Ahead of the 2026 general election, Wyoming Public Radio and KHOL Jackson offered all candidates in competitive races for statewide and federal offices 20-minute interviews to introduce themselves to voters and discuss their positions. The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Steve Harshman is the Republican Party’s nominee running for superintendent of public instruction. His campaign website is www.harshmanforwyoming.com. He spoke with KHOL’s Sophia Boyd-Fliegel.
Click here to listen to a special episode of Open Spaces previewing the races for statewide and federal offices.
Sophia Boyd-Fliegel: You like to say that the tone at the top matters when it comes to this position. How would you describe the current tone, and how does that compare to what you would like to project?
Steve Harshman: I want to really focus on – I think it's been kind of a national thing since COVID – but I think my main deal in this elected office, it's the only one of the electeds that really runs a department of state government and a Department of Education. [I] really want to build this on great customer service and really great collaboration, because a lot of this is compliance and reporting and all those things. We want to do that really with fantastic customer service.
Also, the piece of that tone you're talking about. Our teachers, every day, unless you've been in a school and in a classroom and worked there, it's incredible, the work. Every issue in society shows up at our public schools, and our teachers and our school people, the whole education team, they're doing a great job with that.
Now, it's not perfect. I mean, I'm a father of four children. I've made mistakes as a parent, you know? That's part of this thing. But I think setting up a culture where it's just continuous improvement is so important, to really honor that work that's being done, from, gosh, taking home with them, the grading papers, to the work, to the worrying, to your last waking thoughts, to the fundraising to buy stuff for your classroom or your program, to all those things. There's a lot of triumph and a lot of victories going on every day across Wyoming with our kids and in our schools and our education team.
It's that entire team. It's from the bus driver – some of the kids' favorite adult they see is the bus driver, who's the first one to see them in the morning. So really honoring that process, because [it] truly is what has made America stand out in our history.
You think how radical of an idea this was. This is before even our current Constitution. This is back in the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, free public education, just so radical. It's changed our country and changed our world, frankly. We want to really strengthen that and build on that, because our kids, [they’re] about 30% of Wyoming's population, 20 to 30%, 25%. But they're 100% of our future, and that's the bottom line. We're gonna pour into this, and the tone is really important in any leadership position. Whether you're the leader of your family as a parent or you're the leader of your business, the tone you set is so important because we're going to eventually become what we say we are. We're going to have really high expectations and great customer service and keep moving our great state forward.
SBF: You, of course, are super in touch with educators from your decades of experience and your wife's experience. What are you hearing from teachers on the ground as to what they would need specifically from leadership in Cheyenne to stay longer, teach better?
SH: Part of this is how we've kind of evolved. Someone asked me what's changed. I think the biggest thing is teachers had more time to teach.
SBF: How do you mean?
SH: There is a lot of box checking off going on now. There are standards to meet. Lots of time is put into testing. I think it's just gotten into a deal where it's more, more, more. And the state board – I brought a bill six years ago or so to slash the number of standards, because it all grew to such a point. Gosh, I remember first grade English Language Arts [had] 41 English standards. The state board is working on that. As an elected superintendent, you're a voting member of the state board, and we'll continue to push that so we make sure we make the important things important and we don't evolve to a place where, holy smokes, that we don't even recognize a little while later.
SBF: I've heard you talk about trying to reduce those standards on students and teachers. I guess wouldn't you be in a worse position to do that as an administrator versus a lawmaker? Like you said, you've brought bills to try to help. How would you actually accomplish that or try to accomplish that as superintendent?
SH: The state Board of Education sets the standards for our schools, and you are one of 11, and you're a voting member on that, so it's really important. Absolutely, you're gonna be at the table with those discussions 100%, whereas a lawmaker, you're trying to influence it really from the outside – which you can do, and I've worked hard at over the years. So I think it's a different role, but I think a very important role. You can do some real good.
