A parent in Sweetwater County School District No. 1 has asked for the Board of Trustees to remove chair Cole Wright from his position, claiming the board violated her rights to free speech by amending its public-comment policy last fall.
At the school board meeting in Rock Springs on Monday, Cherell O’Driscoll presented the board with a signed petition calling for Wright’s removal on grounds that he has violated the district’s ethics policy, committed open-meeting violations and behaved unprofessionally.
O’Driscoll’s primary concern is that according to the amended policy she can’t publicly criticize personnel but can publicly praise them.
She said she began circulating the petition in April and collected signatures by reaching out on social media and talking to people around town.
“Like my dad always told me, we have to stand up for what we believe in,” O'Driscoll said.
Wright was not at the board meeting in person but attended virtually because he was out of town for personal reasons, he told Cowboy State Daily.
"There is nothing I can provide at this time other than the board will respond to the petition pursuant to statute," he said.
Once that happens, Wright said, he'll be happy to share the board's decisions "so that you can appropriately tell the full story."
Calls and emails to Superintendent Joseph Libby seeking comment were not returned before publication.
Background
The school board implemented changes to its public comment policy at its August 2025 meeting.
While comments related to district operations, policy or programming are welcome, Wright said that “comments regarding employment or performance of individual staff members cannot be addressed publicly by the board due to privacy protections under the Wyoming Public Records Act and due process rights under the Wyoming Teacher Appointment Law.”
At that same board meeting, Wright reported that action regarding the superintendent’s contract had been taken in executive session two months earlier.
“I want to begin my message with transparency and accountability,” he said at the beginning of the August meeting. “At the June 9 board meeting, I stated I do not anticipate any action upon our return regarding the executive session. That statement turned out to be incorrect. When the board reconvened, we did take action.
"All trustees present voted to extend Dr. Libby’s contract. I recognize the confusion this caused and I take full responsibility for that miscommunication.”
According to contract documents viewed by Cowboy State Daily, Libby was hired for the 2024-2025 school year with an approved annual salary of $178,000, for both the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years.
An amendment to the contract, effective July 1, 2025, extended his employment contract through June 30, 2028 and raised Libby’s salary to $195,000, effective July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, with increases each year thereafter.
According to the amended contract, he will be paid $205,000 for the 2027-2028 school year.
The amendment further increased Libby's car allowance to $1,500 per month from $800, as laid out in the original contract – an increase of 87.5%.
O’Driscoll learned about the amended contract when she discovered a file marked “Confidential” that she said had been uploaded to the public Board Docs website by mistake.
The document, one page labeled “Executive Session Minutes,” is dated June 9, 2025, and references “Personnel discussion was held to discuss The Superintendent’s Contract.”
After the discovery, she reached out to the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy think tank and litigation organization that monitors free speech and public records issues nationwide.
The Goldwater Institute has also represented fellow Sweetwater County School District No. 1 parent Kari Cochran in lawsuits brought against her by two school district administrators. Cochran lost her 18-year-old son to suicide in 2023 and has been trying to retrieve his records from the district since.
The Petition
Five signatures are required to present a petition to a school board. O’Driscoll’s petition contained 105 signatures.
“We gave Wright the opportunity to change and he has not,” O’Driscoll told the board Monday. “I told Dr. Libby and Cole Wright in a meeting in May that if they were to keep coming and we were not going to be able to work together I was going to put my feet into the sand and come back and fight back. And here I am.
“I may be as stubborn as a mule. But I am as patient as an ox.”
She said she was nervous as she stood in front of the board Monday.
“It’s confrontation,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “To go face-to-face and call somebody out, it was very stressful.”
O’Driscoll emphasized she was asking for Wright to be removed from his position as chair and not completely removed from the board.
“He is failing in the position he was elected to do,” she said
Wright was not present at Monday’s meeting. Board member Danielle Schumacher, who led the meeting in Wright’s place, acknowledged receipt of the petition and said O’Driscoll would receive a response within 30 days.
O’Driscoll said she was not surprised by that.
“I would love a response to be in writing,” she said. “It’s very difficult to get things in writing from them.”
The Legal Side
Last week, The Goldwater Institute opined on its website that the Sweetwater County School District is misusing its recently revised public comment policy to “unconstitutionally silence critics.”
According to Parker Jackson, an attorney at the institute, Sweetwater County No. 1’s Board of Trustees amended its public comment policy to prohibit any written or in-person comments that negatively address individual employee performance or employment. But comments praising individual employee performance are welcome.
He used O’Driscoll’s experience as an example, saying she was cut off by Wright and her written comments were redacted when she attempted to publicly criticize the district’s assistant superintendent in April.
“However, she was allowed to make written and in-person comments praising other school employees,” Jackson said.
This, Jackson argues, is viewpoint discrimination that violated the First Amendment.
He elaborated in an email to Cowboy State Daily: “Under the First Amendment, government officials cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination. That means that when public comment is taken on agendized matters in a public meeting, the board cannot pick and choose which opinions to hear.”
Jackson further said the school board is in violation of the Wyoming Public Records Act. When the institute requested copies of O’Driscoll’s unredacted written public comments, the district refused, claiming the comments were confidential personnel files.
“The district’s interpretation of ‘personnel files’ is so broad that it could encompass any record the district has that names or criticizes an employee or that the district chooses to place in a personnel file,” Jackson said via email.
The Goldwater Institute sent two letters to the school district asking them to reverse course. The institute has not received a response to either letter, Jackson said.
According to Jackson, the district faces possible litigation if it does not fix the alleged violations.
That could mean lawsuits in state or federal court – or both – based on violations of the First Amendment and state law.
Kate Meadows can be reached at kate@cowboystatedaily.com.
