The Joint Appropriations Committee of the Wyoming Legislature turned down a request for more funding for centers that support kids with disabilities, after Gov. Mark Gordon denied a similar ask in his supplemental budget request. Advocates are worried about what that could mean on the ground.
Child development centers serve around 3,500 kids around the state and offer things like speech therapy, physical therapy and cognitive skill support. Their goal is to help kids under the age of 5 get up to speed before kindergarten.
The Legislature passed SF 19 in 2024, which increased the per-child amount allocated by the state to calculate payments to service providers for that programming.
That year, the Department of Health requested about $16 million for those costs and inflation, and were approved for a little more than $12.2 million. While those funds didn’t fully cover the request, it was the largest appropriation given to the program by the state in the last decade.
The department asked for another $11.7 million as part of the 2025 supplemental budget, but Gordon recommended to deny that request. In the budget book, he referenced a budgetary footnote and wrote, “It is the intent of the legislature not to exceed the $12,290,328 appropriated for services to preschool children with disabilities. This was enacted in the 2024 legislation session, including Senate File 0019.”
In a Joint Appropriations Committee meeting on Jan. 21, Sen. Mike Gierau (D-Jackson) made a motion to appropriate $4.3 million to cover some of that deficit in meeting the per-child amount.
Wyoming Department of Health Director Stefan Johansson shared that the funding requests for the program fluctuate year to year.
“ In some years, the external cost adjustment calculations have been minimal or insignificant,” he said. “In the past several years, they've been extremely significant, largely due to inflationary pressures.”
When asked by Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland) about the state of the centers financially, Johansson said it varies by site and added that some locations have even had to start GoFundMe pages.
“Some have better margins than others [and] staffing levels than others,” he said. “Over the past couple of years, it has become a significant issue with our developmental preschools in terms of their financial condition, but it does vary depending on the center.”
Gierau’s motion did not pass the committee, and it voted 7-5 to uphold Gordon’s recommendation to deny the supplemental funding request.
Alisha Roan is the executive director of the child development center in Casper, which serves about 700 children a week. In an interview with Wyoming Public Media, she said that lack of funding could put services at risk in the future.
“ Within one to two years time, we would see three centers close [around the state]. That impact alone would probably be over a thousand children,” she said.
Roan specifically named centers in Cheyenne, Riverton, Lander and Jackson as locations that are “ really looking at how long they can operate on the small funding that [they] get from the state at this point in time.”
She added that the amount of state and federal funding that the center in Natrona County receives doesn’t even cover her staff, and that the center raises about a million dollars a year from donors and community members to offset its operations.
“It's not the donors’ responsibility to keep these centers going,” she said. “Our state has a responsibility to provide these services to children and keep them going.”
Roan said that Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander), Sen. Bill Landen (R-Casper) and Sen. Tim Salazar (R-Riverton) are planning to introduce an amendment to get more funding for the centers as the full House and Senate continue to debate this year’s supplemental budget.
“ If [lawmakers] don't realize that the children of Wyoming need these services and need this funding, then how sad for our state,” said Roan.