SBF: Via the board and maybe your more concentrated power as a stakeholder in the board?
SH: Right. You're one of 11 instead of one of 62, and then one of 31 on the other end of the hall, you know?
SBF: Right, right.
SH: It's not an easy process to pass laws, for sure – as it should be.
SBF: Jumping to one of the top topics of this election cycle. I know you've been a vocal opponent of the universal [school] choice program – that's state money for private education – as has your opponent. And since the fate of that program is being litigated, we have been talking to parents here, and some of them say they need that flexibility because public school isn't meeting their child's needs. How do you respond to families in that position?
SH: First of all, I support all kids, whether they're homeschool, private school or public school. But what is the role of government? I think our Wyoming Constitution really provides that guidance. We're prohibited in Article 1, Section 7; Article 3, Section 36; Article 7, Sections 8, 11 and 12. I've been speaking about this a lot. I spoke about it on the House floor, from giving out our state tax dollars to people, entities, organizations not under the control of the state. Then I think Article 16, Section 6, and this is back to 1890, does allow appropriately the necessary support of the poor.
The initial bill back in 2024 included income requirements, and of course, that was all stripped out. I think we see that with special interests in politics nowadays. You pass a good bill, start a program, but it's never enough. ‘Oh, we gotta do more, and more, and more.’ They push these issues too far, and I think they've gotten into some legal, obviously legal, I won't say trouble, but –
SBF: A quagmire of sorts
SH: Yeah. Our Supreme Court now is going to decide it. However they decide that, that's the first thing, right? You gotta, as an elected official, you raise your right hand and swear an oath to our state Constitution and our U.S. Constitution. I thought the bill was unconstitutional when it came for these reasons, for those sections in the Constitution, and I argued that on the floor of the House.
But it passed, so be it. If it's ruled constitutional, we'll work hard to make sure it's a Wyoming program. If you look on there now, there's over 1,000 so-called certified providers. Most of them are out of state, and they're certified by an out-of-state company that we're paying now over $600,000 a year, and growing, to do this. There's no testing, no accountability. You can get online and learn something from somebody in San Francisco or Florida or wherever. I just think if we're going to have a program, let's make it a Wyoming program.
Here in Casper, I toured a little private micro school. If we're going to use money, that's what it should be used for. Teaching in small groups. The parents are volunteering, and a lot of great stuff happening. Certified teachers, the whole works. I just think we, like I said, special interests on not only this issue, but really you see it on all issues.
Wyoming used to have the fewest abortions in the United States, the smallest percentage. We were 50th and .002 or .02. South Dakota, the next one, was more than double us. Then, of course, you had to keep pushing these bills, and now they got thrown out. But those bills stripped out all of our previous laws that we'd put together over years and years and years. So now we're no longer 50th. I think more is not better. Sometimes you find the right deal, but I think sometimes you have lobbyists and special interest groups that keep push, push, push. I think that you don't always have the best policy for Wyoming. We'll see how it turns out, the Steamboat Legacy, but whatever turns out, of course I'll follow the law on that.
SBF: I did speak with Ms. Cordova about this topic, and similarly, she has a similar stance and also kind of a similar, if the Supreme Court allows it to pass into law, a similar critique of, ‘We would want to make sure that the money is able to be spent locally first.’ Do you see any difference in how you would approach the issue between yourself and her?
SH: I think the first thing, I would bring it in-house. I would have a couple employees at the Department of Education who actually certify education providers, and we would interview in Wyoming. Come to Wyoming and interview. If you want to teach a foreign language from San Francisco, come here and interview. We want to make sure you have the chops to do it and the credentials to do it. I think that's the key. You look at how this thing is exploding: End of June, there were 400. End of July, there's over 900. Now, I haven't even checked in the August report, and it's hard to find on the website. I'm sure it's well over 1,000, because it's just a money rush.
SBF: It's like a bonanza, you're saying, that companies are seeing and flooding.
