The Powell school district recently tweaked its agreement with Montana to continue paying for the education of students living in Yellowstone National Park. Though the students in Mammoth Hot Springs will likely never set foot in a Powell school, they are part of Park County School District No. 1.

The Mammoth students — who live roughly 150 miles from Powell — receive their education in Gardiner, Montana. (Gardiner is only about 5 miles away from Mammoth.)

Earlier this month, the Powell school board approved memorandums of understanding with the Gardiner district to pay for the Mammoth students’ education during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years.

While the Powell district sends the payment to Gardiner, the Wyoming Department of Education reimburses Powell for the entire cost — down to the penny.

“We’re basically a pass-through,” said Mary Jo Lewis, coordinator of business services for Park County School District No. 1. “We’re getting 100 percent reimbursed.”

For the 2015-16 school year, it cost $416,495 to educate 33 Mammoth students in Gardiner — which breaks down to $12,621 per student.

The Powell school district will budget around $430,000 for the Mammoth students’ tuition in its budget for 2017-18, which the school board will consider next month.

When the agreement was first reached in 2014, “one of the stipulations was that it would never, ever take a penny away from the students that live in Powell,” said Kevin Mitchell, superintendent of Park County School District No. 1.

Over the past few years, the State of Wyoming paid Gardiner the same rate per student that it paid to educate Powell students who attend local K-12 public schools.

The new agreement approved this month changes that. Rather than being based on the Powell rate for students, the agreement is based on Gardiner’s actual expenditures for each Mammoth student.

“It’s basically what their expenditures are per pupil,” Mitchell said.

That rate takes into account the exact number of days each Mammoth student attends Gardiner schools as well as general fund, transportation, food and other costs.

“This just made it a whole lot cleaner,” Lewis said. “We’re using theirs [numbers] instead of ours, which is how it should be.”

She said Powell and Gardiner administrators worked through the new agreement together, and it will cost Wyoming less — approximately $1,500 less per student.

“They didn’t do anything wrong, we didn’t do anything wrong — it gave us an opportunity for us to clean it up,” Lewis said.

She noted that several school districts around Wyoming pay for students to be educated out-of-state. Districts near the border paid for Wyoming students’ education in South Dakota, Montana, Utah and Idaho this year.

“There are other school districts in the state that are doing the same thing we are,” Lewis said. “We aren’t the only ones paying [out-of-state] tuition; it’s just that we are the largest.”

Mammoth Hot Springs — located in the northern part of Yellowstone — became part of the Powell district in 2014.

Before then, “that northern part of Yellowstone was never in a Wyoming school district for some reason,” said Greg Borcher, chairman of the Powell school board.

The National Park Service used to cover the cost of the Mammoth students’ education.

Mitchell said the arrangement hasn’t cost the Powell school district anything extra.

“Other than some time every year looking at this contract, and Mary Jo [Lewis] signing the check, there is no expense to the school district,” Mitchell said.