(Lander, WY) – The Lander School Board approved updated salary schedules for the 2026-2027 school year this month – after expressing some frustration about the lack of local control involved in the decision.
“In my opinion, we are not paying anyone in this district well enough – (and) we can’t,” Trustee Mara Gans said during a board meeting May 12. “We cannot give everyone the money that we would like to … because we only have so much power.”
Gans was referring to the new “instructional resources silo” the Wyoming Legislature created when it passed its K-12 school finance bill this year.
The instructional silo “earmarks a large pot of money to go to instructional staff only,” Lander Schools Business Manager Travis Sweeney said, and it requires school districts to pay those employees “an average salary number that’s provided within the new funding model.”
In the past, he noted, that legislative funding was sent to local school districts in the form of a block grant that school boards could “divvy up to fit the needs of the district.”
Now, “that pot of money is no longer available for the school board to use as it sees fit,” Sweeney said.
“I think we all have to take a step back and understand that a lot of this this year is out of the district’s control,” he said. “It’s just what we’ve been dealt.”
‘Inherent inequality’
The salary schedules the school board approved this month don’t feature any reductions in force or pay cuts for current staff members, Superintendent Mike Harris said – but because of “the restrictions of the instructional silo” and its associated salary requirements, “there are discrepancies” in the amount of pay increases some employees received.
“There’s an inherent inequality, just because of the way the funding model is put together under this recalibration,” Harris said. “While it’s good for certified teachers, counselors, and school nurses, it does leave a lot of people disparately impacted in terms of being left out from the same level of increase.”
For example, Sweeney said, the new funding model doesn’t support increased salaries for teachers based on experience and education.
“We are no longer funded that way,” he said. “Now all our salaries are based on that average, which is calculated using the regional cost adjustment that they’ve come up with every year at the legislature. (So) we’re very limited on what we can compensate people in that educational silo.”
Gans said school districts are also more restricted in the types of employees they choose to hire now, pointing out that, while Lander schools “may decide we need a certain amount of administrators or counselors (in place) to run our district and serve our students,” the state “may have a different ideal ratio in mind,” and under the new funding model, “we get reimbursed based upon how many administrators or how many counselors the state thinks we should have – not how many we actually have.”
“There’s frustration in a lot of pieces of this,” she said later in the meeting. “I have a lot of notes to share with our (state lawmakers) to make this better in the future hopefully.”
Trustee Mike McConnell agreed that, based on conversations he’s had, “there’s a need for this (funding model) to be re-evaluated” during the next legislative session – but he also referenced comments from people who spoke “optimistically” about the legislature’s ability to address some of those “flaws” next year.
Until then, McConnell focused on the fact that, based on the salary schedules that were approved this month, “we’re getting hefty raises for some folks,” and all employees are “making a little bit more money.”
“That’s a good thing,” he said. “So, this one may not be perfect by any means, but we do have the ability to make (changes) for next year and to get some of the mistakes – or the things that they didn’t see in the legislative session – corrected.”
Referring to himself as “someone who really believes in local control,” Trustee Jared Kail said he voted in favor of the salary scheudules this month “reluctantly – because this is far from perfect.”
“The best government is that which is the closest to the people, (and) I think the Wyoming state legislature … did a very poor job in stripping away the control that we have as a local district to determine what is in the best interests of our local district,” Kail said. “Our hands are tied.”