Education Funding

The Committee on School Finance Recalibration is tasked with adjusting funding levels for K-12 public schools to match the actual cost required to deliver a quality education to all Wyoming children. Learn more about ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ that the committee has been up to as the budget session approaches.

Investing in Wyoming public education pays off: We have one of the best school systems in the nation, and should feel proud of the work done in each classroom across the state every day.

The Wyoming Family Alliance’s campaign to elect school board members uses a candidate questionnaire that focuses far more on sex and genitals than it does on anything a school board member would actually need to know.

The Wyoming Constitution is stricter than other states’ when it comes to education funding and prohibits giving public funds to private or religious schools or individuals. The Legislature ignored these provisions in creating the new program, while Gov. Gordon slightly reined it in with a line-item veto.

Public schools are overseen by boards elected by their communities. But more and more Wyoming legislators want to divert public education funding to “education savings accounts” that fund private, religious, and home school operations with no oversight or accountability—a model that has failed in other Western states.

The benefits of preschool are clear, but middle-class and rural Wyoming families face huge hurdles enrolling their kids. Most states have public preschool, but not Wyoming—and trying to encourage lawmakers who are busy arguing over hot-button national issues to do something about it is an exercise in frustration and disappointment.

So-called “school vouchers” or “education savings accounts” hand over taxpayer money to parents who pull their kids out of public schools and instead enroll them in private, religious, or home schools. The Legislature’s Joint Education Committee will hear such a proposal this week, despite the fact that the Wyoming Constitution prohibits public money from being spent at religious institutions or given to schools that have zero oversight.

Early childhood education sets kids up for success. Children who go to preschool do better in K-12—requiring less help and driving down overall education costs—and they go on to earn more and require less government assistance. But two-thirds of Wyoming kids don’t attend preschool, and the state does not invest a dime in it, creating an early-life hurdle for many children that is both costly and difficult to overcome.