Nearly $30 million could be added to Wyoming’s public education funding next year as lawmakers weigh how much more the state should spend to keep pace with rising costs.

The potential increase came into focus Sept. 15, when the Wyoming Joint Education and Joint Appropriations committees met to review the state’s K-12 education resource block grant, the funding model used to determine how much money Wyoming’s public schools receive.

The timing is significant. Wyoming completed its required five-year recalibration of the funding model in 2025 and 2026. In the years between recalibrations, lawmakers can use an external cost adjustment, or ECA, to account for inflation and changes in the cost of providing educational services.

The adjustment is built around four categories: professional labor, nonprofessional labor, energy and educational materials. Each category is tied to a cost index recommended by the Legislature’s consultants, giving lawmakers a way to account for how the price of those resources changes from year to year.

“In order to be able to provide for equal opportunity to deliver services, you have to take differences in price into account,” Lori Taylor, one of the consultants, told lawmakers. “Wyoming has two cost adjustments that address this fundamental concern. The external cost adjustment and the regional cost adjustment. The ECA is intended to address inflationary pressure or changes in price level over time coming from the outside of districts.”

Her latest recommendations could add $29.9 million to education funding if lawmakers approve them as proposed. Most of that increase would be tied to professional labor, reflecting the rising cost of employing the workers the funding model is designed to support.

“If the baseline prices used in the funding model are calibrated correctly, then an annual ECA will be needed to ensure that inflation doesn’t affect the ability of school districts to purchase the recommended level of real resources,” Taylor pointed out.

Under the indices recommended by the consultants, professional labor would be adjusted by 2.253%; non-professional labor would increase by 2.293%; energy would increase by 7.123%; and educational materials would increase by 2.189%.

The recommendations for energy and educational materials are based on preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Final figures are expected by the end of September, according to the monitoring report.

With those figures still pending, the Education Committee unanimously voted to advance the consultants’ recommendations to the Joint Appropriations Committee for consideration.

Historically, Wyoming has enacted an ECA every year since 2001, with one exception: 2010 through 2014.

If the Legislature passes the recommended ECA, or any variation of it, it will only apply to the 2027-2028 school year.