While working as a long-term substitute teacher in a Cheyenne high school not long ago, retired reading specialist Gay Wilson taught a junior who was reading at a second-grade level. 

The school district had identified the student for an individualized education program and had provided additional support for years, she said. Despite that, “he had just never gotten the correct reading instruction” because teachers used a recently debunked method called Balanced Literacy to teach him, she recalled.

“Here’s a kid who’s going to graduate this year, and he’s going to get a diploma, but he’s probably going to be reading at a third-grade level,” Wilson said. 

And his story? “It’s common across the state.”

Anecdotes like these motivated Wilson to trek to the Wyoming Capitol every day of this session, where she and fellow literacy advocate Kari Roden took a crash course in lobbying. They tracked down legislators, handed out data sheets, quashed rumors and bent the ear of any lawmaker who would listen. They were among a loose collection of parents, guardians and educators who, unlike the professional lobbyists crowding the halls, were not there on behalf of a client. 

“It was a battle every day,” Roden recalled.

Their work paid off Friday when Gov. Mark Gordon signed  into law. 

The bill aims to ensure that every K-12 Wyoming student develops strong language and literacy skills and that struggling readers do not fall through the cracks. It will establish an evidence-based system of instruction, intervention and professional development to provide teachers, families and students with comprehensive and effective tools for teaching reading. The bill also addresses deficiencies and aims to bring all Wyoming districts in line. 

“Reading is the foundation for every child’s success in school and in life,” Gordon said in a statement to WyoFile. “Senate File 59 keeps the focus where it should be, on Wyoming students.”

Wilson and Roden, of course, were there to see Gordon ink his name on the bill.  

“It’s just such a win for Wyoming children,” Wilson said. 

While the signing is only one action, advocates say it’s a monumental step in the effort to ensure children no longer get left behind to face the long-term uphill battles linked with low literacy skills, such as higher rates of incarceration and less economic mobility.

“It’s a historic day,” said Annie McGlothlin, whose own experience with a dyslexic grandchild led to her co-found an organization called WYO Right to Read. 

“You might think passing the law would be the end, but really it is the beginning,” McGlothlin continued. “So here we go.”

A long time coming

A group encompassing teachers, lawmakers, the University of Wyoming, literacy advocacy organizations and others has worked for nearly a decade to overhaul and improve how Wyoming teaches children to read. In that time, literacy instruction has emerged as a nationwide issue as American reading scores tick down. While Wyoming continues to rank comparatively high in national testing, literacy challenges are evident.

In 2024, 36% of the state’s fourth graders and 29% of eighth graders performed at or above the proficient level in reading on national standardized NAEP tests, lower than the previous five years. (2024 is the most recent year for which NAEP data is available.) Categories include below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. 

Some 32% of Wyoming fourth graders performed below basic levels, which was a slight increase from 29% in 2022. For eighth graders, 30% scored below basic levels in 2024, up one percentage point from 2022.

As  have shifted how the literacy field views reading instruction, many states have passed legislation to ensure evidence-based learning instruction is available to all students. 

Wyoming’s version resulted largely from the work of a literacy subcommittee with input from stakeholders including parents and educators focused on better identification and treatment of conditions like dyslexia. Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder made literacy review a top priority after she was elected in 2022, creating a cabinet of 40 elementary and secondary teachers that had input on the bill draft.

The Legislature’s Joint Education Committee finalized the draft over the legislative off-season. 

Once it hit the session, . 

Citing heavy constituent concern from educators, some wondered if the implementation would pile unnecessary professional development burdens on the already heavy workload of teachers. Others made efforts to limit it to K-6 or worried it would diminish local control. 

“I don’t think anyone that is opposing this bill is saying that literacy isn’t fundamentally important,” said Casper Republican Rep. Julie Jarvis during floor debate on the third reading of the bill. “What is being said is maybe this isn’t the right way to go about it … I’m not sure that this bill does what we think it does.”

Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, argued that the benefits of passing it far outweigh any reasons to hold off any longer. Literacy has been an interim topic for seven years, Brown noted. 

“I wholeheartedly understand the plight of the teachers,” he said. “But … ladies and gentlemen, it is about the kids.”

Improved literacy can help stanch mental health problems, avoid bad outcomes and address an issue of high school graduates ill-prepared for college or the workforce, other House proponents said. 

“We have a responsibility to make sure that when these kids are leaving our K-12 education, they are as equipped as they can possibly be to go on, if they so choose, to an institute of higher learning,” Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said. Wyoming post-secondary institutions are reporting alarming rates of incoming freshmen who need remedial education, he said, and that doesn’t speak to the students who don’t attend college. 

Cheyenne Republican Rep. Steve Johnson worked in a trade that required the ability to read and comprehend highly technical manuals, he told his fellow legislators. 

“In my trade, I found a disproportionate number of young men who had high school diplomas, who were practically functionally illiterate,” he said. “It’s very important that we provide for these older students the tools they need to propel them into a highly technical future.”

The House ultimately passed the bill, which it amended to loosen some teacher licensure requirements. Between the two chambers, SF 59 received 76 ayes and 15 nays on final readings. 

Personal stories

When 11-year-old Paul Pine died by suicide in 2023, his mother, Chandel Pine, initially resisted talking publicly about it. But Paul had severe reading difficulties, and the more she learned about literacy, she said, the more she realized that speaking out could help others.

Urged by her son’s former tutor, Pine testified to the Legislature. That led her into the literacy world, where she started  that has provided dyslexia screening and support to nearly 60 students. 

Many of her fellow advocates have personal stories that opened their eyes and led them into the work. Stories of children whose learning disabilities went undetected, of parents hiring costly tutors, switching schools and engaging in lawsuits against school districts. 

While 58 students is an achievement, she said Friday, the bill represents an opportunity for system-wide change, which will have bigger ripples.

Megan Hesser, Pine’s former tutor, wishes the bill was stronger in some areas, but said “it’s still a huge win.”

Hesser, who began lobbying in 2020, can’t help but think about the students who suffered unnecessarily in the meantime, she said. 

“How many kids have we lost and left behind in the six years it’s taken us to get here?” she asked.

This was originally published on .

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court allowed Maine private schools to receive public funds, at least five lawsuits have been filed by teachers unions, in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Missouri and South Carolina. Additional legal challenges have been mounted by advocacy groups and parent organizations.

The Supreme Court’s Carson v. Makin ruling, combined with growing interest among parents in post-COVID, has fueled the rise of voucher programs and led to a tug-of-war in state courts between public educators and school choice advocates. 

Heading into the 2025 legislative session, at least 33 states had some form of private school choice, according to the Georgetown University think tank . Most union lawsuits have focused on , in which public dollars pay for children to attend private schools —  including religious schools — and cover other education-related expenses such as homeschooling.

In Wyoming and Utah, judges ruled in favor of the unions — at least for now. In South Carolina, the program was retooled after a court declared its previous version unconstitutional.

The Wyoming Education Association, which represents roughly 6,000 public school teachers, landed a win in July after District Court Judge Peter Froelicher granted against the state’s universal voucher program. The union and nine parents had sued the state in June on grounds that the is unconstitutional because it violates a state regulation that it must provide a “uniform system of public instruction.” 

The union decided to sue after lawmakers made the voucher program universal this spring. It was originally created with a family income cap of 250% of the federal poverty level.

“No income guidelines, in essence, means that you could be someone in Jackson who owns an $18 million property, and the state’s giving you money,” said union President Kim Amen. “Our constitution clearly says that we cannot give public money to private entities, so that’s why we challenged that.”

The injunction temporarily stops the distribution of — which are funded from a state appropriation of $30 million — until the court determines the program’s constitutionality. The state has since filed an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court.

“I am disheartened at the court’s written order granting the WEA’s injunction. As one of nearly 4,000 Wyoming families, you have had your lives unnecessarily upended through no fault of your own,” Megan Degenfelder, state superintendent of public instruction, wrote in to parents. 

The case is similar to the one in Utah, where a judge ruled a $100 million voucher program unconstitutional in April, following a lawsuit by the state teachers union.

The Utah Education Association last year, arguing the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program violates the state constitution by diverting tax money to private schools that aren’t free, open to all students and supervised by the state board of education. The Utah Supreme Court is set to later this year.

Lawsuits in other states are still working their way through the courts.

In July, the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which represents the state’s public school teachers, challenging the constitutionality of the statewide voucher program that funds private education expenses for special education students. 

“Even voucher programs like [this one] that are targeted to students with disabilities deprive them of crucial legal protections and educational resources,” the plaintiffs said in a .

In Missouri, the state teachers union is over the , which started as a tax credit scholarship in 2021. It currently relies on nonprofits to collect donations that are turned into scholarships. Donors can receive a tax credit amounting to 100% of their contribution, but it can’t exceed more than half of their state tax liability. 

This year, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe dedicated $50 million in taxpayer dollars for the scholarships and $1 million for program marketing, according to the suit. The Missouri National Education Association, which has 28,000 members, sued in June in an effort to block the appropriation.

“The General Assembly has far overstepped its authority and violated five provisions of the Missouri Constitution by using an appropriations bill to construct out of whole cloth a scheme to divert general revenues to what are essentially vouchers for the payment of private school tuition for elementary and secondary school students,” wrote Loretta Haggard, the union’s attorney, in the suit.

On July 30, — part of a national nonprofit that advocates for school choice — filed a motion to join the suit as defendants. Thomas Fisher, litigation director, said in a that the program helps Missouri families afford an education that fits their children’s needs. 

“The recent expansion of the program is constitutional and will expand education freedom for low-income families and students with learning differences,” he said.

In South Carolina, the ruled in 2024 that its Education Trust Fund Scholarship Program was unconstitutional following a lawsuit from the state teachers union, parents and the NAACP. The program resumed this year after to funnel money from the lottery system instead of the general fund. 

Unions have also been involved in school choice lawsuits in and . In 2023, National Education Association Alaska over a state system that sent cash payments to the parents of homeschool students. That same year, Wisconsin’s largest teachers union asked the state Supreme Court to hear its case challenging the constitutionality of the statewide voucher program, but the .

LARAMIE—The Lab School is a family affair for Corelle Lotzer. 

Not only did Lotzer enroll her daughter and son in the school, but she taught math here for over a decade. Her daughter, who thrived years ago as a student in the K-8 atmosphere, returned as an adult to work as a paraprofessional — just down the hall from her mom.

Because Lotzer took a year off to take care of an aging aunt, she lost tenure. So when the closure of the 138-year-old school became official this winter, she did not receive a contract with the district to continue working at one of its other schools. 

Lotzer, who was raised in Laramie, instead accepted a position at Cheyenne East High School. In early May, she was still trying to figure out the logistics involved with working in Cheyenne while her other, younger kids continue their education in Laramie. 

“It’s been tough,” Lotzer said in a second-story room in the Lab School. The shrieks and laughter of children at recess drifted in from an open window. “I would have rather stayed in Albany County.”

Lotzer is one of 11 Lab School teachers without tenure, Principal Brooke Fergon said. “That’s probably been the most difficult challenge, that our tenured teachers have been placed in other schools throughout the district, and our teachers who do not have tenure … were not initially placed in positions.”

It’s not the only pain point involved in closing a school that predates the state of Wyoming itself. Many people fought to keep the Lab School open, and the past year has been a rollercoaster of emotions for school staff, students and their families as hopes have been raised and dashed, Fergon said. The school, which sits on the University of Wyoming campus, started as an educational learning site for college students studying to be teachers. It’s beloved for its experiential and outdoor-based approach to learning and emphasis on inclusivity. 

But  last summer as the university and Albany County School District 1 hit a stalemate over a lease agreement. School advocates pleaded to keep it open by some means and floated ideas that didn’t stick. The Lab School no longer served its former functions, university and district officials said, and issues from maintenance costs for the 75-year-old building to district-wide enrollment trends factored into closure talks. 

The final Hail Mary came during the Wyoming Legislature. A bipartisan bill sponsored by Laramie Democrat Chris Rothfuss would have . The bill passed out of the Senate, but House lawmakers killed it in February, and that was pretty much that for the Lab School. 

In the last year, Fergon said, “I think we’ve really been sitting in a place of uncertainty, just with all of the different avenues that could have kept the school going, and so that did feel kind of like a final door closing.”

