Senate adds millions to recalibration bill

CHEYENNE — A panel of lawmakers voted Monday to add millions of dollars to a controversial K-12 school funding recalibration bill.

The Senate Education Committee voted 5-0 to send Senate File 81, “K-12 public school finance-2,” back to the Senate floor with an additional $127.1 million in education funding, spread out over the next two years and across the state’s 48 school districts.

SF 81 tackles recalibration, which is a constitutionally mandated process required every five years in which lawmakers decide how to allocate education funding. Two attempts to pass a mirror bill in the House have already failed this session.

“I am grateful for the Senate for taking this up,” Rep. Scott Heiner, R-Green River, told the Senate Education Committee Monday morning. “It is our constitutional duty as legislators to recalibrate and to come up with updated funding for our schools. The House failed to do that twice. We failed to uphold our oath of office to uphold the constitution.”

As SF 81 came out of the Select School Finance Recalibration Committee, it was 95 pages and included an estimated $1.8 billion worth of K-12 public school funding.

Rothfuss amendments: ‘We’ve been listening’

Before the committee adopted several amendments Monday, Sen. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, said SF 81 included an estimated $157.1 million increase in funding for Wyoming schools over the next two school years, for the total $1.8 billion.

Included in the conceptual amendments, proposed by Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, is an increase of teacher salaries to 85% from 79.1% of the comparable wage average. Rothfuss also proposed increasing the calculation of an average daily membership, or formula used to determine student enrollment for funding purposes, to a two-year rolling average.

The committee’s initial recommendation was to use prior-year enrollment numbers, which would have reduced the state’s student count by around 2,000 students.

The amendments would also add an external cost adjustment back to the model as an annual calculation, rather than doing an ECA every second year and would include a provision that for every school district in Wyoming, there would be a minimum of 17 teachers, regardless of the district’s size.

The amendments also increase the elective and specialist teachers in middle school from 20% to 33.3%, re-establish pupil support staff of one full-time equivalent for every 100 at-risk students and fund nurses and counselors at elementary schools in the first year of the biennium.

“We’ve been listening,” Rothfuss said. “We have talked to other members of the Senate, and discussed an approach that I believe will make (the recalibration bill) better.”

If approved as amended, SF 81 would increase the funding for the 2026-27 school year by $60.3 million, and another $66.8 million for the 2027-28 school year, Matt Wilmarth, senior school finance analyst at the Legislative Service Office, told the committee.

After the amendments Monday, total education spending included in the bill for two years would include a $127 million increase over current law.

Before the amendments passed, the committee heard many of the same concerns lawmakers have heard throughout the recalibration process: That the bill increased class sizes while eliminating staff, without adequately addressing teacher salaries.

“This bill solves a math problem and creates a human problem,” Jeff Jones, superintendent of Sheridan County School District 1, said, adding that class sizes in grades 4 and 5 would increase from 16 to 22 students, and from 21 to 22 in grades 6 through 8. High school classrooms would increase in size from 21 to 25 students.

“The immediate result is not flexibility, but fewer funded teacher positions across Wyoming,” Jones said.

Classroom numbers after Rothfuss’ amendments were not immediately available Monday.

Others expressed concern over SF 81’s requirement that all school districts move to the state’s insurance plan, citing a lack of study on the plan.

Dirk Dijkstal, senior counsel at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming, said that such a requirement would not improve the quality of health care in Wyoming, and that its impacts should be studied before being mandated.

The committee voted to push the health insurance shift out two years to allow for time to study.

SF 81 will head back to the Senate for debate in committee of the whole, where all standing committee amendments will have to be voted on by the full body.