SH: It's part of the whole – Pres. Eisenhower talked about the defense industrial complex, and this is the education industrial complex. It's an out-of-state corporation that does this in other states. And man, they get the contract, and here we go. The more they do, the more it grows. It started at $300,000. Now they certify them. We'll be at three-quarters of a million soon and growing. And so yeah, if it is constitutional, let's make it a Wyoming program so it benefits [groups] like that micro school that I toured here in Casper, Wyoming kids and Wyoming people with Wyoming tax dollars.
SBF: Sticking on the topic of alternative education, I've been learning about the Hathaway Scholarship since I've moved here, something that you were instrumental in helping create 20 years ago. This is a scholarship to reward kids with merit-based scholarships to help kids go to university or community college here in Wyoming. We've largely, I understand, kept that model the same. But I'm wondering: With high school graduates having better options without a four-year degree, do you think that the state is doing enough to support those non-traditional paths, and would you have any room there as superintendent to bolster that?
SH: Just a little history on the Hathaway. It started off as really this academic track, and you had to take a year of foreign language. I remember Marna Strock, Lord rest her soul, was on that, Gov. [Dave] Freudenthal's appointee, and passed by one vote. Now we've changed that. We allow a lot of different things for language, and we've allowed not just academics, your math and science concentrators, we allow concentrators in the arts, performing and visual arts. We allow concentrators in the CTE [career and technical education] classes to qualify for that.
I passed a bill like three years ago. Think of a journeyman electrician or plumber who's learning at our community colleges. They could have qualified for the Hathaway, but they couldn't use it in our community colleges if they wanted to be a journeyman electrician, because it's on-the-job training and learning, and then they take a three-hour college class in the evening per semester. Well, you're not a half-time or a full-time student, so you couldn't qualify. So I passed a bill. That's all taken care of. It's not a two-year community college thing to be a journeyman. It's a five-year commitment. And so, all those things we've adapted and I think we'll continue to adapt.
It's a powerful community college. Most of the kids who are using the Hathaway are at our community colleges, and –
SBF: Oh, most?
SH: Oh, yeah, it's a powerful deal. We started that thing off with $405 million during the natural gas boom and coal was booming, and in the early 2000s, we saved. The trust [for that thing] is over $800 million and growing, and it'll be an important part. All my bills were shut down that year, and I had brought three or four bills for that that kept getting drawered, and I passed a substitute bill amendment on the last day in the House, and that's how the Hathaway was born. I kept working and doing different maneuvers to get it, and I finally used every play I could on the House floor and got it. Then we studied it for a year, brought the bill, and we got going.
I was insistent we name it after Gov. [Stanley] Hathaway, because you think of an adopted kid, Torrington, Wyoming. Flies 50 missions in World War II when you only had to fly 25, and he volunteered another 25. Comes home, rises up, gets educated and becomes governor and $89 in a checking account. [He] finally says he'll support a severance tax, but only if part of it is saved forever, and the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund was born. Of course, that's now the leading revenue generator for state government. It's just incredible. His daughter called me here a few months ago on the sign in Cheyenne, and we had another great talk, and she just thanked me again for naming that after her dad. I was really honored.
That's the beauty of public service. You can do some real good, and those are some things I've been able to accomplish, and it's changed a lot of lives, and it'll continue to. Really, to answer your question, it'll continue to evolve and change and grow. It always does. We continue as things change. It'll evolve, certainly.
SBF: You're certainly a good history storyteller, too, after years of experience. Sticking with a little bit of the funding questions, because I love that history of stashing money away, trying to save it and grow it. I am wondering, though, about if the federal Department of Education is further cut under Pres. Trump. I have seen about 15% of funds for our state's public schools coming from the feds. I don't know if you have a different number on that, but that's what I've seen. Is that on your horizon as something that you're worried about?
