Wyoming schools now have a clear path to curriculum transparency thanks to a collaborative effort between participating school districts, stakeholders and the Wyoming Department of Education. 

On Tuesday night in the Park County School District 6 board room, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder announced an online curriculum transparency resource. The webpage includes Wyoming standards, grade level documents and a blank template for districts that wish to participate. 

“These templates are intended to help parents easily view what is required of their child at each grade level, and to connect them with those requirements in a district's curriculum and instruction materials,” Degenfelder said.

School districts can also post their curriculum directly to this webpage.

“When I campaigned across Wyoming for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, I heard concerns from citizens around different materials and what was happening in our schools, as well as difficulty in locating what their children are learning,” Degenfelder said. 

Parents have rights to their child’s education and the knowledge that the information they are learning is not politically biased, she said. 

The transparency resource is part of Degenfelder’s six point strategic plan. Originally, the transparency effort was listed under “Parental empowerment and eliminating political bias.” As listed on the plan, the department of education would outsource the curriculum webpage.

In the process of developing the transparency resource, Degenfelder consulted a diverse group of superintendents and it was eventually decided to do things the “Wyoming Way.”

“That's exactly what we're really seeing here tonight, these districts stepped up to the needs of Wyoming parents and put in the work to model templates to show every other district in the state that not only is this level of transparency possible, but it really does make things better in Wyoming,” Degenfelder said.

The website is designed to  be user friendly for parents and community members “without being an additional burden to our teachers and all at no additional cost to taxpayers.”

Park County School District 1 and Park County School District 6 superintendents Jay Curtis and Vernon Orndorff were involved in the process as well as superintendents from Big Horn, Sheridan, Natrona, Sweetwater, Weston and Lincoln school districts.

The department of education's curriculum transparency webpage includes primary curriculum from Powell and Cody as well as many other districts involved in the collaborative effort.

Powell’s curriculum can be accessed on the WDE webpage or on pcsd1.org under the Curriculum Transparency PILOT tab.

Use of the transparency guidelines is not required by law and participating districts can adapt the guidelines to fit their communities' needs. The WDE guidelines pertain to primary resources in a district’s curriculum, but school districts can adapt the guidelines to their needs, and post more if they choose. If parents have concerns regarding the curriculum, it opens up the possibility of dialogue between the parents and the schools.

“I think that's the beauty of this document and building this out is that it really fosters that relationship between parents and the local district and really gets parents engaged and involved in talking to their teachers. Nothing can replace that relationship between a parent and a teacher in that one-on-one communication — this is one tool in doing that,” Degenfelder said. “And so I think that this is a great starting point for that, and really recognizes that parents have a role in this. They should be involved in this. And the next step is to talk to your teacher, talk to your district or talk to your local school board members.”

The curriculum transparency webpage can be found at edu.wyoming.gov/for-parents-students/standards-transparency/.