And for her staff, she said, “even though we’re not happy to say goodbye to the school, and we didn’t want to see the school close, I think that having some certainty and a path forward … feels better than just sitting in limbo.”

With the school year ending Thursday, Lab School students will be saying goodbye to their classrooms and dispersing to other schools in the district. Some teachers will too, but others are starting new jobs or moving out of Laramie entirely. The school community spent the last couple of months bidding farewell, some with regret about how it ended. 

“We love the school,” said Lindsey Rettler, a parent with two elementary students in Lab. Rettler was experiencing a mixture of emotions, she said in May. “Surprise, a little bit of shock, really, really sad, super disappointed and honestly, quite betrayed by those who are supposed to be leading people based on what’s best for the people.”

End of an era 

The school was established in 1887 as the Preparatory School to serve secondary education students from counties without access to high school. In 1913, it transitioned to the Training Preparatory School, used as a learning laboratory by UW’s College of Education. 

In 1999, the private school partnered with the Albany County School District to become a district public school. The Lab School then operated as a “school of choice,” meaning any district family could enter a lottery to enroll their kids.

College of Education students continued to train in its classrooms, but they also did so in classrooms across the district, state and beyond.

Historically, UW and the school district operated with a memorandum of understanding laying out terms of tenancy. Efforts to renew that MOU, however, failed to produce an updated agreement. Instead, the university announced last summer it was pursuing an extension only for the 2024-’25 school year, meaning the school would have to find a new home if it was to continue beyond that.

Among the major sticking points: whether the district or UW should pay for things like major maintenance in the aging building. UW also cited the fact that the school “no longer serves a significant role for teacher training in UW’s College of Education,” along with security challenges regarding having a school-district-operated facility located on university grounds; the Lab School’s incongruence with the state’s public funding model and the fact that the school district “has excess capacity in its existing facilities to accommodate current Lab School students.”

The Albany County School District Board of Trustees voted in December to close the Lab School after considering options to move it into another district building. Trustees . 

Concerned residents bemoaned the decision, and Albany County state lawmakers took notice. Sen. Rothfuss’ bill was the product of that concern. The bill brought together strange bedfellows, with co-sponsors ranging from Freedom Caucus-aligned lawmakers like Ocean Andrew to Laramie Democrat Karlee Provenza. Both serve in the Wyoming House of Representatives.

The issue raised questions about the state’s role in local education and what constitutes a situation so exceptional that lawmakers should meddle. Lab School supporters argued its unique role as a teaching laboratory and its century-plus of education history made it a place worth saving. 

“This legislation is not about saving a school,” Rep. Andrew, R-Laramie, said on the House floor on Feb. 28. “It is about protecting a legacy and educating future generations of Wyoming teachers.”

True local control reflects the wishes of the people in the community, he continued, “and in this case, the overwhelming support for keeping the Lab School open has been ignored. The people of Wyoming, the parents and the students have spoken, and they have been met with indifference by those in power.”

But others said the state should not interfere in a matter of local concern.

“This really feels like we’re being asked to micromanage a local school,” said Rep. Art Washut, R-Casper. “I don’t think this is the proper role of the state legislature.”

The body ultimately killed the measure on a 24-32 vote. 

Moving on 

With that, school staff began the work of transition, making plans with its 145 students to help them figure out transfer schools and options, Fergon said.. The school counselor even brought in a “transition curriculum” to help students navigate and cope with the stress of such significant change.

There was also a staff of roughly 20 teachers along with employees like janitors and paraprofessionals. Many say they are sad to leave a school community that felt like family. 

Some, like Fergon, are continuing to work in the district. She will be an assistant principal at another high school.

Gov. Mark Gordon lauded a controversial universal school voucher bill Tuesday morning before signing it into law hours later.

 will represent a significant expansion of school choice in the state, offering families $7,000 per child annually  for K-12 non-public-school costs like tuition or tutoring. The scholarship will also offer money for pre-K costs, but only to income-qualified families who are at or below 250% of the federal poverty level.

The legislation has sparked a deluge of constituent feedback, according to lawmakers, both from supporters of school choice and from critics who call the measure an unconstitutional bill that will erode the quality of public education in the state. 

Gordon had himself  last year, citing constitutional concerns. However, he lauded this version as a “remarkable achievement for Wyoming.” 

“I’m very excited that we’re not only going to be able to expand K-12 choices to be accompanied by careful oversight and … ensure that all families have access to the best educational options,” Gordon said, “but as we pursue these opportunities, I want to make sure that we uphold the strength of Wyoming’s public schools.” 

Bill journey

The law will transform and expand an existing state education savings account program that gives public money to income-qualified families to help them pay for pre-K programs, homeschooling costs or private school tuition. The education savings account program was passed last year and began accepting applicants in January. 

House Bill 199 sponsor Rep. Ocean Andrew, R-Laramie, called the 2024 ESA program much too narrow. His new bill proposed to offer up to $7,000 per student regardless of a family’s economic needs. Along with making the program universal, in its original form, the bill dropped: the preschool component, a requirement that participating students take statewide assessments or similar nationwide tests and a requirement that providers be certified by the Department of Education. 

The bill has been transformed substantially as it travelled through the Legislature; some 26 amendments were brought, including 11 that passed. Along with changing the name from the Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act, the final version reinstated the assessment requirements, the provider certification and the inclusion of pre-K, though families have to show income need to qualify for that portion. 

It spurred much debate as it traveled through the body, triggering discussion on the state of public education in Wyoming, the constitutionality of the program and the importance of early childhood education. Many lawmakers asked what the rush is, given that Wyoming’s existing ESA program is only two months old.

Those who say the new law is unconstitutional cite Article 7, Section 8 of the Wyoming Constitution, which reads: “Nor shall any portion of any public school fund ever be used to support or assist any private school, or any school, academy, seminary, college or other institution of learning controlled by any church or sectarian organization or religious denomination whatsoever.”

When Gordon partially vetoed the education savings account bill last year, he pointed specifically to constitutional concerns when he narrowed eligibility to families at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. That referenced the constitutional language that prohibits the state from giving money to individuals “except for the necessary support of the poor.”

On Tuesday, he said he’s taken the last year to consider the issue, “and I realize that that will be sort of handled by our courts” if the question is asked. “In the meantime, I think it’s important to remember that we have all been working to try to expand school choice, and this gives that opportunity for parents.”

This comes less than a week after a judge ruled in favor of the Wyoming Education Association and eight school districts in a court case that’s anticipated to have major implications for the state. Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher the state’s public schools and ordered the state to fix that.

Praise and worry 

House Bill 199 drew loads of attention — both from local advocacy groups vowing to fight it and from out-of-state groups . President Donald Trump even weighed in when he gave kudos to Senate President Bo Biteman for helping to advance the legislation.

“This would be an incredible Victory for Wyoming students and families,” Trump wrote on Truth Social while the measure was still awaiting Senate votes. “Every Member of the Wyoming Senate should vote for HB 199. I will be watching!”

In Wyoming, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus celebrated the signing of the bill, crediting Rep. Andrew for its success. “Finally, we can say that in Wyoming, we support students, not systems,” a Wyoming Freedom Caucus Facebook post read. 

Many in the detractor camp, meanwhile, decried Gordon’s action. 

“Particularly in light of the extraordinary opposition to the voucher program by the majority of Wyoming’s residents, we are disappointed by Gov. Gordon’s decision to sign HB199 into law,” the Wyoming Education Association said in a statement. The association also questioned the decision’s wisdom following so closely on the heels of the strongly worded ruling. 

“The district court’s ruling from only days ago confirmed that the state is not funding public education to the level as it is required, and the choice to take taxpayer dollars to support a voucher program is a curiously poor decision,” the WEA said. 

The organization warned that similar laws in other states have proven these types of programs to be vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse and ineffective in improving student performance.

“Unconstitutional universal voucher programs serve as a taxpayer-funded welfare handout to wealthy families whose communities have access to such schools and whose students already attend private schools,” the WEA said. 

During his press conference Tuesday, Gordon characterized the ESA bill passed last year as a generic program. 

“I know it’s a big national agenda item,” he said of school choice. “But it’s important to remember that this is Wyoming’s way of doing it. This was created and crafted by people here in Wyoming, not somebody from out of state … and it really meets the needs specifically of Wyoming.”

Reporter Maggie Mullen contributed to this article.

A dozen state leaders, all from Republican-led states, wrote to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, last week asking her to push for greater state control over federal education funds and to avoid issuing guidance they say is “not anchored in law.”

In the Jan. 28 letter, shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, they also want McMahon, former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, to send large buckets of funding for schools, like Title I money for low-income students, as a block grant. But they stopped short of stating support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education — President Donald Trump’s top education policy goal. 

“By prioritizing state leadership and flexibility, the Trump administration can unleash the full potential of America’s schools and students,” they wrote. “Please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible.”

The letter outlines conservative chiefs’ priorities as Trump takes aggressive steps to reshape the federal role in education. He frequently to “send education back to the states” and is expected to issue an executive order before the end of the month that would call on Congress to close the department.

The memo offers specifics that have been lacking in many discussions over how the relationship between the federal government and the states might change. But some experts wonder if the freedom GOP leaders seek will leave high-need students without services currently provided under law. Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman, confirmed they’d received the letter, but said officials wouldn’t share it with McMahon until she’s confirmed. 

The 12 leaders who penned the letter, both elected and appointed, are from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. 

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was not among them, despite the fact that he has been the most vocal about and at one point, threatened to . 

The proposals should provide additional talking points for committee members during McMahon’s confirmation hearing Feb. 13. While it would require congressional approval, the chiefs want to see the of funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act — like Title I and Title III for English learners — consolidated into a single block grant for “maximum flexibility.” 

They want to design their own formulas for distributing the money to districts so they can address the needs of rural areas, for example, and state-specific learning initiatives. In the meantime, they want the new secretary to grant as many waivers as possible from the accountability requirements of the law so they can “present new ideas” for how to spend the money.

‘Dilute the protections’

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research and policy organization, said she wasn’t surprised that the chiefs didn’t advocate eliminating the education department outright. Many of their states on federal funds and spend less state money on schools. The department, she said, is doing those states “a great service.”

While some state leaders might view the federal requirements as “overly burdensome,” she said their push for more control could come at the expense of students who require extra help, like those in poverty, English learners and homeless students. 

“Once you start blending all of those titles together you start to really dilute the protections that are going to individual students,” she said. 

The letter doesn’t mention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which under , would move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“IDEA oversight is giving some people pause,” she said. “That piece of legislation is very specific to education.”

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say they have “serious concerns” about any attempts to shutter the department. On Thursday, they to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter asking for more transparency on how the department plans to continue running programs it oversees, like financial aid and afterschool programs.

“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators and communities,” they wrote.

In their letter, the state chiefs pushed back on the department’s practice of using “dear colleague” letters to enforce its priorities, which they said have often been “treated as legally binding policy.” Guidance from the department, they said, should merely be a suggestion “so as not to force behavior change.”  

During the Obama administration, for example, Republicans fought guidance that said students should be able to use bathrooms that match their and another that said districts could risk civil rights investigations if Black and Hispanic students were . 

On Wednesday, the Education Department issued stating that it would no longer enforce the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, which extended protections to LGBTQ students, and that any investigations based on the 2024 rule would be “reevaluated.” 

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes Trump honors the chiefs’ request, but noted the “chaos” that has marked Trump’s first few weeks in office. Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding have been . And even some have questioned Elon Musk’s authority to gain access to government payment systems and disable an agency that provides foreign aid.

“The ‘pen and phone’ approach, to quote Obama, whipsaws state leaders across administrations and is lousy federal governance,” he said. “My worry is less about the secretary nominee and more about the ‘move fast and break things’ approach we’ve seen so far in many other dimensions of this young administration.”

The Senate Education Committee voted 4-1 to send  to the floor for consideration by the whole body, but not before softening the language to read “restrict” instead of the original “prohibit.” 

The measure comes amid a bipartisan trend of new limits on smartphone and social media use in schools. Nearly 20 states, including California, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Florida, have passed laws or enacted policies that either ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones or recommend local districts enact such policies. 

Sponsor Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, a retired teacher, said she was inspired to bring the bill by a common teacher complaint that policing phone use has become a classroom nightmare. She cited data on the harmful mental health effects of social media and the hours of screentime many teenagers experience. 

