R.J. Kost

Sen. R.J. Kost, R-Powell, was a guest speaker at last week’s meeting of the Park County School District 1 Board of Trustees.

Naturally, much of Kost’s dissertation was on K-12 education funding. The House and Senate failed to agree on a version of House Bill 173, which had proposed some cuts. When the Legislature took no action, it left the state with no choice but supply schools with the same amount of dollars provided in last year’s budget.

“It would have been nice if we’d been able to cut $70 million to $90 million this year,” Kost said. “It’s left people wondering what the heck is going to happen next year.”

He voted against HB 173 because he said there were too many amendments tacked on that were unclear.

Kost also said there needs to be a change in the way things are looked at in Cheyenne. Some wanted to take a hard line approach to cuts to the K-12 budget.

“I’m sick and tired of them saying we’re not doing justice to education,” he said. One example was a legislator taking to the floor and stating that “only 73% of students were performing at grade level.” Kost said he immediately emailed the legislator — before he made it back to his seat — and said the statistic was really “73% and above performed at grade level” and that Massachusetts, the state with the highest scores, was at “75% and above.”

“Trying to change that attitude is important,” Kost said. “I want to change that attitude.”

Another point of ire for the senator was technical and trade training not carrying the same sheen as college degree.

“We need a population that looks favorably on professional trade people and not looks down on them,” Kost said. “We need to ask kids what they want to do and how do we help them get there, instead of, ‘Let’s get you to a four-year college.’”

The issue with K-12 funding, Kost said, it was a structural deficit, meaning there is a disconnect in the way education is funded. 

Superintendent Jay Curtis wondered why it was so difficult to fix the structure.

“Why not funnel some [of the state reserves] to the education account?” he asked. “Why is that opposed so much?”

That rainy day fund was at $1.57 billion at the end of the 2020 fiscal year. 

Kost explained that $1.2 billion in investment income was untouchable as outlined in the state constitution. 

“It would be nice to fix the structure so that every year they aren’t coming at education to cut $100 million,” Curtis pointed out. 

Kost said that perhaps the fix would be to consolidate several accounts into five or six categories that could then be applied to various budget sectors. He also noted that the growth in educational costs were growing at a faster percentage than the funding sources, although he did not compare the two items dollar-for-dollar.