A Cheyenne, Wyoming, judge ruled Wednesday that the Wyoming Legislature isn’t adequately funding its schools, and he ordered lawmakers to do so.
Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher’s 186-page decision, filed Wednesday, addresses a lawsuit that the Wyoming Education (WEA) filed in August of 2022.
Several school districts had joined the WEA's lawsuit, suing the state of Wyoming.
WEA and the school districts argued that the state wasn’t using the proper assessments to determine how much to pay schools and teachers, how to adjust for inflation, and how to replace and upgrade buildings.
Also, the plaintiffs argued, it’s time for the state to start funding gaps in school lunch programs and hire more school resource officers and elementary-school counselors. They also called for the state to ensure that every child had access to a computer.
The Wyoming Attorney General’s deputy had argued in the case that the state over-funded education from 2005 to about 2020, and so the failures to increase school funding grants on pace with inflation in the years since has merely been a leveling-out. Some school districts have been hoarding reserve money and over-funding some areas of their education programs, the state argued.
The Courts Before Us
Froelicher sided with the plaintiffs on every point.
The judge drew from decades of Wyoming case law in local courts and the state Supreme Court. These have required the state Legislature to use a “cost-based” calculation model to decide how much to pay for education, and to supply a “complete and uniform” education that is the “best” it can do.
And because the Wyoming Constitution is “in a sense, a living thing, designed to meet the needs of progressive society,” that call for exemplary education funding applies to modern needs, Froelicher ruled.
That means the Legislature must start paying for each kid to have a technological device at school; for shortfalls in the school nutrition programs that federal grants don’t cover; for elementary-school mental health counselors and for school resource officers, he wrote.
Wyoming has been wracked in recent years with a teacher shortage, which Froelicher concluded based on the case evidence is real – and is linked with salary shortfalls.
“The Court has not reached its conclusions lightly and has carefully tried to apply the holdings and standards set by the Wyoming Supreme Court,” wrote Froelicher.
Governor Considering Appeal Issues
When the suit was filed two-and-a-half years ago, Gov. Mark Gordon said Wyoming had recently made record cuts to almost all services besides K-12 education.
On Wednesday, Gordon's office was reviewing the ruling "to consider our issues on appeal."
His spokesman Michael Pearlman noted that Gordon has been asking the Legislature to adjust the K-12 system to stay on pace with what education costs.
"Throughout his time in office, Governor Gordon’s budget has recommended funding the entire External Cost Adjustment, including in the current supplemental budget," Pearlman wrote in a Wednesday statement to Cowboy State Daily. "The current Legislature did not agree with the Governor’s recommendation."
Gordon looks forward to working with the Legislature in the coming months. Pearlman added, "to ensure that the state is meeting its Constitutional obligation to fund Wyoming education."
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
