In July, members of the public will be allowed to carry concealed firearms onto school grounds as long as they have a valid permit.
The Legislature repealed gun-free zones earlier this year, paving the way for the legal bearing of arms in schools and on college campuses that had previously banned the practice.
School boards can't limit this right, but they can add handgun and scenario-based training requirements for their teachers, other staff and volunteers.
The school board in Laramie is doing just that. It's looking to require more than 60 hours of training for employees who want to be armed.
The proposed policy begins with a statement voicing opposition to the new state law, declaring, "Guns simply have no place in our schools and will not make them safer for employees and students."
But the trustees stressed during a recent meeting that it's important for the public to understand local officials can no longer ban guns at school.
"This is a policy that is being put into place because it has to be," Albany County School District No. 1 Trustee Alex Krassin said. "And we have done our best to write and provide a policy that creates as much safety as we possibly can."
The board is looking to mandate 47 hours of handgun training, 16 hours of scenario-based training and a full psychological evaluation. It's the highest standard proposed by any school district in the state.
Trustee Kim Sorenson said the proposal asks for training hours equivalent to those required in law enforcement.
"Even though the bar is probably very high, and maybe much higher than some districts are willing to go, we felt that that was the minimum that we could even ask of people," he said.
Other school boards also plan to require training, but less of it.
Natrona County School District No. 1 has proposed 56 total hours of training, with 40 handgun hours and 16 scenario-based hours.
Campbell County School District No. 1 has proposed 32 hours of training, with 24 handgun hours and eight scenario-based hours. This would be a reduction from the district's current requirement of 56 total training hours, according to the Gillette News Record.
Several other districts have proposed 24 total hours, with a breakdown of 16 handgun hours and eight scenario-based hours. This is the minimum required by state law for any district adopting training standards.
The new law is limited to concealed carry. Open carry, for employees and the public, remains forbidden by the school districts. Students, meanwhile, are prohibited by state law from bringing guns to school even if they would otherwise qualify for a concealed carry permit.
Most training requirement proposals are in the planning or approval stages and won’t be finalized until later this summer.
University of Wyoming
The right to pass training requirements for employees and volunteers is limited to school districts, but the state law extends to other public spaces, including the University of Wyoming campus.
For several years, concealed carry has been allowed on campus grounds but not inside campus facilities. The repeal of gun-free zones will change that, allowing concealed carry permit holders to bring weapons into most UW buildings.
Exceptions include the Early Childhood Education Center, labs where volatile materials are present and wherever alcohol is served, such as Pokes Pub in the student union or War Memorial Stadium during UW Cowboys games.
UW has published an FAQ page about campus carry and plans to host an informational session for employees and students both in-person and online. The session starts at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 28 in Business Building room 121.
The UW campus has been debating its own concealed carry rules for more than a year.
In 2024, the Wyoming Legislature passed a repeal of gun-free zones that would have allowed concealed carry on UW's campus. Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed that bill, but directed UW to reconsider its weapons ban.
UW did that, surveying its campus, hosting town halls, drafting proposed changes and putting those changes to a vote during a public meeting of UW's Board of Trustees in November.
The campus community broadly opposed any changes to its weapons ban. An overwhelming majority of faculty and staff, and a simple majority of students, wanted campus facilities to remain gun-free. In a close vote, the trustees granted their wish, refusing to change the weapons ban last fall.
But state lawmakers overrode that determination with the passage of House Bill 172, the piece of legislation that will eradicate gun-free zones on school and other government grounds, including the UW campus.
Unlike the year before, Gordon allowed this bill to pass. He did so without signing it, writing in his no-sign letter that the bill interfered with local control, such as the "exercise in local governance" UW attempted with its year-long campuswide deliberation.
"Such lack of regard for the principle of 'government closest to the people' so fundamental to our Republic is stunning," Gordon wrote.
The UW trustees updated the university’s weapons policy to match the new law during their meeting in April.
"While this issue evoked passionate debate when the university was considering a similar gun policy last year, we are confident that our campus will remain a safe setting for our students, employees and visitors," UW President Ed Seidel said in a May 22 news release. "Concealed carry is permitted at many dozens of other universities across the country — including some of our close peers. Over many years of collective experience, there is no evidence that those institutions experience higher levels of gun violence."
Community colleges
Wyoming's eight public community colleges have worked together to craft a policy, drawing on UW's in the process.
"This is a bill that could be litigious and if eight different colleges treated eight different ways, then it could cause some challenges," Northwest College President Lisa Watson said during a meeting of her college's board, according to the Powell Tribune. "And so I had suggested to my peers that we think about putting together a task force and approach this bill as a group of eight."
Now the community college boards are in the process of taking the unified policy and amending it to work for their own institutions. Broadly, the policy outlines firearm storage and excluded spaces.
