Paul Pine’s mother shared his story with the Education Committee this week.
He was a young Wyoming boy who committed suicide his fifth grade year at Carpenter Elementary School in Laramie County.
His mother described the years prior, during the COVID school closures, when Paul was home trying to do his schoolwork and wrapped a sock around his neck. He said he didn’t want to live anymore.
As she closed her testimony, she said literacy is a right, not a privilege.
“My house is too quiet…I no longer have my son,” she said.
Paul had a first grade reading level in the fifth grade, before the district placed him on an IEP (individualized education plan).
His parents signed him up for structured literacy, paid for it privately and tried to help him advance.
Paul’s mother advocates now for evidence-based reading instruction and wants parents to know how they can get their child on an IEP.
How can a child slip through the cracks? Why weren’t the appropriate steps taken sooner? Why did a little boy end his life in a public school?
Training special ed teachers for dyslexia is needed, proponents of law changes say.
Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, a retired high school teacher and Chairwoman of the Committee, said of staff training, “I think you’ve hit on a really important thing.”
There are a number of good training programs, but good luck on getting Wyoming to agree on one because we are all about “local control” in Wyoming, she described.
When local control can’t appreciate or remedy the problem, it’s the state’s turn to step up and manage distribution of education funding in a more “strings attached” fashion.
Lawmakers need to become more innovative on the education spending laws that bind us to fund an endless education Goliath with little line-item connections to results.
We always talk about government “waste” but maybe the real “waste” is when our money does nothing to demonstrate real results.
Wyoming’s investment in her children should keep them literate, educated and healthy, or what are we doing? While courts are telling us to spend more, maybe we should take a harder look at what we are already spending and what it is the cost-benefit analysis of these funding approaches.
I think the way our education funding system is designed; the districts are incentivized into a system that is equivalent only to a cull the cattle approach.
If a child is too problematic, too expensive or sick, it is easier and cheaper to push them off to the liabilities of others and push them on into the next grade level, never addressing the real root cause.
Schuler said, “I don’t know what the answer is in terms of our districts and how they want to spend their money. Because that really is their money to spend.”
I disagree regarding the premise that the money belongs to the district.
It belongs to the students and some students simply cost more to educate than others.
Schuler said a lot of behavioral issues are the result of kids struggling with academic issues, and she added, “We need to do better.”
Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, (the longest sitting Wyoming legislator), said, “What are we going to do about school districts that just plain won’t do it? That has been a problem.”
Under Scott’s proposed bill draft, many solutions to this problem are on the table. One important recommendation in Senator Scott’s new bill draft is that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction will have an exact protocol available for dyslexic students that will be used by the districts.
Scott previously had a bill draft which was similar in theme, but notably different in approach. The previous bill left the enforcement mechanisms largely to the court.
This bill draft requires the state superintendent of public instruction to lead the charge on this issue instead.
The rub between local control and state intervention are obvious.
Rep. Tom Kelly, R-Sheridan, said he doesn’t like increasing the size of the Wyoming Department of Education.
But Sen. Scott countered, “the current status of the performance of too many of our districts is just unsatisfactory.”
He said we’ve been proceeding down the line of charters and private institutions for some time, but that this is a “reform effort” for the public-school system.
When local control fails to allocate state funds appropriately to satisfy constitutional and federal requirements, state leadership has no choice but to intervene and course correct.
Paul’s legacy should remind us that dollars in education have meaning. The meaning is not in the amount, but instead in the purpose of the dollars and the requirements attached to them.
Cowboy State Daily columnist Cassie Craven is a University of Wyoming College of Law graduate who practices law in Wyoming. She can be reached at: longhornwritingllc@gmail.com
