Across Wyoming, kids are preparing for Christmas. They're rehearsing for school concerts and church pageants, writing letters to Santa, and counting down the days until break.
I remember being one of those kids, prepping the perfect drawing to give my parents and deciding which cookies to bake for Santa and his reindeer.
Meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus is preparing to defund our children's schools. Budget hearings began in Cheyenne this week, and public education is once again a target for huge funding cuts.
Those decisions weigh on me as I move through my own preparations. As a pastor, I’m organizing services and gatherings for the church. But I’m also preparing for something deeper: the fulfillment of God’s promise in Jesus Christ.
For Christians, Christmas isn’t only the celebration of a birth in Bethlehem. It's a time where we remember a promise that God made to us.
The prophet Isaiah puts it this way: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6). Throughout Scripture, God makes promises to His people and keeps them.
The story of faith is a story of a God who speaks hope into the world and then brings that hope to life. In Christmas, we see one of the greatest promises honored in full.
I think about promises a lot when I think about Wyoming's public schools. Our constitution makes a promise to every child in this state: that we will provide thorough and efficient education.
My faith teaches that communities are measured by how they care for the vulnerable. Children don't vote. They don't lobby. They don't show up at budget hearings. They depend entirely on adults to do what’s right. When we fail to fund their schools, we're turning our backs on the kids that we promised to support.
Providing adequate funding to our schools is not a nice suggestion. It’s a promise we make. And earlier this year, a district court found that our state wasn't holding up its end on teacher pay, on inflation adjustments, or on basic resources for children.
Having been both a student and a teacher in Wyoming public schools, I’ve seen just how much they hold our communities together. They give kids the tools they need and help build the kind of character we all want to see in the next generation.
Strong schools lift our economy and help our towns thrive. And as I travel around Wyoming, I see it plain as day: When we invest, good things follow. When we don’t, teachers head to other states, classes get crowded, programs dry up, and rural schools fight just to stay open.
I'm curious what our lawmakers will decide as they talk of making cuts to education. Will they respect what our constitution requires? Will they fund our schools so they can prepare Wyoming's kids for the future?
Here's what keeping the promise looks like: Provide adequate funding that keeps up with inflation and give schools the resources they actually need to help our kids be successful.
Stop treating public education as a line item to cut and start treating it as what it is: the foundation of every community in this state.
This Christmas, kids across Wyoming will stand on gym risers, gather backstage in school auditoriums, and practice for church pageants with nervous excitement. Their classrooms will be full of glitter, paper snowflakes, and countdown calendars.
They don’t worry about budget debates or court rulings. They simply expect the adults in charge to make sure their schools are strong and their futures protected.
God kept a promise to humanity through a child. Now it’s our turn to keep the promises we’ve made to the children of Wyoming.
Sincerely,
Jordan Bishop
Reverend Jordan Bishop is an Episcopal Priest who lives in Laramie, Wyoming
