It’s not clear what the full impact of the state Legislature’s massive recalibration bill for school funding will be as it’s the first major school funding for many years and, Park County School District 1 Superintendent Jay Curtis said, has the state education department scrambling. 

The problem, Curtis said at a March school board meeting, is it may still not be clear when the district passes its next fiscal year budget in June. 

“I wouldn’t even put money that we will know by July the actual number,” he said. “And they’re working on this every day. This is the only thing in front of them. And it’s just such a substantial change from what we’ve done and there on a daily basis, well, we have to go to the [attorney general] and get his interpretation, and that delays it. We’re gonna be OK, by the way. You know, it’s complicated, but we’re gonna make it work.”

He told board members March 24 that there are some changes that are at least generally known — he’s expecting, based on early examinations, the district will have around $1 million more for the instructional side and roughly $800,000 less for the operational side — but the finer details have yet to be worked out. 

Curtis said in the past, once the state started giving final funding numbers in the summer rather than in the spring, Business Manager Mary Jo Lewis could use a funding model she had in place to determine quite closely the final amount the state would be giving to the district based on past years. Of course, now that model has changed for the first time in roughly 15 years. 

Regardless, Curtis said the district has decided on a “soft landing” for the next school year by committing some of the district’s reserves to avoid any drastic changes. 

“On first blush, we are going to have to make some adjustments this year, but we’re not going to be drastic in those adjustments,” he said. “That’s what the reserves are for. It is raining, and we’re going to recommend a measured soft landing for our district, because not only do we have this crazy bill, but we also have a declining enrollment, as does the rest [of the state].”

The recalibration process is required every five years in Wyoming in order to adjust how much the state funds education. How much each district receives is based on full time equivalency enrollment, staffing, salaries, benefits and more.

This time the recalibration led to successful new legislation, which Curtis and other superintendents, including the other two in Park County, had expressed concerns about from the beginning. That led to a number of school leaders heading down to petition for legislative changes during the session, and Curtis noted he and Trustee Beau Fulton were there to see legislators agree to a change to include paraprofessionals under the instructional side within the statute.

Now, he said, there have been disagreements with the state on whether that still applies. 

Almost all Park County legislators voted in favor of Senate File 81, K-12 Public School Finance, which sailed through both chambers. 

While the legislation appears to result in more overall funding for Park 1, and especially for instructional staff as many proponents have touted, school leaders have been concerned about funds being more restricted than in the past. 

There are also questions about how the salary model works and how close to the average salary — which Powell is already very close to — do small districts have to reach. 

“There’s always going to be disparities,” Curtis said of statewide salaries. “The unintended consequences of this bill are going to create a circus around the state.”