Gov. Mark Gordon will allow a major school funding bill to become law without his signature. The bill will boost teacher pay across the state, but includes other provisions that have worried education advocates and contributed to the bill’s rocky journey through the legislature.
In a letter explaining his no-sign decision, Gordon cited similar concerns to some education advocates but also recognized that the legislation represents “hard work” from lawmakers on a “very complex issue.”
“I am confident that this bill, although imperfect, is the result of a genuine, good faith effort to meet the constitutional requirement to maintain a complete and uniform system of public instruction. But the bill lacks vision,” the governor wrote. “Still, without this bill, Wyoming’s teachers may not get a well-deserved increase in compensation.”
Gordon’s letter takes aim at the bill’s “instructional silo,” a provision that restricts classroom-specific funds from being spent elsewhere. The governor notes direct instruction “is not the only task of managing a school district.”
“In fact, efficient and effective school district leadership encompasses a wide range of operational endeavors such as transportation, student activities, nutrition, school safety, and many others,” he wrote. “The Legislature may be signaling that these capacities need to be pruned by shorting them in this act's formulation.”
Gordon said he worries this inflexibility could leave school districts in an “untenable position” when and if disaster strikes.
“For example, if a school loses a roof in the fall of the year, there may not be enough reserves to repair it under all the constraints the legislature has placed on districts,” he wrote. “These negative effects will be especially magnified in small, rural school districts, which may be unintentionally penalized for the efficiencies of operating in singular buildings.”
Beyond the practical implications, Gordon added that the “instructional silo” is “an unreasonable encroachment on the prerogative of local school boards.”
“I firmly believe that the best government is the one closest to the people,” he wrote. “When the state government becomes overly prescriptive to school districts, local control is sacrificed.”
The recalibration bill was crafted by a dedicated legislative committee and hired consultants throughout 2025. Identical bills were filed in both House and Senate and were met with differing levels of enthusiasm.
In the House, the bill twice failed to achieve the two-thirds vote it needed to be introduced. The Wyoming Education Association (WEA), which represents teachers, celebrated those early defeats as a win, given its opposition to some of the bill’s most impactful provisions.
In the Senate, lawmakers introduced and amended the bill. They boosted teacher pay and made a change to how enrollment is calculated, landing on a compromise between the calculation preferred by districts and the calculation preferred by lawmakers.
The Senate’s version was then approved by the House with minimal amendments and sent to the governor.
Hanging over these discussions of school financing was a lawsuit, launched by WEA in 2022, accusing the state of underfunding public education. Last year, a lower court handed the teachers’ association a sweeping victory, finding the state had chronically and unconstitutionally underfunded public schools.
The court ordered lawmakers to better fund school counselors, school resources officers, nutrition, technology and more. But the state has appealed the ruling to the Wyoming Supreme Court, which has yet to issue a final decision. In the meantime, those specific fixes ordered by the lower court have been halted.
The Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration, which crafted the first version of this year’s bill, plans to examine these issues in the months ahead, preparing new legislation for the 2027 General Session next year.
“There is promise that they may address the shortcomings I have mentioned here,” Gordon wrote in his no-sign letter. “I hope their efforts will result in more than idle promises. I strongly encourage the committee to develop a robust funding structure that adequately supports the operational elements of delivering a world-class education to Wyoming's children.”
