Wyoming to appeal ruling on education funding

Wyoming will appeal the February court decision that found the state unconstitutionally underfunded public schools, according to a Wednesday filing. 

The notice of appeal filed in Laramie District Court asks the Wyoming Supreme Court to review the case anew. 

The appeal comes a month after Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher ruled the Wyoming Legislature has been failing to meet constitutional duties in the way it funds public schools. The failures ranged from improperly adjusting for inflation and not funding school resource officers to providing salaries insufficient to recruit and retain the personnel needed to deliver the quality of education guaranteed in the Wyoming Constitution.

The case has major implications for the public school landscape in Wyoming. Superintendents and plaintiffs celebrated Froelicher’s decision, telling WyoFile they hope it enables them to hire mental health counselors, fund better nutrition programs, pay for safer buildings and offer better salaries to return Wyoming to a state that attracts and retains the highest-quality teachers.

Plaintiffs oppose the state’s request to halt the ruling while an appeal unfolds, according to court documents. Granting the state’s request “would have the effect of perpetuating the violation of a fundamental constitutional right,” plaintiffs argued.

“This is not an ordinary case where delay might merely cause inconvenience, and the court can easily postpone implementation without harm to anyone,” they argued. “It is a case of delaying the enforcement of right that affects children now and throughout their lives.”

The basket of goods

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. That review process is known as recalibration.

Wyoming hasn’t met those mandates, 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.

In his 186-page ruling released in February, Froelicher wrote the Legislature has violated the state constitution on several accounts. 

“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 a manner consistent with his order “to assure the school financing system for operations and for school facilities are constitutional.”

Froelicher’s ruling could signal that the state must pump more money into public education at a time when lawmakers have been more interested in cutting spending and promoting private alternatives.

It seems to have had an immediate influence; Senators voted two days after the decision came down 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. 

Recalibration process

Wyoming also filed a motion for a stay pending an appeal — basically asking to freeze the judge’s ruling until an appeal decision is handed down. 

“It is in the interest of justice and will avoid waste of judicial resources to maintain the status quo and stay any further proceedings in this Court pending the outcome of the high court’s review,” that filing argued.

Many of the constitutional deficiencies the ruling identified will be considered and addressed through recalibration of the school funding model, the state’s filing continued, which the Legislature has already authorized.  

In a response, plaintiffs alleged that argument to be disingenuous. “The Legislature was already required to conduct a recalibration and had already planned to conduct the 2025 recalibration without regard to the court decision,” they said. 

Judge Froelicher on Thursday denied the state’s request for a stay.