“When we talk about trying to do good things for our kids in education, I think this might be one of the most important things we can do for our students,” Schuler said. 

The bill zeroes in on restricting use just during “instructional time.”

Not everyone agreed, however, that it’s as simple as banning devices, and due to potential complexities around safety, health conditions and communication needs, lawmakers replaced the more stringent “prohibit” in the original version with “restrict.”

What they said

At least 18 of Wyoming’s 48 school districts — and likely more — do not have cellphone policies, according to data collected this fall by the Wyoming School Boards Association. The lack of district-wide policies hasn’t stopped some schools in those districts from adopting specific rules. Senate File 21 would force all districts to adopt policies restricting smartphone use

In states that already have such regulations, Schuler said, the results are promising. “They’re seeing better social interactions with kids with their peers, better focus in class, higher achievement.” 

Kirk Schmidt of Lander, a retired school administrator, warned lawmakers about passing a bill that would not be nimble enough to react to the ever-changing realities of technology. 

Schmidt also noted that some teachers use these devices for instructional purposes. “This takes all that away,” he said. 

Others wondered about enforcement, privacy concerns and timelines. 

Supporters, meanwhile, echoed that smartphones are correlated with declining academic performance and behavioral problems like bullying. 

“I can tell you that the phones in the schools are very difficult for the teachers and administrators,” said Cheyenne resident Deb Mutter Shamley, who has experienced it firsthand as a substitute teacher. 

Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder supports the bill, a spokesperson told lawmakers. Degenfelder and Gov. Mark Gordon penned a joint letter in September urging Wyoming schools to limit cellphones. 

Tweaks 

In order to allow districts more flexibility, committee members voted to amend the language. They also pushed out the timeline two months to give school districts until Sept. 1 to enact policies. 

Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Casper, said he thinks the measure can “make significant progress in improving the quality of instruction in public schools.”

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, who cited concern about state government overreach, was the lone dissenting vote. 

The bill now heads to the Senate floor where it must pass three readings before it can advance to the House.

This was originally published on .

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. 

Most districts try to prevent chronic absenteeism through early warning systems that identify students who miss too much school, according to the report by . Districts also conduct home visits, call families when students are out and hire staff who specifically address attendance. 

But those efforts meet with pushback from parents. Some say, for example, that letters sent home nudging students to attend school are “too harsh.” 

“Parents’ overall feelings about the importance of school have changed,” said Jessica Hull,  executive director of communication and community engagement for the Roseville City School District, outside Sacramento. Chronic absenteeism in the district has dropped from its pandemic high point of 26% to 11%, but that is still roughly double its pre-COVID rate.

Some students with family members outside of the U.S. can be gone for weeks at a time. Others frequently miss Fridays and Mondays, while some older children are tasked with caring for younger siblings. 

“I’m generally a very positive person,” Hull said. “But I don’t know that we’ll really dramatically change those things.”

The report comes as more states are showing leadership on the issue. On Monday, Attendance Works, an advocacy and research organization, announced that have committed to cutting chronic absenteeism in half over five years in response to a challenge it issued in July along with the American Enterprise Institute and EdTrust. Chronic absenteeism peaked at 28% nationally in the 2021-22 school year. The Rand survey of nearly 200 district leaders estimates that rates dropped to about 19% last school year, but that’s still above the pre-COVID level of 15%. 

In a statement, Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, said states are “uniquely positioned to alert everyone to the size of this challenge.” 

But the Rand report suggests district leaders feel a sense of urgency to reach families with children who miss the most school now.

“The leaders we interviewed were frustrated because there are chronically absent students for whom their interventions aren’t working,” said Lydia Rainey, a researcher with the 

Center on Reinventing Public Education, which with Rand on the survey. “Some of the leaders had ideas for new programs to try; others were at a loss for what to do next. No one talked about giving up.”

The authors urged districts to emphasize approaches that foster stronger relationships between students and staff — an ingredient that even discouraged leaders say is the key to more successful strategies. Parents need to understand how poor attendance impacts their children’s academic performance, researchers said, and districts should collect better evidence on which methods make students want to come to school.

The U.S. Department of Education last week encouraged similar strategies in for low-performing schools identified as part of states’ accountability systems. The public has until Oct. 4 to provide comments on the draft. In addition, a recently posted  from the Department of Transportation offers other ideas, like teaching students to if transportation is unavailable.

In its effort to address the problem, the Roseville City district supplies gas cards to families who can’t afford to fill up and encourages transient and homeless families to transfer schools if their living situations have changed. 

“One school that works at the beginning of the year might not be the school that works at the end of the year,” Hull said.

Lines of communication 

School leaders sometimes modify district-level practices to keep the connections with parents positive. 

In central Wyoming’s Fremont County district, for example, home-to-school liaisons call families when students miss too much school. But Katie Law, principal of Arapahoe Charter High School in the district, changed the title for these liaisons to student advocate — “so families see that it is an attempt to help.” 

To comply with state laws and tribal codes, the district also sends letters and truancy citations to families of chronically absent students. But Law said those messages are often counterproductive.

“This just made relationships and trust between the school and the parents worse and led to students dropping out entirely,” she said. “It wasn’t effective.”  

Law has tried some of the conventional strategies Rand studied, but she has also added some home-grown ideas, like handing out prepaid phone cards so she can text students when they’re not in class.

“We can open those lines of communication instead of trying to find four different phone numbers that might be disconnected,” she said. 

Food is another incentive. Once a month, the school holds a community day, including a “giant potluck.” Last week, students and staff made pancakes and volunteered at the local food bank. 

“Kids start to feel that somebody’s depending on them the way they depend on other people,” Law said. “It shows them that accountability.”

‘Tricky’ questions

That mixture of approaches demonstrates how schools can connect with students socially. The “next phase” is ensuring families see an academic payoff as well, said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a research center at Georgetown University. She recently examined a to reduce chronic absenteeism in Rhode Island.

“Do students, especially high school students, feel that going to school has value? Is it a good use of their time?” she asked. “We have to start tackling the tricky and sticky questions of what happens within the school day, academically, that makes it worth it for students to stay in those buildings.”

As part of the Rhode Island effort, the state posts data showing how chronic absenteeism affects the percentage of students meeting math and reading expectations. The state also operates a that is updated every night and gives the public a real-time picture of absenteeism rates.

This year’s data is promising, with the rate declining from almost 29% in 2022-23 to less than 25%. 

Nearby Connecticut, which publishes on chronic absenteeism at the district and school level, has seen a decline from 20% in 2022-23 to 17.7%. 

But few states offer such timely, localized data, and most don’t even release statewide figures until October or later.

That’s part of the problem, Cohen said.

“This should be unacceptable,” she said, “given the agreement on how urgent this problem is.”

As the Wyoming Department of Education prepares to roll out a new , school-choice advocates are again asking lawmakers to expand the non-public-school assistance program to more families. 

That comes among warnings that expansion could jeopardize its already challenged constitutionality.

It’s the latest twist for a measure that was transformed, killed, revived, amended scores of times, passed by the Legislature, then partially vetoed by Gov. Mark Gordon in March before finally becoming law. The tug-of-war reflected the different outcomes advocates hoped the bill would achieve: early childhood education for some, universal access to non-public-school choice for others.

As it stands, the law creates a program to give income-qualified families state funds to offset private, pre-K tuition and homeschool education costs. Families who earn up to 150% of the federal poverty level — $48,800 for a family of four — can qualify for up to $6,000 to pay for school expenses for a child aged 4 up to 12th grade. Allowed uses include school supplies, tuition or tutors.

Gordon narrowed the income eligibility standards by removing families on the wealthier end of the spectrum when he vetoed parts of the bill before allowing it to pass into law. Gordon’s changes were , he noted, pointing explicitly to the Wyoming Constitution’s prohibition on the state giving money to individuals “except for the necessary support of the poor.” 

His vetoed version might not mark the end of the saga; school-choice advocates voiced interest during a Wednesday Joint Education Committee meeting in tweaking the bill again to broaden eligibility. 

“Should we tweak this legislation in the next session?” Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) asked. “Because we clearly had a different idea of what we were trying to do with this bill then maybe the governor’s veto reflects.”

A rocky path 

The education savings account law has roots in a pair of bills introduced during the 2023 legislature session. They would have given families $6,000 per K-12 student for tuition at any non-governmental school or related educational expenses. Those measures failed, but a new proposal that would also extend the money to early childhood education costs emerged between the 2023 and 2024 sessions. Speaker of the House Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale), who helped block one of those 2023 bills, touted the legislation as a compromise for those clamoring for more early childhood funding and those who want to support parental choice for options like private school or homeschooling.

Questions of constitutionality have swirled around the measure since those interim discussions. Along with the “support of the poor” concern, critics have pushed back on the legitimacy of effectively transferring state funds to religious schools.

The measure traveled a rocky path through the session before arriving at Gordon’s desk. After passing the House relatively unscathed, Senate lawmakers stripped it of income qualifications and pre-K eligibility. The House declined to accept that version, sending the legislation into a negotiation process that resulted in the final iteration.  

The version that landed on Gordon’s desk had a tiered income-qualification system based on the percentage of the federal income poverty level — $6,000 for families earning 150% or below; $4,800 for families earning 150%-200%; $3,600 for families earning 200%-250%; all the way down to $400 for families earning 450%-500%. For a family of four, 500% of the federal poverty level is an annual income of $156,000. 

Gordon eliminated eligibility for all but families at or below 150%. “While the intent to support education and parent choice is commendable, my analysis revealed practical and constitutional complications within the bill’s provisions,” the governor wrote in a letter explaining his vetoes.

Building the program

Wyoming allocated $20 million to seed the account, along with nearly $1 million for contracting and administration costs. Two positions will be created to help administer the ESA program. In anticipation of the Jan. 1 program launch, the education department has established an  to prepare the public for the application process. 

“We know we’ve got to get a lot done prior to [Jan. 1],” Wyoming Department of Education Chief of Staff Dicky Shanor told the committee. A big task is staffing the positions: an educational expert to oversee the academic requirements of the program and a financial expert to manage the financial requirements. The department will also put out a request for proposals for a vendor to partner on setting up some kind of online marketplace, he said. 

In addition, the department also needs to draft and finalize rules for administering the program, which will entail public comment, according to the education department. Those rules will dictate what kind of expenses are allowed, among other things. 

Rep. Ken Clouston (R-Gillette), who co-sponsored the education savings account bill that became law, asked Shanor about state programs that give money to people who earn up to 250% of the federal poverty level. Steinmetz followed with her question about tweaking the act and if that would affect the Jan. 1 rollout. 

Shanor didn’t know exactly how it would affect the timelines, “But I can say that Superintendent [of Public Instruction Megan] Degenfelder has supported the concept of this being as universally available as possible.”

Court test?

“One of the purposes of this bill is to have the opportunity for a court test and contest over what we really can do … in the K-12 system for private and other non-public schools,” Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) said to Tania Hytrek of the Legislative Service Office Wednesday. “Even with the veto, this bill provides the opportunity for that kind of a court test … does it not?”

Hytrek confirmed that. “To my knowledge a challenge to the bill has not been filed. But certainly the issues that were pointed out last year a number of times through LSO memos still exist even with the governor’s veto.”

Scott wondered if the program would have to get up and running before a court challenge would come. Hytrek said a court challenge could come either way, but noted that “it would take someone, an interested party, filing a challenge to the legislation which has not happened to date.”

The one individual to give public comment, former representative and current state director of Americans for Prosperity Tyler Lindholm, said his organization supports an effort to restore broader eligibility.

“I hope that you’ll move forward with legislation this year” and rework the process, Lindholm said. “I think the message that was sent by the Legislature with the passage of this legislation is that school choice and parents’ decisions matter. And I think the message sent from the governor’s office was somewhere along the lines of ‘you’re not necessarily poor enough.’ And that’s a rough message.”

A six-week bench trial over Wyoming’s school funding formula is underway in a Cheyenne courtroom. 

The heart of the case — whether the state is meeting its constitutional obligation to fund education — is dense and complicated. A parade of witnesses is anticipated to testify on topics ranging from major maintenance projects to school lunches, campus security and staffing. 

