How deep will they cut?

As vaccines slowly begin to roll out and Wyoming continues to deal with the various impacts from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), legislators will eventually have to make difficult decisions on what to cut and where. Including in those discussions is the State of Wyoming’s funding of K-12 education.

During their regularly scheduled meeting on December 17, the Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2) Board of Trustees were provided with a legislative update.

At the time of the meeting, it was still unclear as to what the Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration would forward to the full legislature and, even then, what the Wyoming Legislature would do in regards to school funding.

“The consultants will present their final results to the committee next week. The committee will then decide whether to accept that or not. If they accept it, it will be recommended to the full legislature,” said CCSD2 Superintendent Jim Copeland. “There’s talk, in some of my meetings, that there’s somewhat of an expectation that they can’t agree so that just leaves the current model in place until the full legislature can change that. There’s also talk … their consultant model does not reduce education expenditures. In fact, it increases it a little bit.”

According to Copeland, even if the recalibration committee were to agree on the funding model provided by their consultant, the full legislature could still change that funding model. The superintendent stated that there had been discussion about the Wyoming Legislature voting to fund 90 percent of K-12 education.

“If that happens, there’s probably going to be some topic of lawsuits from the group that watches that very closely because the constitution, it has been ruled, requires Wyoming to fully fund whatever education model they pass,” Copeland said.

Article 7, Section 1 of the Wyoming State Constitution reads “The legislature shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction, embracing free elementary schools of every needed kind and grade.”

Copeland informed the Board of Trustees that another unknown was when the Wyoming Legislature would actually meet. While various committees have met via videoconference to discuss interim topics, Article 3, Section 7 of the Wyoming State Constitution requires the legislative body to meet in Cheyenne. According to Copeland, there had been discussion in meetings of the district superintendents that the Wyoming Legislature would meet on January 12 for a brief period before adjourning until a later date.

The swearing in of new representatives and new senators has been scheduled from January 4 to January 8 and broadcast on the Wyoming Legislature’s YouTube channel. A press release from the Legislative Services Office on Monday stated that the 66th Wyoming Legislature would convene for a one-day virtual session at noon on January 12 to elect legislative leadership, adopt rules for 66th Legislature and receive a message from Governor Mark Gordon before adjourning and reconvening at a later date.

Copeland turned the update over to Sally Wells, CCSD2 Business Manager, for additional insight into where the Wyoming Legislature could be leaning in terms of cuts and revenue.

“I think that you can hear ‘no new taxes’ even though people are saying ‘we would endorse a tax if it’ll keep our schools open, we would support that’ so if you have a view, one way or another, your legislators need to know if you would support increasing the property taxes, sales taxes,” said Wells. “They’ve talked about income tax, that’s failed in the revenue committee, but I don’t think they can cut their way out of K-12 education.”

Wells added that the recalibration committee had appeared to be in favor of draft legislation that supported the model proposed by their consultants. Going off of that model, Wells informed the Board of Trustees that she projected the district was within $100,000 of their current funding model. With a district budget of $15 million, Wells stated that $100,000 was “a small lot.”

“It could be a sports program or something like that, but it’s not a big thing. I think we’re actually pretty good, we’re protected by the minimums that are in the model if they fully fund the model,” Wells said. “If they say ‘We’re going to keep the model the same and we’re going to cut 10 percent’ that means we’re going to have to cut $1.5 million of our budget and that’s a big cut, $1.5 million would be 10 percent of our budget.”

According to Copeland, all 48 school districts in Wyoming had been requested to provide the legislature with what a reduction in staff would look like with a 10 percent budget cut. That number came to 1,700 certified positions.

“Now, that’s counting Cheyenne, the bigger districts that have a lot more positions, but you also then lose 1,700 families that pay taxes, that support the local economy,” Copeland said. “So, it’s just not a clear cut picture. Yeah, you can do everything through cuts and not raise any revenue but then you’re also losing even more revenue with all these families that are moving out.”

Copeland added that it appeared there had been discussion that the legislature would need to find a combination of cuts, revenue increases and borrowing from the State’s rainy day fund to help fund K-12 education in Wyoming. The superintendent added that, if the district needed to, CCSD2 could transfer money from their own fund balance in case of a shortfall provided they received permission from the State.

“So we could have some balance between cuts and using some of our fund balance,” said Copeland.

When the school recalibration committee met on December 21 and December 22, it ended their two-day virtual session by voting 8-3 to forward 21LSO-0165, which adopted the model proposed by their consultant. In this proposed legislation, the School Foundation Program Guarantee would see a total of $1 million cut. 

According to documentation provided by the Legislative Services Office, CCSD2 would see a reduction of approximately $638,000 when considering a reduction of $1,082 per average daily membership or district enrollment. Meanwhile, a reduction of 6.54 percent to the School Foundation Program Guarantee would see approximately $967,000 reduced from funding to CCSD2 from the State.

Senator Larry Hicks (R - Baggs) was one of the 8 votes in favor of forwarding the draft legislation to the full legislature.

The next meeting of the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees will be at 5 p.m. on January 18 at the Platte Valley Community Center in Saratoga.