As the brother of a recent graduate from the University of Wyoming’s College of Education, Rep. Landon Brown (R-Cheyenne) has seen firsthand how lagging teacher salaries in Wyoming affect the state’s pool of educators. 

“The offer that he received from Arizona was $22,000 more a year than what he was offered for any school district here in the state of Wyoming, including Cheyenne, where his home was,” Brown told his colleagues on the Joint Education Committee Thursday. 

“He picked up and moved to the state of Arizona, where he’s going to pay income tax, because he can make $22,000 more a year,” he continued. 

In the face of such anecdotes, as well as empirical evidence that Wyoming is , the Joint Education Committee recommended an 8.5% “external cost adjustment,” or temporary increase in funding, for teacher and other school staff salaries for the 2025-26 school year. The body voted 11-1 to recommend the increase.

The recommendation, which also includes shifts in funding for school materials and utilities, would increase funding by approximately $66.4 million in total. That would bring the funding in alignment with Wyoming’s “evidence-based model.” That funding model was implemented after the Wyoming Supreme Court in 1995 declared the state’s K-12 school finance system unconstitutional for failing to “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction.” The new formula relies on consultants using complex economic data to periodically define appropriate funding levels instead of elected officials. 

The pay bump still has hurdles to clear. The Appropriations Committee will make its own recommendation on the matter to Gov. Mark Gordon by Nov. 1. 

But the Education Committee’s decision could represent a response to critics who say Wyoming has lost its ability to recruit and retain quality educators because it hasn’t kept up with the high relative pay it once offered. 

Background 

Wyoming periodically “recalibrates” how much the state is willing to spend on education and how the funds should be split — a complicated undertaking done with the help of consultants. The next recalibration is scheduled for 2025.

During the non-recalibration years, lawmakers decide whether inflation and cost models demand an external cost adjustment to appropriately fund staff, supplies and utilities. Any changes are then reflected in Wyoming’s Educational Block Grant Funding, a spending measure approved by the Legislature.

The committee’s discussion last week honed in on pay for teachers and other school staff. 

In 2010, teaching salaries in Wyoming were about 25% higher than salaries in adjacent states, according to a  by economics researcher Christiana Stoddard. But over the next decade, the state’s average teacher wage didn’t increase much, going from $59,268 in 2012 to $60,650 in 2020, the report states. 

Today, Wyoming still exceeds many Western states for teacher pay, but its edge has slipped. It’s ranked No. 26 in the nation for its average teacher salary of  $61,979, 

Teacher pay in surrounding states is creeping up, Stoddard told the committee Thursday, including in Utah, which now surpasses Wyoming. Teaching wages have also fallen relative to salaries in other comparable occupations in the state, she said. 

“Cost pressures matter because they affect the quality of teachers, and we know that teacher quality makes an enormous difference in terms of student outcomes,” Stoddard said. Many Wyoming school districts, she said, have opted to hire fewer personnel at a higher pay to remain competitive. 

Stoddard noted another concerning trend: “a pretty sharp drop in the number of bachelor’s degrees from the University of Wyoming who are graduating in teaching.” UW has been a major source of new teachers to Wyoming schools.

In an effort to sustain teaching levels, districts are coming up with creative solutions. Wyoming reported 190 teachers using emergency or provisional credentials and four teachers working outside their licensed subject area for the 2021-22 school year, according to a Learning Policy Institute  on the state of the teacher workforce. 

Keeping constitutional 

After listening to reports on the state of school funding Thursday, Sen. Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie) made a motion to recommend an external cost adjustment that includes the 8.5% increase for both professional and non-professional staff. 

The total $66.4-million difference in the funding that adjustment would represent is “not an arbitrary number,” Rothfuss said. 

Instead, it’s the figure legislative staff identified to ensure Wyoming follows its constitutional mandates, he said. “It is the amount that it takes to make a constitutional, statutory model equivalent to the evidence-based model.” 

Sheridan County School District 1 Business Manager Jeremy Smith encouraged the 8.5% recommendation. The conversation leading to it, he said, had a consistent theme: high teaching salaries can attract quality candidates even when they have alternate employment opportunities. 

One only has to look at the University of Wyoming graduation data to see that Wyomingites are being dissuaded from the profession, Smith said. He also pointed to a 2022 survey conducted by the University of Wyoming’s College of Education and the Wyoming Education Association that found 65% of Wyoming’s teachers would quit if they could. 

“Teachers aren’t very satisfied in their profession right now for a whole host of reasons, but one is certainly salary,” Smith said. “You’ve got to give the ECA, it’s got to be substantial and substantive in order to turn the ship around.”

Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) was the sole lawmaker to protest, calling the adjustment “out of line.” 

Rep. Brown of Cheyenne, meanwhile, spoke in support of it, saying that failing to sustain external cost adjustments has already proven to be unwise. 

“We’re not funding our school districts with the valuable resources they need to teach these kids,” he said before the committee passed the recommendation. 

In November, voters in La Plata County in southwest Colorado will consider to support child care and affordable housing.

Local advocates plan to use a new $100,000 grant to urge a yes vote from residents and think ahead about how to distribute the money if the ballot measure passes.

The grant is focused on prenatal and birth-to-3 issues announced Monday by the nonprofit Early Milestones Colorado. Other recipients include Hunger Free Colorado, Immunize Colorado, and Mile High United Way. The grants, several of which aim to help Hispanic and immigrant communities, came through Early Milestones’ “Impact on Equity Fund,” a new program seeded with a .