The outcome could have a bearing on the mechanisms by which Wyoming funds everything from teacher salaries to deferred maintenance in its 48 school districts. With nearly two years elapsed since the lawsuit was filed, WyoFile offers this refresher on Wyoming’s school funding model and what’s in the current lawsuit.

How we got here

The Wyoming Education Association, an educator advocacy group with 6,000 members, filed the 71-page lawsuit in August 2022. Eight school districts joined the lawsuit as intervenors to challenge the state. 

The suit claims the state of Wyoming has violated its constitution by failing to adequately fund public schools and has withheld appropriate funding at the expense of educational excellence, safety and security. That has left districts to fend for themselves and divert funds from other crucial educational activities, which causes further systemic erosion, the suit contends. 

Article 7 of the Wyoming Constitution states that the Legislature “shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction.” Landmark court cases further delineated the state’s obligations in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The more recent of those, the Campbell cases, set the stage for Wyoming’s current school funding obligations. Those cases culminated in 1995 when the  to determine the cost of a high-quality education, fund public schools, adjust funding at least every two years for inflation and review the components of the school funding model every five years to ensure resources are keeping pace with needs and costs. 

The court required the Legislature “to consider education as a paramount priority over all other considerations.” Its determination gave rise to a funding framework defined by two key ideas: the “basket of goods” — the skills and subjects students are required to learn, as well as “recalibration” — the process by which the Legislature reviews and adjusts its funding model. 

The Wyoming Education Association was an intervening party to that suit. 

What’s in the current suit

The 2022 complaint essentially contends that in the years following the Campbell cases, the state has failed to meet its school funding obligations. It’s done so by not granting periodic external cost adjustments and allocating insufficient funds to match necessary funding levels, the suit alleges. 

That includes teacher, administrator and support personnel salaries.

“In 2010, that teacher salary advantage was approximately 25% above the average of surrounding states and Wyoming districts competed well for the best teachers,” the suit reads. “Due to the failure to keep the model adjusted for inflation, that advantage has disappeared, and Wyoming districts not only cannot compete for high-quality teachers, but in a number of instances, Wyoming districts cannot compete to hire anyone for some positions.”

Wyoming districts have also been unable to “provide necessary support services for students; have delayed purchase of new textbooks, equipment, technology and other essentials; have cut back on activities and opportunities for students; and, in some cases, even eliminated programs,” the suit reads. 

Along with impacting the state’s stable of teachers, the underfunding has led to deteriorating levels of safety and security as well as the continued use of unsuitable facilities with unmet maintenance needs, according to the suit.

Moreover, the suit alleges, the failure to fund schools is not based on inability — “rather, it is ultimately a result of the lack of political will to follow the clear constitutional mandate.”

The suit also alleged that Wyoming has used several consultants to conduct its “recalibration” studies, but “ in turn when the consultants’ recommendations included increased funding.

“The level of funding for the model currently being provided is actually far below the funding level recommendations of the Legislature’s own consultants when the model was studied as part of ‘recalibration,’” the suit reads. “In reality, even those studies seriously understated the actual cost of education.”

Intervening school districts in the current case include Albany County School District No. 1; Campbell County School District No. 1; Carbon County School District No. 1; Laramie County School District No. 1; Lincoln County School District No. 1; Sweetwater County School District No. 1; Sweetwater County School District No. 2; and Uinta County School District No. 1.

Current spending

State education spending has increased from $443 million, or $4,372 per student in 1985, to $1.5 billion, or $16,751 per student, in 2022, according to the Legislative Service Office. 

Increases can be tied to many factors, including a growing number of students requiring special education services, increasing technology needs and rising inflation. 

Wyoming’s low population and rural nature also contribute to it having some of the highest per-pupil spending in the nation. 

Legal moves 

In December 2022, the Laramie County District Court denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.  

Then in 2023, Wyoming asked the Wyoming Supreme Court to intervene in the case regarding the level of scrutiny appropriate for determining the outcome. The Supreme Court upheld the district court’s decision that “strict scrutiny” shall be applied, denying the state’s petition for a lesser standard. 

On May 1, Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher denied the state’s motion for partial summary, sending the case to trial. 

Six weeks 

The trial kicked off Monday in Laramie County District Court with opening arguments and plaintiff testimony. Over the first two days, plaintiffs’ witnesses provided testimony regarding unfilled district positions, salary adjustments, how schools qualify for major construction projects and curricula. Witnesses included WEA President Grady Hutcherson, who spent 24 years teaching in a classroom, as well as district employees like superintendents and human resource managers. 

One of the outcomes plaintiffs seek is that the court grant “retroactive relief” to districts for “a reasonable amount of the funding that should have been delivered to them to date.”

The court is broadcasting the trial live, find the stream 

The was originally published on .

Since then, superintendents in nine of those districts — stretching from Florida’s Atlantic coast to central California — have resigned or been fired, often after a period of conflict with board members.

“Six new board members clean house first night on the job,” on Facebook Nov. 16, the day after its slate of candidates took office in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Before a confused crowd, they , who had spent his entire career, over 20 years, in the district.

Moms for Liberty founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich told ����Ӱ�� that their endorsed board members don’t always take office with plans to replace superintendents, but that sometimes it’s “necessary.”

Six of those nine districts hired permanent replacements; three still have interim chiefs.

Forcing out district leaders is one of the most obvious ways Moms for Liberty has made its mark over the past two years. As they over library books with sexually explicit content and LGBTQ-inclusive policies, members tend to portray these removals as victories for parental rights. Others say the group has unfairly targeted effective leaders and failed to address pressing issues like teacher shortages.

“The one thing that districts can point to that will demonstrate change is a new superintendent,” said Andrea Messina, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association, which conducts superintendent searches. “It’s an immediate message to the community.”

ILO Group, an organization focused on women leaders in education, analyzed superintendent turnover in those 17 districts for ����Ӱ�� as part of to track leadership changes since the pandemic. 

The Laramie County district in Wyoming — where Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates tipped an already conservative board further to the right last fall — is among those that have seen recent superintendent turnover. Margaret Crespo stepped down in August after serving as chief for two years. She who wanted to restrict books with sexually explicit content from children unless their parents gave permission. 

Crespo said she recognized what she was up against.

“They’re highly organized,” said Crespo, now a superintendent-in-residence with ILO Group. She said the organization knows how to mobilize quickly. “They have taken that skillset and moved it into this very dynamic political arena.”

Florida wins

Moms for Liberty’s goal is to “recruit moms to serve as watchdogs over all 13,000 school districts,” according to its website. combats what they view as government overreach and seeks to give parents more control over what their children learn, particularly as it relates to race, sex and LGBTQ issues. According to their tally, more than half of their first-time candidates won in the 2022 elections. 

The group’s impact is particularly noticeable in Florida, where Justice and Descovich served as school board members.

Their candidates flipped seven Florida school boards last November, four of which have had superintendent turnover — , and counties.

Justice and Descovich say they’re giving parents a voice in the political process. 

“We are focused on empowering parents who are seeing problems in their school districts to stand up and fight for their children and make real change by running for school board,” they said in a statement to ����Ӱ��.

Last month, they released a new “” with ready-made design templates, that they say should jump start the process for those seeking election in 2024.

As it looks ahead, the group’s fortunes may be shifting. it endorsed this past April for seats in Illinois, Oklahoma and Wisconsin haven’t fared too well. Of 32 endorsements in 15 races, just eight candidates won.

The groups advises winning candidates to reject training from their state’s school board association because many “foster the same woke propaganda Moms for Liberty is fighting against,” according to their site.

Because it’s a nonprofit, it’s unclear how financially successful the group has been. A 2021 put their revenue at $370,000, but membership has grown since then. There are now 285 chapters nationwide.

Other organizations such as and are working to counteract Moms for Liberty’s momentum. But experts say they are not nearly as well-funded and lack a national infrastructure.

“They’re out there, but they do need some connecting,” said Heather Harding, executive director of Campaign for Our Shared Future, a nonprofit advocating for attention to inclusion and equity in schools.

Moms for Liberty’s “network structure,” on the other hand, has given them considerable reach, said Rebecca Jacobsen, an education policy researcher at Michigan State University.

Some education advocates say once elected, however, the group’s members don’t always act with the same efficiency to address complex challenges in their districts.

“For all the power that they say they have, they haven’t really done much,” said Kathleen Low, president of the Berkeley County Education Association, which represents teachers in the district where Jackson was fired. 

The district is currently responding to a challenge over that include material one parent considers inappropriate for students. Among the titles are those targeted by Moms for Liberty members elsewhere in the state, including “The Kite Runner,” the story of an Afghan boy during the rise of the Taliban, which features a rape scene. In another, “Gabi: A Girl in Pieces,” a Latina teen chronicles her feelings about a friend’s pregnancy, another friend who comes out as gay and her father’s drug use.

Low called the issues a distraction at a time when schools in her district are short . include counselors, elementary teachers, and middle and high school teachers in core subjects and special education.

Book controversies are “like trying to discuss the feng shui of the furniture in a house that is on fire,” she said. “That’s how serious our situation is with staffing.”

Mac McQuillan, the Moms-endorsed chair of the board, didn’t return calls or emails seeking comment. 

Others note that solving such problems may not be part of the plan.

Members of Jacobsen’s research team have been watching hours of school board meetings in districts where Moms for Liberty won a majority last year. Compared to board meetings from 2019, they’ve noticed a shift in the “demeanor” of members, including new rules that limit public comments, less engagement and eye contact with parents or others who address the board and a more “hostile” atmosphere during meetings.

Moms for Liberty members, she added, have been successful at getting citizens without children in the local public schools to attend meetings and share their concerns about books and curriculum.

“You don’t have to have any agenda if your agenda is to disrupt,” Jacobsen said.

In July, a federal rule change ended this ban, instantly making 767,000 incarcerated people eligible to use Pell’s $7,395 annual stipend to pay for higher education. For advocates who have long sought this reversal, including college officials and justice reform proponents, there’s a realization that now, the hard work will begin.

“It’s so easy to turn things off,” said Ruby Qazilbash, deputy director of the Policy Office for the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance. “It’s difficult to turn them back on,” she added, referring to the arduous process needed to create new prison education programs. 

Ben Jones, education director for Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections, issued a warning to college and prison officials: “It’s not only a lot of work, but it’s expensive work.”

The move back toward allowing incarcerated students to access federal student financial aid began in 2015, when President Barack Obama initiated the . This allowed 67 colleges to begin prison education programs and made Pell funds available to those schools’ imprisoned students. By 2021-22, those 6,000 participants had more than doubled, to 13,186, according to a . In all, nearly 41,000 incarcerated students participated in Second Chance Pell, earning about 12,000 credentials.

Then, 2½ years ago, as part of the FAFSA Simplification Act, Congress that ended the ban, effective this past July. Celebrating the Pell ban rollback at a conference in Washington, D.C., this summer, James Kvaal, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, said that this “expanding opportunity has transcended politics.”

Now, colleges and prisons in nearly every state are attempting to create new initiatives. There’s no official count of how many schools are starting to offer classes behind bars, but enthusiasm is high, said Ruth Delaney, Vera’s associate initiative director. 

But crafting a college program inside prison isn’t easy.

There are three main steps: colleges and prisons must design a course of study, have the plan approved by the school’s accreditors and, if students will attempt to use Pell funds, apply for authorization from the U.S. Department of Education.

Jones is part of his state’s committee that reviews prospective programs. That group sets concrete guidelines for everything from how students will access technology to how frequently professors will hold office hours. “We’ve scared some schools away” because of the number of questions asked, he admitted.

Laura Ferguson Mimms, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education in Prison Initiative, agreed with Jones. “Operational things can create so many barriers” in prison programs, she said. “We want to know everything” about the plans. 

When building a relationship between a prison and a college, both sides need to “go slow in order to go fast,” she said. 

The idea of each state setting up a task force to oversee prison education programs is gaining momentum, Delaney said, especially because all federally approved programs need to be reviewed after two years. Having a formal structure in place before a program starts can lessen review surprises, she said. Up to 15 states, including Tennessee, Kansas, Mississippi, Georgia and Michigan, have task forces, Delaney said. These groups typically include college accreditors, state higher education officials, incarcerated people and corrections officials. 

