The Wyoming Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill revamping how the state funds public education. The proposal will now head to the House, where a similar bill has already failed twice.
Rep. Scott Heiner (R-Green River), who co-chaired the interim committee that drafted the bill, said he was thankful the Senate was giving lawmakers a second chance.
“We failed to uphold our oath of office, to uphold the constitution,” Heiner told the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 16. “To refuse to even bring it to the floor for debate, to be able to adjust it, is, in my mind, a derelict of duty. They abdicated their responsibility as a legislator.”
Heiner and the other lawmakers on the Select Committee for School Finance Recalibration spent the summer and fall crafting a recalibration bill. It raised teacher salaries, but also increased class sizes and would have led to hundreds of teacher layoffs across the state.
The bill was unpopular with teachers and school officials, who were concerned about those and other changes. When the bill died in the House, Wyoming’s teachers association cheered its defeat as a victory.
But an identical bill was filed in the Senate. When it hit the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) brought an amendment further raising salaries and softening some of the changes that had worried teachers.
“There was time out between recalibration and when we got to session where we took a tremendous amount of feedback,” Rothfuss would later explain to his fellow senators on the chamber floor. “[The] Joint Education Committee took a look at that feedback, had a lot of discussions with other senators, stakeholders, and tried to put together a few changes that address those concerns.”
In addition to paying teachers more, the Senate version of the bill advanced by the committee provides for a higher minimum number of teachers for school districts, more middle school elective and specialist positions, more pupil support, an annual external cost adjustment calculation, and a change to the way Wyoming calculates each school’s enrollment.
Currently, enrollment is calculated as last year’s headcount, or the average of the last three years, whichever is higher. School districts have wanted to keep it that way because it would protect small schools from seeing a sudden funding drop-off if a few families moved away.
The original bill would have done away with the rolling average and just taken last year’s headcount as a school’s enrollment.
Rothfuss’ amendment introduced a two-year rolling average, representing a compromise between the current model’s three-year rolling average favored by school districts, and the bill’s original language.
The bill, as reimagined by Rothfuss’ amendment, would add $126 million to the state’s education spending over the next two years. It also pays for the salary enhancement in part by reducing health insurance reimbursements to the districts.
The Senate Education Committee advanced the bill with a unanimous 5 to 0 vote. The full Senate then passed it with a nearly unanimous 30 to 1 vote.
Senators proposed several amendments during the third and final reading, but rejected most of them, including an amendment from Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) that would have undone much of Rothfuss’ committee amendment.
Now, the recalibration bill must head to the House. The lower chamber will need to approve the Senate’s bill before it can head to the governor for his signature.
The House is dominated by the state Freedom Caucus, which has sought to slash government spending throughout the state budgeting process.
The House has assigned the recalibration bill to its own education committee for further consideration.
