Jay Curtis

Park County School District 1 is open to implementing the recommendations of the Reimagining and Innovating the Delivery of Education Committee recommendations released on Wednesday.

“I really applaud this work, I think the governor saw the need, I think that he got some really good people working on it. I think they took the right approach and I think that the work itself is really good,” Park County School District 1 Superintendent Jay Curtis said. “I will be interested to see where it goes from here and how decisions are made with regards to implementation, but we sure stand ready to do whatever it is we can do to help kids achieve their potential when they leave.”

PCSD1’s input was sought during the RIDE Committee’s data gathering process in June, 2022. During the data-gathering process 7,000 stakeholders were surveyed across 17 listening sessions. 

Park County legislators Sen. R.J. Kost and Rep. David Northrup served on the RIDE Committee from 2021-2022. Kost was defeated this year in the Senate by Dan Laursen. Northrup is to be the chairman of the 2023 House Education committee.

The committee suggested two priority recommendations and two additional priority issues. The committee recommended students progress based on demonstration of mastery and all students should have pathways to opportunities including in Career Technical Education. Priority issues listed included mental health and behavioral issues in community context and pre-kindergarten education.

Curtis said that in his opinion Powell and some other schools in the state are Professional Learning Communities which allow advanced students “enrichment in that standard.”

Northrup agreed that some schools in the state do have these systems in place but said that the number of districts who already have these practices are “about 50-50.” He also added that teaching students at their own pace doesn’t necessarily mean advancing students but bringing kids along that may not be learning at the same pace as their peers. 

“I just don’t know exactly what they mean by that. I don’t know how or what [students progressing based on demonstration of mastery] will look like,” Curtis said. “I think it’ll be really good work that I think we as a district will probably get pretty engaged with as it’s making its way through the state board of education. I think we’ll really keep an eye on it and probably provide a lot of input.”

Senior policy adviser for Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, Lachelle Brant, listed four characteristics of a student-centered learning plan in an email response. The characteristics defined by Brant are voice, choice, competency and continuous monitoring of student needs. According to Brant’s characteristics student voice in this learning model will mean “students construct their learning goals and have ‘voice and choice’ in determining what, how, when and where learning occurs.” This would be different to the current model of teacher led learning where “all students are doing the same thing at the same time.” 

Students will also have choice which means every student will have a personalized learning plan with targets and “expanded learning opportunities.” Student advancement will be based on competency not how much time is spent on a given subject and student needs will be continuously monitored. Brant said that this monitoring can be formal or informal, it can also be through projects, rubrics, portfolios, anecdotes, observation or technology.

Curtis said he’s open to change in the district and “not just doing what we’ve always done for the sake of doing what we’ve always done.” He added that what the finished product will look like is yet to be seen. 

“This report, I guarantee you will change the look of Wyoming education, some districts are gonna have to make a lot more changes than others,” Curtis said.

Northrup thanked the stakeholders who participated in the surveys for the enormous response and willingness to provide input.

Brant said that moving forward Gov. Gordon will begin discussions about implementation when State Superintendent-elect Megan Degenfelder assumes office in January.