The structure of prison education programs can vary widely, from full-time in-person classes to hybrid to fully online. While most schools prefer in-person instruction, a hybrid option can allow incarcerated students to mix with those who are on campus, Delaney said, sometimes increasing the types of courses that can be offered to those imprisoned. At California’s Pitzer College, students participating in the Inside-Out program travel to the California Rehabilitation Center to take in-person classes with incarcerated students. Three imprisoned students from the center graduated with bachelor’s degrees this summer. 

While the rollback marks a major change for higher education prison programs, Delaney said, many may avoid using Pell Grants if they can find funding elsewhere. “Pell is fantastic, but it’s very hard to file a FAFSA [form] in prison” because incarcerated students often cannot access the proper documentation, she said. Filing the federal financial aid form is required to receive a Pell Grant.

In states, such as Tennessee and California, that offer residents free community college tuition, it’s easier to use state funding than Pell Grants. That’s the case for College of the Redwoods, a community college in northern California that has been running classes at the supermax Pelican Bay State Prison for eight years.

But, using Pell funds is key for a new bachelor’s degree program being set up by California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, said Steve Ladwig, director of the school’s Transformative and Restorative Education Center. 

That program, which begins in January, will enroll students who have completed an associate degree with College of the Redwoods. Although Pell eligibility doesn’t factor into acceptance decisions, “with Pell, we can serve a lot more students,” Ladwig said. 

Being chosen for Second Chance Pell also changed the University of Wyoming’s program. The school had started by offering single classes to imprisoned students without putting anyone on a path to a degree. But because Pell funds can cover full-time students’ tuition, the university ramped up its Pathways from Prison program, said Robert Colter, co-executive director. “Pell is absolutely critical for creating a sustainable degree path.” 

Wyoming’s program started at the state’s only women’s prison so the university would not have to deal with students being transferred to other facilities, Colter said. But the school also just launched a program at a men’s prison for the fall semester, he added.

Like Wyoming, College of the Redwoods began with one group of students taking one class, said Rory Johnson, dean of the Pelican Bay Scholars Program. There are now as many as . “We started small and just added as we got better at it,” he said.

Beyond financial considerations, reinstatement of Pell is meaningful for imprisoned students, said Humboldt’s Tony Wallin-Sato, a formerly incarcerated individual who has earned a college degree. “It tells people who are incarcerated, you do deserve this, you are human beings. It validates something.” Wallin-Sato is the program coordinator of the school’s Project Rebound, a program that helps formerly imprisoned students attend college. 

As colleges explore creating programs behind bars, Colter cautioned, they must pay attention to the demands that starting a prison program places on internal staff. Instructors might have to adjust classes for students who can’t access the internet or create a way to run a lab inside a correctional facility.

And because prisons are typically located far from college campuses, travel can be a major consideration. Wyoming Women’s Center is in rural Lusk, 2½ hours from the university. Because of the distance, classes are hybrid, with most instructors visiting the prison at least once, Colter said. The distance between Humboldt and Pelican Bay is 83 miles; while the university plans to make all its classes face to face, winter might impact traveling on rural roads, officials said. 

While it is typically not difficult to find instructors willing to be part of a prison program, Colter said having the backing of the entire school is vital. In Wyoming’s program, student support officials go to the prison to help with enrollment and to hunt down transcripts. “That can be really hard sometimes,” he added. 

Johnson agreed that it is important to get different department officials to buy into a program, even if most of them will never visit the prison. For example, Redwoods had eliminated all its paper forms, but because of limitations on technology in the prison, it had to re-create a system to enroll imprisoned students using paper, he said. The school also created a policy to accept unofficial transcripts because so many long-term incarcerated people at Pelican Bay had trouble procuring accurate documents. 

It’s not clear how many students it might take for a college program to break even financially, said Delaney, adding that Vera plans to conduct a cost analysis of prison programs soon. But Mark Taylor, a formerly incarcerated prisoner who earned a degree at Humboldt, came up with his own calculus. He estimated that California spent $1.5 million to keep him locked up for 21 years. “I earned a bachelor’s degree for under $30,000, and now I’m paying taxes, a significant amount.” Taylor is a youth outreach coordinator at Project Rebound.

“At some point, you’re asking the wrong question if you’re asking if we can afford” prison education programs, said Maxwell Schnurer, a Humboldt communications professor and the leader of its upcoming prison program. “It’s more like, can we afford to have a bunch of uneducated folks in our community? I would say no.”

“It’s not just about having them pass classes,” said Colter. “We have a saying at our school: Prepare for complete living. That’s what I have in mind.”

The state known for its traditions of coal and cattle will be advancing a new tech sector this fall: computing. The University of Wyoming’s School of Computing will be opening as a centerpiece of the Wyoming Innovation Partnership, an initiative intended to build workforce resilience and boost the state’s economy. 

The initiative is not a move away from the state’s bread and butter industries, said former state Rep. Tyler Lindholm, who is now the Wyoming director for the Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group. 

“They’re the ones that have kept us alive for decades and decades, they’re our stalwart champions,” Lindholm said. “But it also comes down to the fact that Wyoming exports our most natural precious resource, and that’s kids.”

After graduating from high school and college,  their homes at some of the highest rates of out-of-state migration in the nation, although that slowed during the pandemic. Between 2014 and 2020, Wyoming’s millennial population — people ages 24 to 39 — decreased by 6%, according to a . 

“So a lot of the ideology behind being tech forward, and figuring out a way to attract these businesses, is honestly [about] keeping our kids,” Lindholm said.

Gov. Mark Gordon acted on this issue in 2021 by ordering the innovation parternship’s implementation using American Rescue Plan funds. The program focuses on driving statewide development through digital infrastructure and entrepreneurship. The efforts emphasize coordination between the state government, community colleges and UW. 

Teaching tech

The School of Computing, as a key component of the initiative, is billed as “a hub of innovation and knowledge exchange providing UW students, faculty, and Wyoming businesses and citizens with a ‘backpack’ of computational tools and approaches to drive transformation.” 

While the initiative is recent, Wyoming’s tech-forward movement began around 2016 while Lindholm was still in office. The state became the first in the nation to implement K-12 computer science education and led in pro-blockchain law. It remains 

The state also took a stride in computing efforts by bringing the  to Cheyenne in 2012. 

“Wyoming has really innovated in computing,” said Gabrielle Allen, the computing school’s director. “I think what we haven’t had is the ability to kind of pull that together to be really strategic in how that impacts the university and the state.”

The way the state has coordinated the innovation partnership has garnered national attention, said UW President Ed Seidel, who is married to Allen. Seidel serves on the advanced scientific computing advisory committee for the Department of Energy. 

“We had people there from the White House talking particularly about the importance of all of these digital areas and artificial intelligence and how we have a national crisis and must invest,” Seidel said at the June Board of Trustees meeting. “I’m able to hold up the fact that in Wyoming we have the whole state organized around this. It’s really getting a lot of attention on the national level.” 

Top priority is deploying “new computing tools that are particularly relevant to solve the problems and the challenges and opportunities that we have in the state,” Allen said. “We have a lot of cool applications … that relate to the environment, the climate, weather, animal migration, controlled environment, agriculture, ranching.” 

The school is designed as an interdisciplinary hub to reach the state’s varied markets and students in all academic areas through applied computing skills, the practice of integrating computer science with another discipline. 

Bryan Shader, a professor of mathematics selected by Seidel to organize UW faculty behind the school, said the academic unit is also focused on reaching students at different academic stages and interests. 

By providing an applied computing degree, “that allows a larger swath of students to be part of the computing field,” Shader said. “So computing is no longer just the purview of the people that want to be a computer scientist.” 

Cashing in on education

Despite the school’s inclusive aspirations, Shader said it’s been a long process of getting people interested and invested in the school’s mission. 

“It’s partially a social and economic question,” Shader said. “And it’s dealing with change. I think you have to be really careful not to mandate anything or shove things down people’s throats. I’m a really strong believer that if people have an opportunity to see value added, and are welcomed to sit at the table, most people will find ways to seize opportunities.”

With transferable computing skills, students can become entrepreneurs and business owners in the state, whether they’re from Sheridan, or Cody, or Jackson, Allen said. “We want to show them that there are modern opportunities. But we need to build up that infrastructure.” 

“I think that’s the importance of things like the Wyoming Innovation Partnership and the aims there, because we need a whole ecosystem,” Allen said. “I’ve spoken to small tech companies in the area who, who kind of have to maintain a part of their business in Colorado, for example, purely for workforce needs, and they would like to expand in Wyoming.” 

Shader said he could name 15-20 Wyoming businesses looking to hire UW students with data science, AI and software development backgrounds. 

This fall, the school is gearing up to infuse Wyoming with a more computing-savvy workforce. During this inaugural year, undergraduate students will be able to pursue a minor in computing. Some 16 graduate computing scholars will interface with the school to help guide its growth and design. 

Right now, the school is implementing a Bachelor of Science in an applied software development degree as a program where students will begin their degree at one of the state’s community colleges and finish the program at the university. There are already 15 participating students at Sheridan Community College. 

Also in the works is a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts in applied computing. Eventually the school also hopes to offer a master’s in computing around AI and certificate course options. 

Aside from the formal programs, this fall the university will see the largest group of students — 220 — take the school’s intro to computer science course, Shader said. 

“I do think that there’s a beginning sense amongst the students, that, hey, having some computing can benefit them, regardless of what their major is,” Shader said. 

But developing a young tech workforce must be reinforced by a strong post grad market, Lindholm said. 

“My concern is, can we maintain this momentum, stay on top of our laws and stay hungry on this?” Lindholm asked. “If we can do that, if we can stay hungry, and stay on top of these laws and find new ways to advance our state economically, then really, Wyoming’s future is exceptionally bright.”

 is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Following years of underperformance and legislative wrangling, the Wyoming Department of Education has proposed a new set of rules for how the state’s public schools teach kindergarten through third-grade students how to read, and is seeking public input on the changes. 

Drafted in response to a  in state law, the rules are intended to raise reading proficiency levels by the end of third grade by improving assessment and intervention practices that identify and support students’ varied needs. 

This legislative debate over literacy laws began about five years ago, according to Rep. Landon Brown (R-Cheyenne), who chairs the Joint Education Committee. At that point, the Legislature proposed eliminating reading assessment instruments altogether. This came at the same time that on the American reading curriculum’s widespread failure to implement evidence-based instruction methods for early literacy. 

“In Wyoming we really have a K-12 and beyond literacy problem, but the major emphasis should remain in K-3,” said Megan Hesser, parent advocate for Parents of Wyoming Readers and founder of Hesser Literacy Partners, an LLC offering consulting, coaching and private tutoring using evidence-based reading practices. “The research out there shows that if you are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade, without some massive interventions, you will always be behind grade level, it doesn’t change. It’s the reason that the [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores don’t change.” 

The most recent NAEP tests reveal that not even  met or exceeded grade-level proficiency scores in 2022. These students face a significant risk of lifelong reading difficulties.

Instead of abolishing standing reading assessments, concerned constituents — mostly parents of struggling readers — began fighting to fortify K-3 literacy laws in the state. 

The  up for comment are a result of their years-long efforts. 

The Department of Education drafted the rules with input from a committee of stakeholders the agency selected to represent a composite of the state’s districts as well as a range of formal training and in-classroom experience. 

“We wanted a full range, so we have all the way from superintendents to curriculum directors to reading interventionists,” WDE Chief Education Officer Shelly Hammel said. “Every single one of the individuals that participated in our stakeholder committee had been classroom teachers first and then moved into other roles.”

The group also included those with special education and English-as-a-second-language backgrounds. 

The department will accept input  through July 31. Interested parties can also weigh in via virtual comment forums  from 5:30-7 p.m., or , from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 

Literacy bedrock

Hesser became a leading advocate for better literacy legislation after her son fell behind in the classroom. For more than two years he struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia, dysgraphia, avoidance behavior and anxiety related to learning to read, she told the Joint Education Committee at its last meeting. 

The problem, she said, is much larger than test scores.

“It’s time that the education committee considers that there’s a link between K-3 literacy and mental health,” Hesser said. “Reading is the root of a lot of these pieces that seem unrelated.”

If you can’t read, she continued, “how are you going to fill out a job application? Or resume? And if you can’t do that, then how are you going to take care of yourself or your family? At some point, something’s got to give.” 

