The state committee tasked with calculating the cost of public education is recommending eliminating 656 core subject or regular classroom teachers, while upping spending by $11 million, or 0.9%, according to meeting materials.
Consultants hired by the state had recommended an increase of about 8%. These moves are not final, however.
The Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration is overseeing a review of the state’s funding model for public schools, which is mandated to take place every five years. It will meet on Jan. 22 and 23 in Cheyenne to finalize proposed legislation, which will be further marked up during the legislative budget session starting in February.
Rep. Scott Heiner (R-Green River) cochairs the committee and emphasized in an email that the process is still ongoing. Last year, the state commissioned consultants to meet with teachers, parents and other experts, and make a recommendation for what it takes to fairly and adequately fund public education.
Consultants’ recommendation for increasing spending by another $88.2 million, for a total of about $100 million, was “still on the table,” Heiner said, only further down the line.
The select committee has already accepted the majority of the consultants’ recommendations, he said, with the resulting additional cost of $11.7 million per year and a total cost of public education of $1.81 billion per year.
Some school leaders across the state said they felt unheard after the committee declined to meet the consultants’ full recommendations.
Matt Erickson is the superintendent of Lincoln County School District No. 2, where he’s worked for 32 years.
“I have yet to hear a parent or a community member say, ‘You know what, we need to cut teaching salaries, we need to cut offerings for students, we need to cut activities,’” he said.
Wyoming’s school finance recalibration comes as a court ruled last year that the state has underfunded its public schools, which the state is appealing. Wyoming’s last major school funding recalibration was in 2010.
Increasing class sizes over third grade is another top concern of Erickson and Shannon Harris, who runs Sublette County School District No. 1.
Harris worried the recommended model could make those cuts sudden, instead of eliminating jobs through attrition.
“Instead of giving us a gradual off-ramp to right-size our staff, we’re just gonna have to cut,” she said.
Worries over funding come as lawmakers also consider school choice bills that would give homeschooled students more access to public schools in classrooms and activities such as sports, without backfill funding.
Educators are organizing ahead of this week’s meetings.
Earlier this month, Sen. Dan Dockstader (R-Afton) gathered school leaders of southwest Wyoming in Kemmerer.
The mood, he said, was one of concern.
“What positions do they cut?” he said, referencing the questions superintendents asked. “You still have to provide a great school with students that come out that are prepared for this world. That’s going to cost [money].”
Educators are happy with some of the select committee’s recommendations.
For example, Kim Amen, president of the Wyoming Education Association, said she’s glad to see the state recommend more funding for career and technical education, especially in Wyoming, where mineral and energy production is the biggest industry.
The select committee also recommends bumping minimum average teacher salaries to $70,560, with further regional adjustments, and putting all employees on state health insurance. A 2023 state report found that teacher wages in Wyoming were 6.6% higher than in adjacent states and North Dakota, but that other states were quickly catching up.
But Amen said raising the average instead of base salaries is misleading.
“When you say you’re going to give a raise, but then you’re also going to raise class sizes, and you’re all going to eliminate over 700 full-time positions, that’s not helpful,” she said.
Those full-time positions would include, in addition to core subject and elementary teachers, elective and specialist teachers. Some of those positions would be replaced with instructional facilitators, or professional development coaches for teachers.
Erickson also worried that putting everyone on the same health insurance takes away control for local school boards to “strategic plan and be good with taxpayer money.”
But Heiner said the model, though incomplete, has a lot to offer.
The recalibrated model will increase classroom-level resources by more than tripling the number of instructional facilitators, almost doubling the number of tutors, and increasing summer school and teachers who help with extended school days by more than 66%.
Dockstader said it’s simply getting more expensive to attract and retain top teaching talent.
“In the old days, Wyoming could recruit good teachers because they had exceptional pay,” he said. “[Now] there’s other states next door like Utah saying, ‘No, we’ll pay you more.’”
Heiner said the way to fix that is with this recalibration process. But even if a bill passes, work will likely continue into the 2026 interim for subjects like mental health and school resource officers.
