GOSHEN COUNTY – State Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) addressed educators at Lincoln Elementary School on Feb. 10 about impending budget cuts to Wyoming K-12 education. 

The outlook is complicated. Pages and pages of finances, acronyms and percentages point to the harsh but inevitable truth – cuts are coming. 

Each and every state funded program stands to lose, but at the forefront of the budget conversation is public education. Possible solutions, generally, are few: create new revenue streams through taxes, reduce government services and programs, or a combination of both. 

Lincoln Elementary educator Abby Bruch told the Telegram she invited Steinmetz to talk with educators to start a dialogue between local representatives and those who are impacted by public education funding.

“I feel like there are so many pieces to the puzzle and we often don’t know all of them from an educator’s standpoint,” Bruch said. “There are parts to education that our representatives don’t know about either, so it’s important that we’re all seeking the information that we need to be able to better understand what’s going on and to make good,
educated decisions.”

One proposed revenue generator favored by the Wyoming School Board Association and Wyoming Education Association is a one percent sales and use tax. According to a document outlining revenue enhancement options, if the entire penny goes to education, it could generate $164.2 million to backfill education for fiscal year 2022. Steinmetz said it’s unlikely the legislature will implement such a tax because education might have to share the revenue with other agencies, minimizing its impact.

Bruch said if the legislature is looking for solutions, a one percent tax is a first step that is supported by education entities.

“If you’re not willing to go there, how are you willing to support public education?” Bruch said at the meeting. “It does feel like, oftentimes, we don’t have the support from our local senators when it comes to local education.” 

Steinmetz told educators she supports them, but the legislature is looking for “what meaningful reductions” the Board of Education could make before implementing taxes to generate revenue.

“We’ve asked so many other agencies and they’ve reduced the budget by $400 million, $445 million,” she said. “I don’t just represent the school district, I represent the senior center, St. Joseph’s Children’s Home, Diversified Services Inc. and they’re all taking huge cuts.”

Goshen County’s delegation does not have any congress members on the education committee, but Steinmetz is a member of the Joint Appropriations Committee charged with allocating funds to various state-funded programs. 

Educators are increasingly worried about House Bill 0089, which would cut student activity funding by 50%, eliminate funding for instructional facilitators, take away five teacher professional development days and the subsequent salaries earned from them, among other measures as written currently. 

“The WEA is watching that one very closely, because there are major points in there we do not agree with,” said Jennifer Brummell, president of the Goshen County Education Association, the local chapter of the WEA. 

At a Feb. 9 school board meeting, Steinmetz, one of nine co-sponsors of the bill, told the board it is likely to fail or be parsed out and amended into other bills. 

Brummell, a fourth-grade teacher at Trail Elementary, said yes, districts should “tighten up the belt” and be prudent in spending funds, but slashing and cutting hurts education statewide when positions are cut, and class sizes are subsequently increased. 

She said she wants to “come to the table” more often with local and state legislators, so she was grateful that Steinmetz came to Lincoln.

“We don’t want this to be like this for the next 20 years,” Brummell said. “We want our kids to have a great education and to figure out what we can do so we’re not just putting band aids on it all the time.”

At the meeting with Lincoln teachers, Steinmetz told educators, GCSD Superintendent Ryan Kramer and Business Manager Marcy Cates she needs to see where the district has made budget reductions in the past. 

One teacher raised her hand and indicated she now teaches at Lincoln due to staff reductions at Trail Elementary, which serves third through fifth graders. 

GCSD’s buildings share administrators and specialists as a result of a budget reduction, said Lincoln Elementary Principal Nyana Sims. There is now one district librarian and library clerks in each building. The district recently cut $400,000 from its annual spending after exceeding its planned budget in 2018-2019, as previously reported by the Telegram.

More than $22.3 million of GCSD’s total $30.5 million 2020-21 general fund budget is from state sources. 

At a recent school board meeting, Board Chair Mark Jespersen estimated the district could have to make do with a $3.9 million total reduction next fiscal year, though exact figures remain up in the air until the end of the legislative session in April. 

Bruch is a special education teacher who serves 35 students. Special education used to receive 100% reimbursement from the state but has not for a few years, Cates said at the Feb. 10 meeting. 

“The scariest part for students with extra needs, is they do need more resources and they do need more support from human beings,” Bruch said. “My worry is that because of what’s going on with the budget, we’ll start to lose those things and then kids that need extra won’t get anything extra, and closing that gap as far as getting them where they need to be will be much more of a challenge.”

The decline of oil, gas and coal create a grim outlook for the state’s budget, as could the Biden administration’s ban on oil and gas leasing that funnels $150 million a year into Wyoming K-12 education, said State Superintendent Jillian Balow in a recent press release. 

The GCSD board of trustees will hold a work session to discuss school finances on Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. 

“The future of Wyoming lies within every K-12 building in the state,” Bruch said. “We have to keep kids first. We have to invest in our kids and do that wholeheartedly knowing that’s going to be tough. Sometimes, that’s putting personal opinion aside and getting transparent and seeking the information we need to make decisions. I hope the representatives are educating themselves and going to people they want information from rather than waiting for the information to come to them.”