Though Hesser responded to her family’s experience by earning a master’s degree in reading science, she said that parents and teachers were largely left out of the rules drafting process. She hopes they now participate in the reviewing process. 

“There’s so many families and teachers that don’t know what they don’t know,” Hesser said.  

Committee co-chair Brown also said he would like to see the review process build a broader consensus base.

“I hope the parents that had been left behind [and] the parents that have had good processes in this system comment on this,” he said. “I hope that we have legislators that take note of this and understand exactly how important this is.”

Rules roundup

The  regulate five key aspects of reading instruction:  

1. Screening: Establishes a list of approved screening instruments that districts can use to catch reading difficulties, defines the criteria that alternate screeners must meet and mandates that such assessments be administered three times per year. This section also provides for regulations interpretation and needs-based decision making processes. 
2. Evidence-based intervention and curriculum: Orders content standards for evidence-based core curriculum and establishes standards for remediation practices in the case of intervention. 
3. Individual reading plan and parental notification: Defines the process by which identified reading difficulties result in individual reading plans for students, and how both will be reported promptly to parents or guardians. 
4. Professional development: Defines the content and quantity of professional development districts will require of K-3 educators in evidence-based literacy instruction and the identification of reading difficulties. 
5. Reporting requirements and documentation: Establishes that all districts will record district literacy plans, individual learning plans and professional development practices; and will report to the WDE screener data, individual schools’ progress towards the goal of 85% of students reading on grade level and other documentation upon request. 

Looking forward

Hesser’s biggest concern going forward is implementation, she said. 

“I know there are pockets across the state that are a little bit resistant to what’s been happening, as far as these changes to the legislation have gone over the last handful of years,” she said. “So that’s always going to be my biggest concern,” she said.

Brown notes these rules are a first attempt.

“We also need to make sure that we’re nimble enough that if this does not work, we need to be able to change our statute and change our rules package in a hurry to make sure that we’re identifying what’s wrong with our statute, what’s wrong with our rules to make sure that school districts and schools themselves are able to adapt as they need to,” Brown said. 

 is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

An unexpected Sunday night resignation just two weeks into the 2022-23 school year left rural Newcastle High School, in eastern Wyoming, without a math teacher to handle three classes each of Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. District curriculum director Sonya Tysdal stepped in as a substitute, but after a couple of fruitless weeks searching for a qualified long-term substitute or replacement, Newcastle needed a sustainable option. That’s how Carnegie Learning’s ClearMath Classroom was born. 

Newcastle already used the company’s High School Math Solution curriculum, so Tysdal asked if Carnegie had a way to help. What emerged was an expansion of an established tutoring service into a full-time classroom provider that now serves students in the Weston County School District and beyond.

“We emphasize small-group instruction and small-group software whenever we can,” says Barry Malkin, Carnegie Learning CEO. “The small-group instruction, together with the tutoring work we are doing, really led to the epiphany there is a needed solution in the market to address the teacher shortage problem. We brought all these elements together into ClearMath Classroom.”

Newcastle’s 90 or so algebra students connect with certified teachers employed by Carnegie Learning through an online portal while in class. Each class is divided between two educators, to keep the small-group mindset going. Students work in pairs to promote collaboration and spend 60 minutes with their teacher virtually, referencing textbooks, taking notes and interacting via the portal. The remaining half-hour of class time is devoted to individually paced independent work. 

A full-time paraprofessional serves as manager and facilitator in the classroom, monitoring student behavior and engagement, communicating with the virtual teachers when needed and troubleshooting technology.

As with any new effort, it wasn’t wrinkle-free. There were technical issues to troubleshoot — such as ensuring students stayed connected to the portal and microphones always worked — and communications snags to work out. For example, Newcastle needed to make sure the teachers provided by Carnegie Learning were in tune with each student’s individualized education program and were aware of logistical changes, such as snow days. But because the school already used the company’s math curriculum and students were already using computers in the classroom, the only new component was constructing an approach that mixed small-group instruction and one-on-one assistance. That was done within a few weeks.

“I’m not sure how we would have provided a quality education for our students without it,” Tysdal says. “It has been very beneficial. It has been imperative to do.” 

Carnegie Learning, born out of Carnegie Mellon University 30 years ago, is an independent company but still relies on the university for research and data. Created with a math focus, the company launched a K-5 math program in February and has recently expanded into literacy and world languages. Malkin says the virtual solutions fit the company’s goal of “producing better educational outcomes across the country.” 

With its success at Newcastle, Carnegie Learning has expanded to a few additional districts around the country, providing a stopgap solution that could eventually evolve into a long-term in-classroom alternative. “I do see the current construct as solving a nationwide crisis today, but I see the product evolving to support differentiating in the classroom tomorrow,” Malkin says. “There is a role for virtual support in the classroom to augment long term.” 

Newcastle recently hired a new math teacher for next school year but will finish out the current year with ClearMath Classroom. “It will always be nice to know that there is an option,” Tysdal says. “If we are in a tight pinch again, this would be something we would definitely look into.” 

She adds, “It is good to know this service is there. It has helped us immensely.”

Some, like Joshua Oh, who started sixth grade in 2019-20, never experienced a full year free from virus worry at the campus they’re now leaving. To mark the occasion, we invited a few members of ����Ӱ��’s Student Council who are graduating, including Oh, to take stock of the current moment, reflect on the highs and lows of pandemic schooling and share what they’ve learned along the way.

Joshua Oh, graduating from Crofton Middle School in Gambrills, Maryland

My views on life and school have drastically changed from the start of middle school to my graduation. I was excited about a new school and new people when I first started middle school in sixth grade. I remember being sad that there was no recess and having a completely different group of friends.

That first week is always the most nerve-racking but fun, meeting new people and fitting into groups. As the year went on, I realized how diverse the people were, unlike in elementary school. The kids were racially different and there was less teasing. I found friends that I connected more with and started to drift away from my original friend group. I met new people and got to talk to them every day until the pandemic started. 

At the time, everyone was happy getting a break from school, not knowing how long this break would be. Those two weeks increased from weeks to months until the lockdown started. I would watch the news and be scared that people I know could get COVID and die. I felt like I would be stuck inside forever and the world was falling apart. I had peers around me losing family members and it really scared me when a close friend’s uncle passed away. I was afraid the same thing could happen to the people I care about.

I was happy playing video games and doing nothing, but virtual school started a short time later. It felt like the first day of school again, but communication with everyone had stopped. The rest of the year was easy, with little teaching and easy assignments. 

The school system used summer break to fix virtual learning, and when the new school year started, we got actual work. There were no requirements for camera use during class, so nobody used them. Nobody knew what each other looked like, making it difficult to break the ice. At the time, I didn’t have much communication with my friends except through video games. I lost a couple and gained a few friends, but this was a low point in my middle school career. 

Things started to get easier when hybrid learning was introduced, although optional. I was one of the few to pick this and got to make new friends. I didn’t learn much from this year, but it is something I will never forget. Restrictions started to decrease during that summer, and I hung out with my friends more. When the new school year started, in-person learning was required, along with masks. School started to feel normal again, and masks became optional. As the year went on, COVID faded from the news. It felt like COVID was gone and as if a dark cloud was lifted from everyone’s head.

I’m now in the last month of middle school, and it feels surreal that it’s all ending. In sixth grade, I thought middle school would be fun and would last a while, but it is almost over. I have changed a lot from the start of sixth grade to the end of eighth grade. I skipped a year where many things changed, including me, and I don’t get excited about the same things. I used to be insanely happy about things like Christmas and Halloween, but COVID has made me care about other things like time with friends and family. 

I hope in high school COVID won’t cloud my thoughts and I want to spend more time having fun with friends. It feels like COVID is attached to middle school and high school will be a fresh start. COVID will affect my future challenges by helping me realize that these problems are small. I know that I have overcome a huge obstacle and am much stronger and more resilient than I was before. The pandemic has taught me how to adapt when situations like these occur and changed who I am.

Diego Camacho, graduating from Collegiate Charter High School in Los Angeles, California

There is a strange connection between journalism and physics. At their very best, both subjects seek to expose an objective, unyielding truth. That concept, the search for reality, has motivated all my academic endeavors. 

But, unfortunately, COVID limited my high school’s ability to offer avenues for exploring the two subjects I love so much.

Whatever underlying issues were present at my school were exacerbated by the pandemic. With a small campus and student body of 200, certain problems can become more prominent than in larger schools. The resignation of a teacher, for example, may mean the loss of an entire class for the remainder of the year. Course offerings one year may be very different from the previous years. 

My school once had a physics class. After talking with the school about the possibility of taking AP Physics for my junior year, I learned the school no longer offered it and only allowed two AP classes per student, per year, assigned based on grade. Thankfully, dual-enrollment at East Los Angeles Community College allowed me to take classes the school was unable to offer.

Many educators I had the pleasure of meeting my sophomore year left the following year. We lost our PE/biology teacher, an English teacher, our enrichment coordinator and a mathematics teacher, among quite a few others. For a small school, this was incredibly difficult. On top of that, our principal resigned that summer. Since then, the school has had many temporary principals. That looming, hectic uncertainty affected students’ ability to plan ahead.

Without a mathematics teacher, the school had to combine their pre-algebra and pre-calculus courses. Seniors and juniors shared a Zoom call, relying on Khan Academy’s free online courses rather than live teaching. 

With in-person learning for senior year, I asked for an exemption to my school’s two AP class policy, hoping to stuff my senior schedule full. My school counselor was unable to grant me the exemption.

Although I did not have many STEM opportunities at my high school, my passion for physics and journalism never waivered. COVID, teacher shortages, and strict policies were stepping stones to greater things. There are countless avenues for discovery, learning and growth outside of school. From dual enrollment at your local community college, to student research, to internship opportunities at the L.A. Times, genuine passions can’t be quelled. 

Currently, I am preparing for a gap year of learning, project-finishing and internship-taking before I make a college commitment. Now, with the conclusion of my senior year, I am optimistic that future graduating classes at my former school will not face the COVID-related challenges I did.

Kota Babcock, graduate of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado

After eight jam-packed semesters at CSU, I walked across the stage and received my diploma on May 13. It’s only been about a month since then, but already, leaving behind my identity as a student has been harder than I expected. 

With each exam, I found myself craving the freedom from homework, on-campus jobs and the stress of student life. As I now walk away, it’s strange to think that for the first time since I was 5  years old, I cannot call myself a student.

While in undergrad, I was deeply involved in HIV and LGBTQ activism. As the chair of All The T.E.A. (Teach, Empower, Advocate), I drove over an hour from Fort Collins to Denver to coordinate workshops, attend local community conferences and to meet with the activists who taught me everything I know. My efforts with All The T.E.A. shaped my interest in fighting antisemitism on campus and in advocating for the full inclusion of minority students at Colorado State. 

I also worked as KCSU-FM’s news director and as the Rocky Mountain Collegian’s arts and culture director, interviewing a variety of musicians, small business owners and other notable locals. 

I’m fortunate enough to have found a job right away as a general assignment reporter at a local Wyoming newspaper, the Laramie Boomerang. But striking the balance with continuing my activism work now presents a new challenge. 

I still make my way to Denver each month (sometimes virtually) to work toward the same goal All The T.E.A. has worked toward since I was in middle school: empowering people living with HIV and advocating for a better future for all people impacted by HIV. A difficulty we faced since 2020 continues to plague the organization, as COVID-19 made it nearly impossible for people to consider HIV an urgent enough public health and social justice issue to volunteer their time to. As our organization moves toward the future, we’re building partnerships to continue offering educational resources, free HIV testing, a shared community and more. 

As for life in Laramie, it’s much different than the experiences I had growing up in Denver, although somewhat similar to the college town I spent the last four years in. Shopping options are a bit scarce, as are easy-to-find LGBTQ spaces for non-students compared to any city in Colorado. Despite Wyoming not having a single gay bar, the aftermath of pushed forward intense change in the small city. When Shepard attended the University of Wyoming in Laramie in 1998, two men from the city beat Shepard and left him for dead outside of town, and Shepard later died in a Fort Collins hospital. Now, most of downtown Laramie is covered in gay or transgender pride flags, and the city recently celebrated its sixth annual pride festival. The story of Shepard haunted me in my youth, especially as my friends and I dealt with anti-gay bullies throughout middle school just over 100 miles south. His death deeply impacted the local communities in both Colorado and Wyoming, and it served as a warning to openly LGBTQ people throughout my pre-teen and teenage years. Fort Collins, it seems to me, has largely moved on while Laramie remains mournful. 