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The grant program unfolds at a challenging time for Colorado’s youngest children and their families. Federal COVID relief funds for early childhood have dried up, infant and toddler care is hard to find, and in recent years, much of the state’s energy has gone toward 4-year-olds served by the state’s program.

In La Plata County, the $100,000 Early Milestones grant will fund a bilingual “navigator” to help Spanish-speaking child care providers and families. It will also help leverage a consistent stream of money for child care — about $500,000 a year if the lodging tax measure passes. (Another $200,000 in lodging tax proceeds would go toward housing efforts.)

“It’s a child care desert down here,” said Rachel Landis, executive director of the Good Food Collective, which is part of the La Plata Food Equity Coalition that received the grant. “I know folks with babies are desperate.”

The lodging tax measure money would fund 100 child care scholarships for middle-income families with babies and toddlers and bump up wages for infant and toddler teachers by 6 percent, she said.

Landis credits a group of Latine moms for pushing for more child care support. The mothers began meeting on their own every Friday night to discuss the issue and ultimately raised their idea to the broader coalition, she said.

“I think initially the coalition was like, ‘Huh, that’s interesting, child care. How’s that related to food security?’” Landis said.

The mothers made a compelling case, connecting their ability to work and put food on the table to the availability of child care.

“It was this very systemic, upstream way to try to address multiple issues that feed into … food insecurity,” she said.

Across the state in Jefferson County, another $100,000 Early Milestones grant will support a project focused on early childhood nutrition and mental health.

The grant, awarded to Triad Bright Futures, will fund a yearlong program called Maternal Child Health Leaders for Equity that includes training and leadership opportunities for 20 Hispanic community members. They’ll receive stipends for participating and will practice what they’ve learned by shadowing home visitors who support parents with young children or helping facilitate community meetings on mental health or food access.

Participants will also be part of a “co-mentorship” program in which local community leaders — from home visiting, parent support, and mental health groups — will provide guidance and advice. Participants will also share feedback and suggestions with their co-mentors.

Paulina Erices, director of development and strategic initiatives for Cuenta Conmigo Cooperative, one of the project partners, said the idea is to bridge the gap between local organizations that are working on health and social service efforts and community members with different ideas or approaches.

Often, the two groups are working on the same problems, “but they are not talking to each other,” she said.

At the end of the yearlong program, which will start in January, Erices said she hopes local organizations and community members will have deeper connections and more shared projects.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .��

Howard, Baltimore and Frederick counties proposed double-digit hikes — above 2023 levels by 10.5%, 11.2% and 13.4%, respectively — according to an analysis by the school data service Burbio. 

Much of the funding for the additional spending is coming from the state, which will send over $7.5 billion to local districts in 2024 thanks to the Blueprint law, an increase of more than $600 million above 2022-23 levels, according to preliminary budget figures provided to ����Ӱ�� by the State Department of Education. Some 21 of the state’s 23 school districts will receive more funds than they did this year.

Prince George’s County is set to get the largest bump with an extra $195 million from the state for next year, the data show. The smaller Caroline County will receive the greatest new windfall proportional to its student body with $1,680 added for each of its 5,600 students. Allegany County and Baltimore City are the only districts that will see a slight drop in funds compared to this year.

William Kirwan, who chaired the commission that drafted the legislation for the 2021 Blueprint policy, said the new budget plans are “absolutely” a marker of schools’ progress toward complying with the landmark law’s provisions.

The 10-year Blueprint plan is in its third year of implementation. Ultimately, it will inject an additional $3.8 billion annually into the state’s education system, some $4,000 extra per student. In return for the funds, the law compels districts to work toward improvement measures such as universal preschool, $60,000 minimum annual teacher salaries by 2026 and widened access to college and career-preparation courses for high schoolers.

“No state has ever undertaken anything like this,” Kirwan said. He describes the changes as a “total overhaul.”

School budgets have been swelling nationwide thanks to the federal COVID stimulus package delivering $190 billion for K-12 education in one-time funds. But the preliminary figures from Burbio show that growth is continuing at a faster rate in several Maryland districts than in comparable school systems in other states. And unlike pandemic stimulus cash, Blueprint funds represent a longer-lasting source of revenue.

���ܰ�������’s includes the projected budgets of large districts in four states: Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland. The Maryland districts accounted for five of the top six largest proposed spending increases out of the 15 included.

The Howard County Public School System it plans to use Blueprint funds to recruit, retain and train educators, including a grow-your-own initiative to help paraprofessionals become lead teachers. It also is devoting money to pay the tuition of high school students who take dual enrollment courses at a local community college, among other efforts.

In Baltimore County, the funds will help the school district raise teachers’ minimum starting salary to next year and cover the costs of AP tests for all students enrolled in those advanced classes, among other measures, spokesperson Charles Herndon said.

Each year, Blueprint funds will provide roughly 500 Maryland students pursuing a teaching degree with a full scholarship for tuition, Kirwan added.

Existing teacher shortages “will be short-lived in Maryland when word gets out,” he predicts.

The Blueprint’s formula adjusts funding levels using a measure for concentration of poverty, and delivers the most total funding per pupil to Somerset County and Baltimore City schools, the two districts in the state serving the highest share of students eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch. Baltimore City’s slight drop in funding in 2024 is because it will go from receiving the highest per-pupil allocation to the second-highest.

Meanwhile, as funding flows to schools and as officials move to launch new initiatives, districts have until March 15 to submit formalized implementation plans to a newly created board overseeing the Blueprint’s rollout.

The decade-long policy is scheduled to be fully implemented by 2033.

“It’s a long process,” Kirwan said.