in a classroom for the success of the students.”
Wyoming used to rank well above surrounding states for teacher pay, she said, but that’s changed. Utah and Colorado have actually surpassed Wyoming, while other states are closing in.
Wyoming school districts, she explained, generally pay more than what the state model calls for. The state model’s weighted average for the school year 2024/2025 was a little under $60,000 according to a graph Stoddard presented. Because districts find funds from elsewhere to pad that, the state’s actual average salary that year was a little over $65,000, according to her data.
Wyoming continues to do very well when it comes to keeping its percentage of very-low-paid teachers small, Stoddard said. What is also small, however, is the percentage of teachers who are very highly paid.
Wyoming teacher pay has eroded in relation to other professions, she said, and about half of Wyoming’s new education hires are green with no teaching experience.
Stoddard recommended that the committee set the state’s funding model teaching salary to ensure the weighted average salary is equal to $70,560 for 2025/26. That, Stoddard said, would make Wyoming more competitive with Colorado and Utah, which tallied average teacher salaries around $70,000 in 2024/2025.
Kiley McConnell, a second-year teacher in Sheridan School District 3, urged the committee to make $70,000 the starting salary, not the average. In Sheridan County, where the average home costs $400,000, McConnell said, it’s not possible to buy a home on her current salary of $48,000.
“The opportunity for me to be investing back in my community, wanting to stay where I am and continue to teach becomes more and more difficult because of the salary limits,” she testified.
To be continued …
Housing strains came up several times during the meeting, along with issues like how to fund counselors, finding resources for increasing disciplinary needs, whether individual computer devices are necessary or harmful for students and the role that school nutrition can play in education.
Lawmakers also expressed doubts about finding solutions to all the issues before them within the timeframe. And given Bear’s suggestion, several topics may have to wait until 2026 for more thorough investigation before the state determines how to fund them.
Lawmakers also issued directions related to school insurance, reimbursement schedules, using a hedonic index to adjust costs over time and capital construction guide posts.
When asked at the meeting Wednesday what message the public can help spread about recalibration, Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, emphasized that the committee members take their task very seriously.
“We are going to commit to the people of the state of Wyoming, from my perspective, to do the very best job we possibly can with the resources that we have to take proper and just care of our kids,” Neiman said.
People who are involved in education, he said, have students’ best interests in mind. “That’s not lost on this committee or on your Wyoming Legislature,” he said, but he noted that lawmakers have to balance those priorities with all the other constituent concerns.
The committee will take up the draft recalibration bill when it meets again Jan. 22-23 in Cheyenne.
It seems to me that studies and tinkering have done more harm than good. We need highly qualified teachers. That takes pay. We need continuing education for teachers. That takes money. Kids need wholesome food. I am not sure what happened to school lunches since I was a kid, but it was terrible. We had oatmeal, cream of wheat or rice porridge for breakfast and always something hearty for lunch, simple but hearty. I understand food costs money but last time I checked we paid for it. We used to do a lot of things we don’t do now and it’s showing. School counselors were rare when I was a kid. Now they’re a necessity. That speaks volumes about our society. Sometimes progress isn’t.
How many decades since you attended a public school? Your experience is outdated and doesn’t make sense today.
Instead of wishing for your “good ol’ days”, recognize that current teachers are more well equipped to provide solutions and ideas to address education in the current century. Try listening to them instead of thinking you know better than they do.
This recommendation is not a “win” for teachers. It’s legislators trying to buy teacher votes at pennies on the dollar. These “raises” are woefully inadequate and they remain in violation of the constitution and the court order. This is the legislature handing out scraps and hoping teachers and the public won’t notice all while failing to deliver what teachers have been consistently telling them they need to succeed. 1 to 1 technology, elementary counselors, SROs and food service have been neglected. This is NOT a win for teachers.
While I am thankful the legislature is considering staff salaries during this recalibration, I do wonder how that will work with a block funding model.
What I really want to comment on is the lack of consideration for mental health resources in schools. In Wyoming, suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth/young adults, per the Wyoming dept of health vital statistics. Counselors in our schools are working incredible hard to help students with limited manpower and resources. Many are trying to help students that are unable to find/afford mental health services in the community and school counselors might be their only help. Also, school nurse funding would be beneficial to help as well.
Anyone who has watched the legislature in the last few years under stands the clout Rep. Bear has over the entire legislature and is most likely running the WY freedom caucus. I understand that other legislators don’t like disagreeing with him as they won’t get support for their own projects, but I would urge someone to be a leader and stand up in support of funding for our children’s mental health.
Raising the pay for teachers is critical to the quality of our schools. But so is the presence of school counselors to support students in need and especially nutrition. Kids can’t learn without adequate nutrition. The legislature cannot “pick and choose, or punt “ when it comes funding public schools and the students they serve. It comes as no surprise, however, that lawmakers have their priorities wrong, wrong, wrong.