Looking back on my career as a student, I sometimes grieve what the pandemic took from me — my study abroad plans were canceled twice — but I also reflect on what I’ve learned. Student media taught me to stand up as loudly as possible for change. From my coursework to my two on-campus jobs and my work with the Hillel Jewish Center at CSU, I learned that to survive as a minority in any space that marginalizes your experiences, you must be as loud as you can be. 

While I never went into journalism with the intent of uncovering secrets or exposing corruption, I did go into it knowing that people in powerful places don’t typically want social change or transparency, and fighting back against that is my goal in everything I do. As I move into my adult life, I won’t forget this lesson and I hope that incoming college students can understand this as well.

This story was brought to you via ����Ӱ��’s Student Council initiative, an effort to boost youth voices in our reporting. America’s Promise Alliance helped in the recruiting of our diverse 11-member council and the idea was conceived as part of Asher Lehrer-Small’s Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship.

Nikki Baldwin, senior lecturer at the University of Wyoming’s School of Teacher Education, agrees with Hendrickson’s assessment and attributes the difficulty to the unstable child care workforce. “We’re seeing large numbers of programs closing their doors,” she says. “We’re seeing center owners selling their RVs to pay their staff.”

Jan Lawrence, director of Basic Beginnings North and Basic Beginnings South in Laramie, hasn’t sold her RV, but she says she’s had more trouble finding and hiring educators lately than in the rest of her nearly four decades in the field. “We’ve managed to hold onto our critical lead teachers,” she says, “but finding junior staff is a real challenge.” The local school district offers $16 per hour and a hiring bonus, compared to the $10 per hour rate she can afford to pay. “I’m picky about who I put in those classrooms,” she says. Filling classrooms with children, as parents struggle to find work in an uncertain economy, has also affected her bottom line. “We’re a for-profit,” she says, clarifying, “Not that there’s any profit.”

Like most observers, Baldwin says more federal and state investment is needed, but she also sees collaboration as a solution. In a large state with a small population, she says, “Everyone is really connected.” The (WYECON), a University of Wyoming endeavor, gave rise to the (WYECPLC) in 2020. One of their recent successes is the —a joint effort with and the nonprofit consulting firm .

Baldwin explains that agreeing on common standards isn’t easy in independent-minded Wyoming—where officials don’t feel it’s their role to regulate small businesses or tell them how to do their jobs—but educators have responded to the simple rules, stories from the field and examples from Wyoming. The organizing might of helped to get the path over the finish line. According to former executive director Becca Steinhoff, who recently joined the , “Wyoming is a large state, but people always compare it to a small town with a very long Main Street.” Everybody knows each other, and they work toward shared goals in spite of ideological differences.

For Baldwin, the Coherent Path boils down to three fundamental questions:

• What do you see children and adults doing together?
• What essential components do you see that made that moment a success?
• How can you help others see why moments like it are so important?

With funds from the Department of Family Services, and , WYECPLC provides training, mentoring and coaching to educators through eight regional facilitators. The collaboration was designed to expand over time. WYECPLC’s includes resources on learning environments, family partnerships, leadership and other topics. The podcast is in its third season. In , Baldwin interviews Janae Asay, Anna Sibbett and Sarah Pence, three adult sisters. Asay runs an in-home child care in Green River. Sibbet is a special education teacher in Casper. Pence, a pharmacist and mom of three in Laramie, helped to frame the Coherent Path to Quality. Some other highlights—all of which apply beyond the Cowboy State:

• “I have so many people around us who know more things than I do. I started reaching out to whoever would take my phone call. That was a big step in my leadership journey.” —, who finished her MA in early childhood special education while working as director of a two-site early childhood center in Jackson, Wyoming and caring for her own newborn.
• “Most people think of leadership as about I say it’s about partnership.” —, educator and author
• “Before I met Kara Cossel [WYECPLC’s North Central Regional Director], I was getting ready to give up, throw in the towel and walk away. She showed me there are people out there that care, there are people out there that want to help us on our journey to help the children.” —, facility director in Gillette
• “I saw different philosophies and approaches and was able to recognize what I wanted for early childhood, what I wanted for my own children. The only way I was going to get that was to open my own program and dig into what early childhood means to me. We can do better for young children and we can do better for the educators.” —, Casper, center director
• “Parents know this child better than anyone else will. I will have your child in my class for about 14 hours a week. I don’t know this child like you do; I need to learn from you.” —, center educator in Sheridan

Steinhoff praises the Coherent Path and the (STARS) as steps in the right direction but adds that the state could really use a National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) affiliate to amplify the voice of educators. “Wages are always an issue, but so are benefits,” she adds. Another challenge is keeping educators like Lawrence, those with the most experience, from retiring.

Steinhoff serves on Governor Mark Gordon’s , which has led the charge on applying for the Federal Preschool Development Grant, which has funded the Coherent Path and the newly published —a document packed with teacher tips, reflection questions and practical tools.

Out of the vulnerabilities that the pandemic exposed, Steinhoff sees “the beginning of a new narrative in Wyoming,” with momentum building for more robust investment in families. Sharing in the creation of new standards and systems takes time, but, as she notes, “People support what they help to create.”

Arkansas is creating a tutoring corps. Montana will provide more training for teachers working with American Indian students. And Wyoming wants to focus on supporting teachers who serve English learners.

Those are among the ways states are spending their portion of from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, according the U.S. Department of Education posted on Monday. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia met the June 7 deadline, but 23 states are still finalizing theirs, giving parents and advocates more time to weigh in on how they want states to direct the funds.

In April, states received $81 billion of the K-12 funds. States won’t receive their slice of the remaining $41 billion until their plans are approved, but the hold up shouldn’t affect districts’ initiatives to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss, experts said.

“Because states already have the lion’s share — two-thirds — of the … funds and are allocating them to districts this summer, states and districts should be able to implement activities in the fall, whether they formally submit their plan now or later,” said Anne Hyslop, the director of policy development at the Alliance for Excellent Education.

In a statement, the department said it is posting the documents online now so families, educators and community organizations can follow how officials plan to spend this once-in-a-generation influx of federal funds for education. While 90 percent of the funds are being distributed to districts, states still have a combined $12 billion to address learning loss and continue preparing schools for fully reopening in the fall. With several plans still outstanding, some experts say the extra time means states can gather more input from the community on how to best respond to students’ needs.

The extra time “could ultimately improve the quality and sustainability of the plans,” Hyslop said.

She said she’ll be interested to see whether states decide to create competitive grant programs, which, she said, could be an effective way to distribute the funds and focus on the needs of “students who’ve been most affected by the pandemic’s disruptions.”

But some will have a better grasp on whether or not students are off track. States that were able to test more students in-person this spring will have more reliable data.

“Because school doors were open for in-person instruction, we had a high participation rate for our statewide assessment. I’m anxious to dig into the data to learn more,” said Wyoming Superintendent Jillian Balow. “Rather than focusing on why students are behind, we have a rare opportunity to address it with federal funds and a keen focus on closing gaps, especially in literacy.”

States had to set aside 5 percent of their allotment to help students catch up, 1 percent for afterschool programs and 1 percent for summer learning and enrichment programs. New Mexico will join with local municipalities to offer for middle and high school students, and New Jersey is issuing grants for summer learning academies to focus on subject areas affected by school closures, such as the arts and STEM.

Most states, according to the department, are using a portion of the funds to address students’ social and emotional health. from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms teens, especially girls, have struggled with mental health issues since the beginning of the pandemic. Among adolescents, the proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health issues increased 31 percent between 2019 and 2020. And between February and March this year, suspected suicide attempts among girls had increased by half, compared to the same time period in 2019.

Oklahoma plans to spend $35 million to hire more counselors and other mental health professionals, and the District of Columbia plans to expand its on-site behavioral health system to increase students’ access to clinical services.

That was one of several requests the D.C. Charter Alliance made in of budget recommendations in February. The pandemic has created instability in finances, employment, housing and food, said Shannon Hodge, executive director of the Alliance. “And we know that those instabilities will affect students’ mental health and their readiness to learn. One of the easiest ways to improve access to mental health care for students is to make services available at school.”

‘Turning up the volume’

Six states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Mississippi, Nevada and Wisconsin — don’t expect to submit plans until August or September. Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy and governance at AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said while the wait doesn’t stop district’s efforts, it “does make it trickier.”

“Being in a state that submitted their plans will make it easier for [districts] to move forward in a timely manner while knowing the state expectations [and] commitments,” she said.

Dan Gordon, senior legal and policy advisor with EducationCounsel, added the delay could complicate matters if states communicate “a key policy priority” once school starts.

“Some of those might be great ideas, but waiting too long to share them could make it hard for districts to thoughtfully incorporate them into their own plans,” he said.

The delay, however, also gives parents and education advocates more time to influence officials’ decisions on where to direct the funds.

“Students will likely return to our school system in the fall with a host of needs that require additional training and supports for educators,” said Feliza Ortiz-Licon, chief policy and advocacy officer at Latinos for Education, a national advocacy organization.

California, where she used to be a state board member, is among those not submitting a draft until August. She said she hopes the state uses the extra time to get more input from the community and focus on increasing educator diversity. “The teacher shortage has been exacerbated by the pandemic and California needs to consider new and innovative ways to attract and retain talent,” she said.

Minnesota is expected to turn in its plan by June 30th.

Khulia Pringle, the coordinator of family engagement and advocacy for the Minnesota Parent Union is concerned that because Gov. Tim Walz announced his in January, long before the American Rescue Plan passed, he won’t incorporate parent feedback now.

She’s organizing a virtual town hall for later this month, arguing that Black, Hispanic and other minority parents — especially those whose children have disabilities — have not been well represented on a committee that is advising the state.

“We’re turning up the volume now,” she said. “We’re trying to engage them, but they’re not trying to engage us.”

Ashleigh Norris, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Education, said officials are currently gathering public comments and are “committed to authentic engagement.”

“The minute they get a time slot, they miraculously turn in all their work,” Teresa Chaulk, the superintendent of Lincoln County School District #1, says with a chuckle, in between signing diplomas in her office with the district’s board chairman. “We haven’t had a senior show up.”

The idea of kids returning to school during the nationwide coronavirus shutdown isn’t merely an empty threat or a far-off plan in Kemmerer, the biggest city in Lincoln County. It’s already happening there in the country’s second-most sparsely populated state. For weeks, students in Chaulk’s district, namely those receiving special education services and enrolled in CTE classes, have been entering district buildings in small numbers. Recently, they were joined by dozens more.

Wyoming is one of just three states that haven’t ordered or recommended that school buildings close for the rest of the academic year, according to . That cohort has been shrinking fast, with new announcements coming every week. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last Friday, for instance, saying that his administration considered it impossible to reopen schools before June “in a way that would keep children and students and educators safe.”

While the governors still holding out have hailed mostly from the Northeast corridor — Maryland and, until days ago, , New York and — it’s districts in the rural Western states of Wyoming, Montana and Colorado that are starting to experiment with reopening during the ongoing pandemic. Others, like , are flirting with the idea. In Montana, one tiny public school to 18 staff members and several dozen students May 7. In Colorado, a superintendent has planned at her district’s secondary school.

State and district officials leading these efforts insist that reopening this spring is the right decision because it gives students much-needed support, but public-health experts warn that the move comes too soon. The conflict over whether or not it’s wise to reopen schools in these states — and what will happen after they do — could offer a preview of what’s to come in more populated regions of the country, where those same scenarios will be playing out in late summer and early September.

Experts point out that the supports necessary for stemming the virus’s spread aren’t yet available in these communities — and that reopening schools too early risks gambling the lives of students and their families.

“Schools are a mixing cauldron for disease,” says Jeffrey Shaman, one of the nation’s leading epidemiologists, who at Columbia University. “Kids interacting in close proximity is a really good environment for the transmission of respiratory viruses. Opening them early is not the strategy I would recommend.”

