The Wyoming Senate defeated two education bills and passed one during final debate on all three measures.
The Senate defeated one bill that would require parental permission for someone under the age of 18 to drop out of school. The Senate also killed a bill that would have required students to take four years of math in order to graduate. Both bills were sponsored by Democrat Chris Rothfuss of Laramie.
The Senate did approve a bill that puts in place a new energy and natural resources curriculum for schools.
Rothfuss noted that the two bills that would have either improved education or graduation rates failed.
“It is interesting, I can certainly say that,” Rothfuss says. “I was curious about the internal consistency of those decisions, but it is certainly not something we talked about during that debate.”
Rothfuss says members of the home schooling community lobbied legislators hard about the compulsory school measure in particular. He says he will bring both bills again in the future because he believes they are important.
