Growing up in Wyoming with a huge extended family was a gift. It shaped who I am in ways I’m still discovering. We had cousins of every age, aunts and uncles who blurred generational lines, and Sunday dinners that pulled us into the same room again and again. We lived life together.
Opinion
We were not always gentle with one another. Our love language came with pranks, and no one was immune. And the snipe hunt? That was a rite of passage.
If you have never heard of it, here is how it works: There is no such thing as a snipe, but someone older tells a very serious story about one. In our family, the snipe was a shy, dim bird that only came out at dusk. You could lure it by hiding in the bushes, chirping softly and waiting patiently with a net. If you were lucky, it might wander in. The older cousin or uncle would step aside so you could have the honor of catching it. They would sneak back to whisper encouragement: “Just a little longer. You are so close.”
These hunts rarely ended in laughter for everyone. Sometimes there were tears, sometimes yelling, occasionally fights. No one likes being made a fool, especially by people they trust.
The worst part is not lying in the dark chirping into the void. It is the walk back to the house. Heart sinking, net empty, realizing you were the joke.
That is what it feels like reading Wyoming’s current school funding recalibration proposal.
To understand why educators are uneasy, you have to stop looking at the bill as a spreadsheet and start looking at it as lived experience. From the inside, this feels like the middle of the hunt — the part where you are told the bird is real and the waiting is worth it. You stay still because the people you trust say that is what you are supposed to do. You want to believe. You want to belong.
On paper, lawmakers say the bill increases education funding. The total goes up, the average salary goes up, headlines say compromise. From the classroom, it sounds like the same reassurance whispered in the dark: “Just a little longer.”
What matters is not whether a number went up compared to last year. What matters is whether it covers the cost of what the state is legally and morally required to provide. Whether the formula translates into real stability for districts and real take-home pay for teachers, paraprofessionals, custodians, bus drivers and other support staff.
Wyoming already asked that question and answered it.
The state hired consultants. It commissioned an evidence-based model that asked what it actually costs to educate students adequately in Wyoming —not in theory, but in real communities with real costs. That model answered with evidence, logic and specificity. And then the Legislature chose to fund something less.
By the state’s own documents, the evidence-based model comes in roughly $88 million higher than what the current recalibration bill funds. That is not spin. That is not a rounding error. That is the difference between a system built to meet expectations and one designed to manage shortfalls.
Supporters will say the bill still increases funding compared to current law. There are also real birds called snipes. Both statements miss the point.
An increase that still lands below the cost is not adequacy. It is just slowing the fall.
The bill raises the model average salary, but in many districts salaries already sit near that number. Inflation has eaten the difference. Teachers are told they are getting more while still juggling housing costs, childcare, healthcare premiums and student loans. It looks generous on paper but feels hollow in practice.
At the same time, the bill funds fewer teachers by assuming larger class sizes. Fewer funded positions mean fewer adults in buildings, more students per class, fewer interventions and less flexibility for kids who do not fit neatly into a standardized system. More managing, less teaching.
The bill also shifts districts into the state health insurance pool, stripping local boards of the ability to negotiate benefits that reflect their workforce and region. For years we have been told Wyoming values freedom and local control. This change quietly removes both.
And now there is another twist. Teacher salaries would be pulled out of the block grant entirely and funded through a centralized, statewide salary model. On paper, it is sold as clarity and equity. In reality, it fundamentally changes how risk is distributed.
Teacher pay is the largest investment districts make. Removing it from the block grant does not remove the cost, it removes local flexibility. When the model is wrong, districts can no longer rebalance staffing, respond to cost-of-living differences, or protect programs when expenses rise faster than projections.
Wyoming is not uniform. It costs more to live and work in Laramie, Campbell, and Teton counties than in places where the baseline is set. Under the current system, districts could try to compensate. Under this one, that flexibility disappears.
When the pressure moves, it always lands in the same place. Larger classes, fewer supports, reduced offerings and budget instability schools did not choose but are forced to manage.
This matters even more because of the court ruling. In February 2025, a judge ruled that Wyoming was unconstitutionally underfunding its schools. The ruling was direct. The basket of goods was not fully funded. Counselors, nurses, safety, nutrition, and technology were shortchanged. The Legislature was ordered to fix it.
For a moment, it felt like the porch light came on. Like someone finally said, “Yes, what you are seeing is real. Yes, the strain matters. Let us fix it.”
Instead, the basket was reshaped to cost less.
This is the moment in the hunt when after all the waiting, you stop feeling hopeful and start feeling foolish. When reassurance thins. When you realize no matter how still you stay or how faithfully you chirp, nothing is coming.
Every snipe hunt ends the same way. Not with a bird, but with a long walk back to the house, net empty, trying to laugh along with the older kids snickering from the porch.
That is where teachers are standing now.
The hardest part is not the funding gap itself. It is the whiplash. Being told you were right, only to watch the system ignore the answer it asked for.
Teachers will adapt. We always do. We will cover gaps. We will make it work for students, but we also know what that costs. There are fewer and fewer willing to keep paying that price. Burnout is real. And in Wyoming, it is not students causing it.
It is adults.
The quiet truth is that for many talented educators, this may be the final straw. Because this time, we know it did not have to be this way.
So ask yourself this. Does a one-size-fits-all system imposed by state government feel like something built by the Cowboy State for its people? Or does it feel like outside ideas forced onto local communities while politicians keep folks distracted with loud talking points and shiny side fights?
Those two things are not the same. And pretending they are is how decisions get made for people, not with them.