While President Trump has pushed states to reopen schools as part of his effort to hike up the flailing economy prior to the 2020 election — saying on April 28 that governors should it — some educators have echoed Shaman’s concerns. The country’s two national teachers unions denounced the president’s statement; the head of one, the American Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten, urged her members to ” if they’re asked to return to classrooms before doing so is deemed safe.

Kathy Vetter, the president of the Wyoming Education Association, was surprised to learn from ����Ӱ�� that some teachers in her state are back in the classroom in a capacity beyond limited instruction for special needs students. Most of the teachers she’s spoken with have said that they aren’t ready for schools to reopen yet out of concern for the health and safety of their students and colleagues, she explained.

As they have in other parts of the country, protests are around Wyoming, with some residents demanding a return to life as they knew it before the coronavirus. Two schools chiefs in Chaulk’s region — one in Evanston and another in Jackson Hole — have told her they’d be excited to reopen their buildings to all students on May 18, if the state would only give them the go-ahead.

Any student deemed in need of person-to-person time 

Last week, 75 of the 614 students at Lincoln County School District #1 went to school. Those in grades 7-12 showed up at Kemmerer Jr.-Sr. High School, and younger kids trickled in and out of Canyon Elementary, where they took turns glancing out the window at the pride of the district, a six-year-old football stadium with bleachers that, in better times, bounced sunlight onto fan faces before a hilly backdrop.

Chaulk expects foot traffic to stay about the same at both buildings over the coming weeks, as the district continues serving seniors at risk of not graduating, plus special needs students, CTE students, and, as the superintendent puts it, “any other student that a teacher deems in need of person-to-person time for academic or social-emotional success.”

That’s casting a pretty wide net, given that, a month and a half into the nation’s forced relationship with online learning, it’s that the screens-only version of school is a strain on teachers, students and their families. That realization likely comes as no surprise to the researchers who have studied the issue, some of whom found, in 2016, that kids taking online classes in credit recovery and on algebra tests than their counterparts in a face-to-face setting.

On any given day, you won’t find more than 15 students passing through a single building in Lincoln County School District #1, according to Chaulk. For teens in grades 7 through 12, the in-person instruction is meant to supplement the half-day Zoom lessons they have with teachers from 8:30 in the morning until 12:30 in the afternoon. All are required to wear the cloth masks stitched by members of the community, she said, to get their temperatures taken upon entry, and to practice social distancing measures and wash their hands. If a family reports that their child has visited somewhere with a live COVID case, the student has to self-quarantine for 14 days before returning to school.

Rosa Salzman, who runs special education for the district, overseeing learning for six students with IEPs, says that the parents she interacts with are grateful for the support the in-person instruction provides — “especially the ones with kiddos who are high-needs.” Her charges linger in a suite of rooms in Kemmerer Jr.-Sr. High School for three to four hours at a time, where they receive speech and occupational therapy — the same services that they’d get in a normal, non-pandemic week.

Shaman, the epidemiologist, says that some of the precautions the district is taking are “sensible” — reducing class sizes, for instance, and requiring that everyone wear masks (“though you do have to worry about compliance with kids”).

Monitoring temperatures, on the other hand, isn’t an effective means of curtailing the disease. By the time a teacher or student has developed symptoms, including a fever, they’ve reached their peak level of contagiousness, which means they’ve been spreading the virus since long before they were detected. And that doesn’t account for the individuals who catch the virus and spread it without ever showing symptoms at all.

Instead, Shaman recommends proactive testing, a measure that’s been practiced in a limited capacity in places like and Carmel, Indiana, a wealthy suburb north of Indianapolis. It involves going into the community, taking swabs and having children spit in cups to better understand the disease’s local spread. As of May 6, there were and no deaths in Lincoln County, Wyoming.

That level of testing — along with “contact tracing,” the process of identifying those who could have crossed paths with an infected person — are necessary precursors to any kind of state- or district-level reopening of schools, Shaman says. Before schools in a particular place reopen, he explains, the community in question should have reduced local case numbers to the degree that three things are true: first, the rate of spread is less than 1, meaning the disease incidence is diminishing; second, there has been at least a 14-day downward trend in case numbers; and third, there’s no longer an added burden on the local hospital system.

Wyoming is one of many states that still the number of contact tracers needed to track coronavirus spread, according to NPR. And it isn’t among the small handful of states — New York, Louisiana and Washington — that or surpassing the testing rate of South Korea, a country that epidemiologists frequently point to as a paragon of virus-quashing, along with New Zealand. Schools in South Korea are not reopening .

If COVID comes to their valley

Shortly after Jillian Balow, Wyoming’s superintendent of public instruction, closed schools statewide on March 16, she gave districts three weeks to submit and start implementing “adapted learning plans.” Schools chiefs were subsequently afforded the wiggle room to tell the state about changes to those plans — that’s how Chaulk was able to start providing limited in-person learning so early.

On April 28, Wyoming’s health officer the allowance, ordering the continued closure of schools through May 15 but adding that buildings could stay open “to provide limited instruction to certain students.” So far, eight of the state’s 48 districts have sought and won approval to use that opportunity, and Balow says that she expects about a dozen more applications in the weeks to come. Her office has yet to reject a single plan.

That guidance came just three days before May 1, when Wyoming hit its in coronavirus fatalities before the start of August: 3.6 daily deaths per 100,000 people. That’s fewer losses per capita than New York but more than Massachusetts, according to data collected by NPR. A tally maintained by the New York Times shows that Wyoming has 596 COVID cases and seven deaths.

On April 27, while Wyoming’s superintendents were on one of their weekly Zoom catch-up calls, Chaulk took Balow up on her invitation to talk about the recent changes happening in Lincoln County School District #1.

Damien Smith, a former principal from Idaho who is new to both Wyoming and his superintendent role, listened to Chaulk’s presentation with rapt attention. Limited in-person instruction seemed like a way to help the small fraction of students in his Uinta #6 district who hadn’t been showing up for their online lectures and turning in their assignments — kids he and his principals had already paid in-person visits to, with varying degrees of success.

“Teresa’s been fortunate,” Smith said. “That’s exactly the direction we want to go in with individualized groups.” His district is relatively close to hers, too — 45 minutes south in the direction of Utah.

Some superintendents on the call complained that their local health officials wouldn’t let them partially reopen schools yet — the state requires districts to get that permission prior to seeking it at the state level. In Fremont County School District #2, about four hours north of hers, Chaulk said, the superintendent was denied permission because the number of COVID cases regionally was still increasing.

Smith initially had that problem, too. The first time he approached his county’s public-health officer about bringing limited in-person instruction to the district, the doctor rejected his pitch, citing the state’s school closure order from mid-March. Uinta County had two confirmed COVID cases at the time.

After the updated state guidance was released in late April, Smith circled back, and this time, the public-health officer was more open to the concept, according to the schools chief.

Smith has worked with his administrative team — principals, nurses, and the district’s directors of special education, activities, maintenance and transportation — to draft a plan modeled after Chaulk’s, explaining how Uinta #6 will teach special needs students as well as those who have fallen behind. He estimates that, if the plan is implemented, it will mean that 80 to 100 of the district’s 730 students will pass through one of the four school buildings designated for limited learning each week. That the county already has eight cases of COVID doesn’t concern Smith; none, as of yet, are in his valley.

Shaman, the epidemiologist, warns that a community having a relatively small number of cases isn’t sufficient justification for reopening its schools. That’s because detected cases are a single data point that doesn’t reflect the potentially significant number of people who are currently spreading the disease pre-symptomatically or asymptomatically.

The timing of Wyoming’s May 1 peak also doesn’t worry Smith, given that he’s not planning to welcome students back to school until 10 days after it, on May 11 — still less than the 14-day minimum decline in new cases recommended by Shaman and federal guidelines.

The superintendent does find Wyoming’s death rate worrisome, however, given that his community is so tightly knit. Families in the district use the same grocery store and two gas stations, plus a third one along the interstate a few miles outside of town.

“If it does come to our valley, and we do have community spread, it could potentially happen fast,” he says.

Smith also recognizes that many of the students whom in-person instruction is intended to help have high-risk family members — relatives over 65, for instance, or those with diabetes.

Balow, the state superintendent, says that partially reopening schools is a good option for Wyoming districts, particularly the more rural ones, given their sparse populations. “In a rural state like ours, there are opportunities for schools to open for limited in-person instruction for students who are most in need,” she argues.

But Shaman begs to differ. “In a rural community, school is one of the main places where transmission could happen and lead to super-spread,” he says. In urban environments, there are a wide range of places for the contagion to jump from one person to another: buses, stores and crowds in the street, to name a few. In rural places, on the other hand, there are fewer potential points of transmission, making schools all the more likely to be the setting of COVID spread.

Balow’s decision to give districts the option of implementing in-person learning followed on the heels of a mid-April from neighboring Montana’s office of public instruction. Because the state is local-control, school districts there were allowed to do whatever they pleased, insofar as reopening goes — provided that the governor reversed school closure and stay-at-home orders before the end of the school year. Gov. Steve Bullock did both, and since then, 12 Montana districts have said they’re opening at least one school building for some or all students, according to collected by the state.

Garfield County, for instance — the site of several Tyrannosaurus rex excavations — has decided to open two of its elementary schools to students for a combination of in-classroom and distance instruction starting May 7.

The rest of Montana’s 399 districts have opted to keep their buildings shut.

One Montana parent submitted a comment to her local school board, writing, “I have concerns about reopening the schools before we see the impact of reopening the state. If bars and restaurants are opening on the 4th, we won’t know what type of impact that will have on the community spread of COVID-19 until at least two weeks later,” the Missoulian .

Experts say that the parent has a point. There’s typically a lag between the time when somebody gets infected, gets sick, and the moment their test comes back positive, which means that there will be a delay between officials instituting a new policy change and an apparent increase in official case number count.

“You have a long delay between what you do and seeing the consequences of those actions,” Shaman says. “We’ll only realize what’s happened three weeks after we’ve been relaxing measures again.” Meanwhile, the disease will continue to spread.

In Colorado, an amendment similar to the one in Wyoming was added to a March 18 executive order from the governor closing schools, a mandate that was repeatedly extended to the point that it now goes through the end of the academic year. In late May, Gov. Jared Polis for districts wanting to provide one-on-one and small-group instruction, so long as local health departments are on board.

“We need schools, we need them in session. But we need the public will and political leadership to find solutions in an appropriate way. We need to think this through.”
—Jeffrey Shaman, Columbia University epidemiologist

At least one state is considering rebooting the 2020-21 year early with partial reopenings this summer: Alabama’s state superintendent just AL.com he’s thinking about letting schools there reopen in June for small groups of kids ages 13 and up.

Public-health experts have acknowledged the urgent need to reopen schools while also asking whether these specific communities are in a safe enough place to do so.

“We need schools, we need them in session,” Shaman says. “But we need the public will and political leadership to find solutions in an appropriate way. We need to think this through.”

The potential downside, they warn, is big. Reopen too early, and there’s a risk of the disease rebounding unnecessarily, with a rise in case numbers and a return to accelerated transmission. Reopen too early, they say, and we risk turning our families into guinea pigs.

Sanitizing everything that students touch

These days, Smith, the Uinta #6 superintendent, is breathing sighs of relief. Over the weekend, the state and the county’s public-health officer approved his plan to start limited in-person instruction. With any luck — as long as shipments of masks and temperature monitors arrive on time — some of the district’s students will be back on campus this Monday, May 11, just as they have been in Lincoln County School District #1.

Not too far away, Salzman, the special education teacher in Lincoln County, wraps in-person instruction for the day at her suite of rooms in Kemmerer Jr.-Sr. High right around noon. She and a few paraprofessionals sanitize everything their students have touched today: tables, chairs, iPads, pencils and “manipulatives,” like the rainbow-colored plastic bears they use to teach math. Eventually, her son joins her there to work on some of his own assignments; he can concentrate better here than at home, away from his 4-year-old sister, she says.

While being a teacher and educating her own kids can be a struggle these days, Salzman rests easy knowing that the district has her back.

“I feel confident that we’re being safe, that our kids are being safe, and that the parents are being safe with the kids,” she says. “Reopening schools wouldn’t be easy to do if we had active cases in our community. I do have people in my life that are high-risk.”

Lead image: Lincoln County School District #1’s Ranger Stadium sits next to its elementary school, where some students began receiving in-person instruction weeks ago (Schools Superintendent Teresa Chaulk)