The fact that Wyoming’s new education funding model leaves many schools short of money for sports and activities is a bug, not a feature, of the package, lawmakers specializing in education policy say.
While some school districts are scrambling to rescue their activities, legislators are urging them not to do anything drastic and give the Legislature time to fix the issue.
“So, what I’m asking the school districts is, don’t cut programs immediately,” said House Recalibration Committee Chair Scott Heiner, R-Green River. “Use some of the reserves — because they have to spend down their reserves over the next three years (anyway). … And give us a chance to fix it in the next session.”
The Wyoming High School Activities Association (WHSSA) amplified the topic with a Friday statement from Commissioner Trevor Wilson.
WHSAA’s board met April 28 and discussed potential “exploratory” options, including:
• Eliminating regional tournaments and consolation games.
• Limiting teams qualifying for state events from eight to four.
• Limiting the number of students participating in some events.
• Reducing the number of contests in every sport, and potentially cutting programs.
The WHSAA also floated potential cuts to indoor track, Nordic and Alpine skiing, swimming, spring golf and tennis, or activities.
The statement also suggested reducing speech and debate from 12 to six in -person events, centrally locating All-State music events and eliminating participation in some national events, using fewer officials for contests, limiting the number of players on a team, increasing gate admission and implementing or increasing student participation fees.
But, the statement added, “Most districts indicated they will rely on cash carryover funds to support activities and athletics during the 2026–27 school year.”
That’s widely viewed as a one-year solution, not a sustainable fix, the statement noted.
Wilson told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that WHSAA is building a school advocacy committee to work with lawmakers.
“Just trying to help our schools and make folks aware there could be some potential – I don’t know if you want to call them issues – but, certainly concerns regarding activities moving forward,” Wilson said.
As a whole, Wyoming K-12 school districts are receiving an extra $114.1 million in the coming school year, says a report by the Legislative Service Office. That’s an 8.6% increase from the prior school year to a total of $1.95 billion, or $22,626 allocated per kid.
Teachers get an estimated 20.7% raise. Classroom resources are increasing by about $123.1 million. The districts are being funded to hire 260 more teachers.
But districts face other big changes, like a rigid category confining funding for educators into its own grant.
School Activities Purgatory
Public school district superintendents who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Monday said they’re bracing for funding cuts to their sports activities, and trying to soften the blow.
At the Lander-based Fremont County School District 1, Superintendent Mike Harris is expecting a $400,000 reduction, at least, for extracurriculars in the next school year, he said.
So far, FCSD1 is considering remedies like dialing back how many kids can play certain sports, limiting the quantity of coaches, and no longer furnishing meals on travel trips.
Even with those mitigators, said Harris, “we’ll still be in the red and have to borrow from savings.”
The factors driving school funding are myriad.
Harris said he and other superintendents have long been telling lawmakers their concerns, but it’s time for parents and students to do the same.
“We need to start hearing from more parents, students,” said Harris. “My impression is (some lawmakers) feel like the administrators have a vested self-interest for money funding. That’s not it. I think a lot of administrators – and I’d count myself in there – we’re genuinely concerned about the loss of opportunities for kids.”
Chase Christensen, superintendent of Sheridan County School District No. 3, told Cowboy State Daily that the new school funding model is “one size fits none.”
On the one hand, lawmakers provided money to hire more classroom educators and pay those educators better. On the other hand, they put that money in a “silo” so that the districts can’t spend it on other things – like activities, equipment, technology, or administration.
“Right, there’s more dollars available,” said Christensen. “But the inability to move some of that money around to fund things that were or still are underfunded in the model is causing some of the angst.”
Even before the new spending package, districts were already padding their activities budget with other, overfunded areas, said Christensen. Now they have less flexibility to do so.
His district’s activities budget covers coaches and the athletics director, he added.
“And it does nothing more than that. It doesn’t put uniforms on teams. It doesn’t pay for hotels; doesn’t pay for food; doesn’t pay for refs,” said Christensen.
His non-classroom operations are taking roughly a $140,000 hit, while inside the classroom funding silo, “we’re going to have probably a $300,000 surplus budget,” he said.
Woah, Now
The activities shortfalls represent one area where the new spending package needs work or further assessment, three of its planners told Cowboy State Daily.
“That’s something we should revisit and increase,” said Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie. A member of both the Select Committee on School Finance Committee and the Senate Education Committee, Rothfuss was a key architect of the package.
“This is, in my opinion, a significant concern and something that our select committee needs to take testimony on and hopefully revisit this summer,” he said.
Besides the teacher silo, the Legislature no longer funds insurance for employees that the districts could, but haven’t hired. Schools used to receive those overages and send the money to other areas. Lawmakers tightened that provision.
Another wrinkle, said Rothfuss, is that the non-state insurance programs the districts buy have spiked in price. Having to pay for that more expensive insurance means districts have one less overage to divert to other costs, like athletics and activities, he added.
As for the teacher silo, Rothfuss told Cowboy State Daily in March that it was the “lynchpin” that made the whole spending package palatable enough to pass the Legislature.
That’s because teacher pay and teacher hiring have been among the educators' loudest concerns for about a decade, said Rothfuss on Monday.