SH: Actually, I'm not really, and it's not quite at 15%, but I think about where most of it is. It goes everywhere from Head Start to the community colleges. Some of it's nutrition, which a lot of our districts have already gotten out, which I think is a great plan. Boy, school nutrition has changed a lot in the last 10, 12 years, and not for the better.
A lot of it is special education. We're the only state in the union that pays every dime, pays 100% of special education costs [fully reimburses local school districts for all costs necessitated by a student’s individualized education program]. So, I'm not terribly worried about it. It's not an amount of money that is going to bankrupt our system. Frankly, I think – and I'm not one of these anti-federal government guys out there, they're our partner. There's been a lot of good over our history that Congress has done. I just wish they'd get back to doing some real good, and different presidents, certainly. But if this changes, I remember back in the '80s and '90s, there were Democratic presidents running for office that were going to get rid of the Department of Education. So it's not a new concept. We'll keep rocking here in Wyoming with the best public schools in the country, some of the best in the world. We'll keep rocking regardless of what the federal government does.
SBF: I lastly wanted to have you talk about a lot of these election-era questions about what you would want to change, but you are so steeped in the institution of public education here in the state. So talk about what is going well that you'd want to preserve.
SH: For example, we're one of 16 states that test every junior on the ACT. I've administered the ACT. I've seen kids sit there with their arms crossed and not answer one question. So you're not just testing kids who are trying to get into a college or whatever – except, I guess, if you're in Kemmerer, in Lincoln, I think it's Lincoln [County School District] 1. You have to have a minimum 15 to graduate. You gotta take it three times. So they require their kids to take it seriously. But out of those 16 states where every junior takes the ACT, Wyoming two years ago was number one. Last year we were number two, and I think we'll be in the top couple this year again as well.
When we talk about the NAEP score, which is something you can compare over the last 40 years, we're always in the top five, some of the best in the world scores.
Our kids per capita who join the military and volunteer to serve our country, we're always in the top 10. Our kids are patriots. Those things are going to keep going. I think you're going to continue to see a rebound since COVID, too. Even on our standardized tests, which move around, and it's a longer story to explain that, but they're not like the ACT, where a 21 on the ACT today is the same as a 21 [was] 10 years ago. The scores move around. They're called cut scores. I call [it] the high jump bar – how high do you gotta be – proficient, advanced. It's always moved, so it's about 50/50. It's like a bell curve, and it's always going to be that way, so we're not going to have 90% of the state-tested standards proficient or above because the high jump bar will go up to seven foot from six foot.
Anyway, this whole COVID dip, I think, is just about over, and I think you're going to continue to see that. I passed a literacy bill, I think it was 2019. We've passed about four or five literacy bills, passed a big one again this last year. I'd really like to implement those and really change the culture. We're expecting grand babies, my wife and I.
SBF: Congratulations.
SH: I remember hearing Casper, Dr. Scaling and Dr. Meyers, they said, ‘First trimester, boy, start reading out loud to your baby. They can hear you read, and it'll start that whole language development.’ Man, we read every night, and then we kept reading to our kids. So guess what [we’re] doing with our kids now? Hey, we're sending the books. ‘Start reading to this baby.’
We gotta get this culture going of put the phone down and read, ‘cause once you learn to read, everything else is read to learn, and it changes everything. I always say, ‘Man, the two things that'll change your life are the books you read and the people you meet.’ I think there's room also with our early childhood education. I just think we've made progress, and I think we can really even take the next step.
There's going to be a lot of news in Wyoming over the next decade about falling enrollment. It's happening all across the country, because birth rates have really declined and crashed. So you're gonna see less babies in Wyoming, and America, and worldwide. That'll be a big issue. I think, again, our kids are a minority of our population, 20, 25%, but they're 100% of our future, and it's so important we're gonna pour into them, and particularly when they're young, 'cause boy, you get that foundation going. It's really huge. Then they can reach their full potential, whatever they want to do.
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