When we talk about school funding in Wyoming, the conversation often starts and ends with test scores, facility cost adjustments, and salaries.
Those priorities are obvious, but they do not cover the entire educational landscape. Behind every classroom sits a well-studied truth:
Students cannot learn if they do not feel safe and supported.
Across Wyoming, public schools are reporting an increase in students with behavioral health symptoms.
For many students, the school counselor or social worker is the only mental health professional they will ever see.
The Wyoming Prevention Needs Assessment shows that nearly one in ten middle school students have attempted suicide in the past year, while Wyoming continues to hold one of the highest suicide rates in the nation.
Currently, Wyoming’s student-to-school counselor ratio hovers around 300 to 1, which is above the recommended 250 to 1. In many rural districts, one counselor covers multiple schools or even an entire county.
That means hundreds of students waiting for one person to check in, and triage when they are in distress.
Wyoming’s Constitution guarantees a “complete and uniform system of public instruction.”
That means funding what students need to access education, which research has shown includes mental health care.
If a student is too anxious to be in a classroom, living in chronic stress, or grieving a loss - learning fractions and reading comprehension becomes far more difficult. Mental health is not an “extra.” It is a prerequisite for learning.
That is why any discussion about school funding that ignores mental health services is not just incomplete; it is irresponsible.
The current recalibration process gives Wyoming a chance to no longer treat mental health as an optional add-on, but acknowledge it as foundational to academic success.
Districts that invest in school-based counseling and early intervention have better attendance, higher graduation rates, and lower disciplinary incidents.
When schools employ full-time mental health professionals, teachers spend less time managing crises and more time teaching.
Sustaining mental health funding is about protecting educators too. Wyoming educators continue reporting higher stress and burnout, much of it tied to the secondary trauma of supporting struggling students without adequate resources.
When schools lack support staff, the burden shifts to teachers who are already stretched thin.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus and others have framed budget cuts as fiscal prudence. However, cutting school-based mental health services is not fiscal responsibility; it is fiscal neglect.
Every student crisis prevented saves the state thousands of dollars in emergency room visits, juvenile justice interventions, and inpatient treatment costs.
Ignoring the need will not ignore the ongoing expenditure. We cannot claim to value Wyoming’s economic future while dismantling the supports that increase children’s success.
As lawmakers debate recalibration, I urge them to keep mental health at the forefront of the conversation, not as a footnote but as an essential line item, as foundational as transportation and textbooks.
Every school day, Wyoming’s children are learning math and reading while navigating an increasingly complex world.
They deserve a state willing to fund that work and invest in the brighter future Wyoming can build together, one where education and mental health are fully connected and supporting the whole child is recognized as the foundation of every student’s success.
Author Bio: Alex Petrino, MS, NCC, LCPC, LPC is President of the Wyoming Counseling Association. She writes about education, mental health, and public policy in Wyoming