The Legislature in recent years has tried to infuse more money into the classroom, only to see that money go elsewhere.
“We ended up with a silo because, while we know (classroom funding) has been our biggest problem, the Legislature has obviously been unsatisfied with the (infusions for inflation) making their way to the teachers,” said Rothfuss.
But the spiking insurance is one of the reasons that money didn’t go straight to teachers, he said, adding, “I’m not saying that’s unjustified. There’s reasons for that.”
Rothfuss urged caution and receptiveness. He said he's seen some school districts propose remedies that the new model doesn't actually demand, and that he's trying to get better information into the public sphere.
Slipped Past
Heiner told Cowboy State Daily he expects the committee and its Senate counterpart to address this issue at its June 24-25 meeting in Lander. He emphasized that the topic is on the agenda for June 25.
In accepting the recommendation of the state’s education consultant, legislators adopted a system that doles out activities money on more of a wholesale basis, rather than tailoring it to individual schools, said Heiner.
The result is that activities funding is expected to fall from $46.3 million to $42.4 million in the next school year.
“Nobody caught that,” Heiner said. “Ninety-three legislators didn’t catch it. The governor’s office didn’t catch it. The Wyoming Education Association (lobbying group) didn’t. The school districts didn’t bring it to our attention. We didn’t realize the implications.”
The overall cut wasn’t intentional, he said, adding “You know as well as I do, there’s many times when we pass legislation that we have to come back and fix, tweak it a little bit because we missed something.”
Rothfuss said the new calculation for activities called Heiner’s concern a “good catch” but disagreed that everyone missed it.
“We really didn’t dig into this one too much,” said Rothfuss. “I think we did (notice the change), but nobody wanted to spend a lot of time on activities, largely because districts had been overfunding it. So we took the consultants’ recommendation.”
Activities aren’t the only issue lawmakers have vowed to address ahead of the 2027 legislative session. They’re also slated to consider funding for technology, school resource officers, and gaps in the school lunch and nutrition programs.
That’s unfolding while the Wyoming Supreme Court considers whether a judge who ordered the legislature to pay more for those things was correct.
Pump The Brakes
House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, who also sits on the Recalibration Committee, told Cowboy State Daily that lawmakers want to address the issues, but that this also could be a good time to find efficiencies.
“I guess my thing is, why are we having the shortfall?” said Neiman, who was preparing to herd a pair of twin calves back to their mother on his northern-Wyoming ranch. “We made some changes, and we need to look at that first, before (school districts) go and start chopping and hacking and whacking.”
Neiman questioned whether activities programs could find efficiencies at home.
For example, he said, a smaller school may be able to play its varsity team against the junior varsity team of a much larger, more competitive school.
“I think (the publicity) is a good thing,” he said. “People get frustrated and shook up quick without stopping to think about, well let’s go through the details… I’m hearing a lot of positives from people now, saying this was overdue.”
Neiman noted that during his time and under what he’s called “conservative” leadership, the state already infused an 8.3% increase to address inflation into the K-12 system.
As for the teacher silo, “I think the consensus view, in my mind, was the Legislature recognized that learning really is in the classroom,” he said, adding that lawmakers wanted, then, to keep the money in the classroom.
Their Reserves
Some districts may have significant dollar amounts reserves, Neiman added.
Harris said Fremont County School District 1’s reserve account holds a balance of $6 million, but some of that money is reserved for other “emergency situations” as well. Still, he said, “we feel like this is a good candidate for those funds.”
Christensen said he didn’t have good figures Monday for reserves available for this exact issue. Carbon County School District No. 1 Superintendent Mike Hamel said his district is not yet at its maximum for carryover: 30% of its budget.
“We’re not at 30%, but I can’t give you a number because we continue to get tax payments in June,” said Hamel. “I don’t know what those tax payments are going to be, so I can’t tell you exactly what our carryover would be.”
Hamel’s district plans to front money from its reserves while working with legislative committees on the shortfall, he said.
Laramie County School District No. 1 is projecting a $570,000 decrease – about 11% - in activities funding, district community relations director Mary Quast said in a Monday email.
That district expects to have about $40 million in “general fund ending balance” by late June, said Quast, adding that the overage shouldn’t be interpreted as excess cash.
“It helps the district manage cash flow, meet payroll and operating obligations, address unexpected costs, and maintain financial stability,” wrote Quast.
Heiner said Sweetwater County School District No. 1 has about $125 million in reserves.
SCSD1 Superintendent Joseph Libby did not respond by publication to an email request for comment.
Cowboy State Daily is working on compiling figures of other school districts’ reserves and has sent inquiries to other districts.
By 2028, districts will only be allowed to carry over 20%, instead of 30%, of their revenues, due to another change in state education law.
They have to spend the money down anyway, Christensen noted in his own interview.
As for Christensen, he said shortfalls for school meals haunt his district the most.
This Bipartisan Baby
The recalibration bill, Senate File 81, which put the school funding package into law, was a bipartisan project with broad support in both chambers.
The Senate advanced it to the House on a 30-1 vote. The House approved it 52-7. An earlier version of it cleared the bipartisan Recalibration Committee unanimously.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
