The Wyoming Attorney General’s office is urging the state’s high court to let lawmakers have more breathing room to crunch public school funding going into the Feb. 9 legislative session — without having to supply one computer for each kid, extra money for school lunch programs, and install school resource officers statewide and mental health counselors in elementary schools.
Wyoming Deputy Attorney General Mark Klaassen in an Oct. 22 motion to the Wyoming Supreme Court asked it to temporarily pause the Feb. 26 order of Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher, which directs the Legislature to fund the extra provisions across Wyoming’s K-12 system.
Legislators are now in recalibration, which is the comprehensive cost and budget crunch process they must undertake every five years to develop appropriate block grants for school districts.
They’re heading into the biennial budget session Feb. 9.
They’re also under the terms of Froelicher’s order while they undertake both efforts.
Froelicher’s order might not survive the state’s appeal of it, which is scheduled for a Nov. 12 oral argument in the high court, Klaassen’s motion says.
The deputy attorney added that with the oral argument so close to the legislative session, lawmakers probably will have made this year’s budget by the time the high court rules.
And, he added, letting the new court-ordered budget go into effect would “whiplash” school districts and lawmakers between a sudden, stark reorganization of the state’s public-school funding model and a potential clawback if the state wins the case.
“This potential for policy and fiscal whiplash, where an action is taken and then later withdrawn, does no good for anyone in the long run,” says the motion. “It is more prudent to maintain the status quo reflecting voters’ preferred policies until this Court has had time to decide the serious questions presented in this appeal.”
The motion claims the state is likely to win its challenge and in so doing, win back more legislative autonomy on how to fund schools. It claims Froelicher’s order used the wrong legal standard and overrelied on anecdotes from those working in the education system.
“Prematurely compelling substantial appropriations of taxpayer funds against the will of elected lawmakers would also injure the comity required for the legislative and judicial branches to balance their powers,” wrote Klaassen. “Co-equal branches should not be set at odds by enforcement of the novel, expansive rulings of a single district court without first allowing this Corut to determine whether the constitution requires legislative authority to be so substantially usurped.”
The Teacher’s Association Says …
The Wyoming Education Association and the handful of school districts that sued the state alongside it in August 2022 claiming the Legislature underfunded schools hadn’t filed a response to Klaassen’s motion by publication time.
But, the association reasoned in a Sept. 8 brief to the high court, it’s hard to usurp duties that the Legislature has already shirked.
The Wyoming Constitution calls for a complete and uniform system of education. Multiple court cases over the years have led to state courts contouring how the legislature is to provide that.
Statutes in line with those orders have followed.
“WEA contents that the Legislature has not properly funded numerous aspects of the costs to school districts of providing education to Wyoming students,” says the brief, “including failing to provide needed funding for the cost of hiring and maintaining sufficient numbers and quality of personnel; failing to provide for needed increases in funding due to inflation and increasing costs; and failing to properly fund renovations or replacements for inadequate or unsuitable school and other educational facilities.”
School resource officers, elementary school counselors, better school lunch programs and “adequate amounts of technology equipment” are part of a proper and modern education that the state doesn’t fund at all, the brief adds.
Well Not Yet
Meeting Wednesday in Casper, the legislative subcommittee on recalibration eased toward some, but not all, of Froelicher’s requirements.
The panel called for draft legislation to increase the average weighted teacher salary from $60,000 to $70,000, for example.
That follows Froelicher’s conclusion in his order that Wyoming’s ongoing teacher shortage is real and is linked with salary shortfalls.
But the subcommittee didn’t fulfill every judicial request.
Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, said he’d like to see studies about mental health services and computing technology extend into the 2026 legislative interim — after this year’s slated budget passage.
“We heard testimony today that technology is actually creating the mental health issue, for example,” said Bear.
Lawmakers also asked subcommittee staffers to work better career and technical education programs and better pay for substitute teachers into the draft model.
Sen. Troy McKeown, R-Gillette, called for school superintendent salaries to be capped at 2.233 times that of the district’s average salary and benefits.
Staffers are drafting that recommendation as well.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
