State lawmakers are drafting a bill that would set the average teacher salary to about $70,000. It’s one of many proposed changes to public school funding lawmakers plan to consider during the next legislative session this winter.
Right now, Wyoming is in what’s known as “recalibration.” The process of reevaluating the funding model for public schools happens every five years. So state lawmakers are re-examining everything from teacher salaries to nutrition to school safety, as well as funding for librarians, nurses, and school counselors.
Private consultants hired by the state presented recommendations last week during a hearing of the Select Committee for School Finance Recalibration. They were led by Lawerence Picus, who has helmed Wyoming’s recalibration in the past.
In general, the consultants called for better funding to keep up with market forces and to keep in line with a recent court mandate directing the state to boost funding for mental health counselors, school resource officers and more.
Teacher pay ‘balancing act’
Chris Stoddard, one of the consultants, said Wyoming’s current funding model provides for average teacher salaries between $50,000-$60,000. But to attract and retain qualified teachers, schools in the state have had to pay actual salaries in the $60,000-$70,000 range. That means individual districts are pulling money from the rest of their budget, or hiring fewer teachers overall, to cover educator salaries.
“If we look at what districts were actually paying, you can see that districts were paying more than the model salary, and that the gap between the two sort of grew, especially in the post-pandemic period,” Stoddard said. “I've always been slightly uncomfortable saying, ‘Here's the right salary,’ because there's a range. And higher salaries, you're going to draw in different kinds of individuals relative to lower ones.”
The recommended average teacher salary of $70,560 tries to account for the fact that many teachers are off during the summer months. Stoddard said the recommended figure is about 79% of what similarly situated individuals make in other professional and technical fields.
Public commenters and public education advocates have balked at this logic in the past, saying it’s an insult to teachers. At the hearing this week, educators and school officials reiterated that teacher pay ought to be higher.
“Starting salary should be $70,000 instead of our average salary, in order to get new teachers to come into the state,” said Kiley McConnell, a science teacher from Claremont. “And we need to acknowledge the fact that our teachers are doing 100% of the job, not 79% of a job.”
McConnell said current salaries leave home ownership out of reach and require many teachers to take on summer jobs.
“This was the first year that I have not worked a summer job,” McConnell said. “I know a lot of my coworkers end up with seasonal work because that's what's available during those times. A lot of people work for Weed and Pest and they'll spray weeds. I know other folks who will do landscaping. Ultimately, it's seasonal positions that are probably meant for college students.”
After a day and a half of discussion and testimony, Sen. Tim Salazar (R-Riverton) said lawmakers have to weigh education needs against every other thing the state funds.
“I’ve been in the legislature since 2016 and this is, without a doubt, the most difficult committee that I've served on, primarily because I want to do the very best job I can,” he said. “I want to give the best education we can to our students in Wyoming, but it's a balancing act.”
Court ruling hangs over discussion
In February, a court ruled Wyoming had chronically underfunded its public schools and ordered the state to do better. The state is appealing the court decision. Yet during the committee hearing this week, some lawmakers were skeptical about the validity of that ruling.
The court directed lawmakers to better fund teacher salaries, school resource officers and school counselors, as well as providing more laptops and hot meals to students. Sen. Troy McKeown (R-Gillette) took issue with the call to provide one laptop for every student.
“As I go through our state constitution, I don't see anywhere where it says every student needs a computer,” he said. “I'm not saying they do or they don't. But once again, I'm back to: We have a judge making a statement and calling it unconstitutional if we don't do it.”
Sen. Bo Biteman (R-Ranchester) also took issue with a presentation slide noting the decision of “the court.”
“I would just point out, for the record, it says ‘the court’ in your slides. I would just point out it was not like ‘the court’ plural. It was a judge,” Biteman said. “So we could just simply put ‘a judge decided this.’ It would be like saying ‘the legislature’ if one legislator said something the rest of the 90 [legislators] might not agree with.”
School lunches, campus safety and student mental health
Nate Martin, executive director of the progressive nonprofit Better Wyoming and a member of the Albany County School District No. 1 School Board, urged the committee to advance a bill that complies with the court order by boosting funds for hot meals, school resource officers and school counselors.
“A district judge also specifically laid out all three of these things in a court order, in a lawsuit that the legislature is going to need a legal miracle akin to something that's contained in a John Grisham novel to win,” Martin said. “I just hope that you consider these things and don't stop at raising teacher salaries and assume that we've adequately funded our public school system.”
The consultants recommended funding universal free meals, citing research that shows such programs “contribute to stronger academic achievement, better student conduct, and more positive school environments.”
Fully funding school nutrition would require closing the $18 million gap between what Wyoming districts are paying to provide hot meals ($58 million) and the amount they’re able to cover with federal money or by charging for meals (about $40 million). Currently, that $18 million is drawn from the rest of a district’s general funding.
The consultants didn’t recommend specific salaries for school resource officers, but suggested funding at least one position for every secondary school while also providing for training, materials “and possibly even police vehicles.”
The consultants also recommend providing districts enough money to hire one school counselor for every “prototypical” elementary school (288 students) and one counselor for every 250 middle and high school students. They recommended there should be at least one counselor in districts smaller than those cutoffs.
The consultants’ recommendations also included nearly doubling the number of nurses. They suggest hiring one nurse for every school rather than one for every 750 students, as the current model dictates. They noted in rural corners of Wyoming, it might take several schools, separated by vast distances, to hit the current 750 student threshold.
The recommendations would cut library positions. School libraries have been front and center of another legislative hearing this interim. Earlier this month, the judiciary committee advanced a bill banning certain books in school libraries and restricting the children’s sections of public libraries.
Adjusting distributions for schools based on location and size
Wyoming could also change the way it calculates external cost adjustments, which try to keep up with inflation, and regional cost adjustments (RCA), which try to provide equivalent resources across school districts.
Calculating the RCA, for example, now uses multiple measures, including one that hasn’t been updated since 2005. Lori Taylor, one of the consultants, recommended updating the RCA to simply reflect what she called the Wyoming hedonic wage index — a measure that takes several different factors into account, such as how close employees live to amenities like national parks.
“A mechanism for regular updates to the RCA would be desirable,” Taylor told the lawmakers. “Twenty years is a long time to go between updating these puppies, and it would be desirable, perhaps, to think of the hedonic wage index as a formula, not a number, and updating it regularly as uncontrollable cost factors change in the state.”
The consultants also recommended “smoothing” the state’s small schools adjustment. That’s the formula it uses to decide resources for schools with fewer than 50 students.
Right now, that formula results in a steep “cliff” between 49 and 50 students, such that losing just one student results in a disproportionate drop in allocated state resources. The consultants proposed a new model that leads to a smoother reduction in resources as a school’s student headcount decreases.
“You still get the same amount of funding that you would have received at that one student minimum, so no one receives less funding than they do currently,” said Amanda Brown, one of the consultants. “It also eliminates that funding cliff.”
Legislative staff will craft a bill based on the consultants’ work, and the recalibration committee will discuss that bill in January.
