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School Board Denies Casper Charter School Application

Courtesy The Guild Charter School

The Natrona County School Board voted unanimously Monday to deny an application for a new Casper charter school.

The proposed Guild Charter School would focus on classical education and use individualized learning plans for all K-12 students. Co-founder Tiffany Leary says she started the application process last year.

“It’s not been an easy road, by any means, but we’ve tried to give all of the information that we could to the Board—anything they wanted,” says Leary. “They said, ‘We need you need you to fix this part,’ and we tried to fix that part. I guess it just wasn’t enough. We will appeal, of course, because we still think we have something that could work.”

Leary can begin that appeals process in about 45 days. Board members told her they thought what The Guild planned to offer overlapped too much with educational opportunities already available in the district.

“The Board said that they didn’t think we had a unique type of education,” says Leary. “Some of it is true. We do have some of the same types of learning. But there’s no way one child can move from one school to another to get the type of education that we would offer in one place.”

Public charter schools are those that operate with state funds—but without the direction of their local school districts.

Wyoming has just four charter schools. School choice advocates say it’s hard to get charters approved in Wyoming when local school districts are the granting agencies. 

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