 - The Riverton School Board has voted to officially oppose two pieces of legislation being considered in the Wyoming House of Representatives this year. ){kind=link}
(Riverton, WY) – The Riverton School Board has voted to officially oppose two pieces of legislation being considered in the Wyoming House of Representatives this year.
The first is House Bill 100 – K-12 uncertified personnel, which would let school districts and charter schools adopt policies to employ administrators, teachers and others without certificates or permits issued by the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board.
The school board voted this week to delegate Trustee Lori Morrow to write a letter to local legislators and/or testify opposing HB 100 during the 2025 legislative session.
They also voted to delegate Morrow to testify against House Bill 199 – Wyoming Freedom Scholarship Act, which would modify the Education Savings Account program the legislature created last year to provide state funding for students outside of the public school system.
Under HB 199, the ESA program would now be funded through a diversion from the state public school foundation program account – and it would no longer be limited to lower-income families.
HB 199 would also increase the amount of funding each ESA student can receive every year to $7,000, up from $6,000, and it would remove the assessment requirements that were included in the 2024 law for ESA students.
In essence, Morrow said, “the bill diverts public funds to private entities with little or no oversight and accountability.”
“It’s taxpayer dollars that are going to these programs,” she said. “It needs to include some assessment data and accountability (because) we don’t give away free money – free state money – with no accountability.”
Riverton School Board Trustee Carl Manning agreed that once a homeschool program receives state funding, it becomes “a state agency – and as a state agency, it has to have some kind of control.”
“Before they were called homeschools, and now they’re becoming publicly funded schools,” Manning said. “They (have) to have some kind of control if they accept that money.”
Currently, homeschool families are required to report “very limited information” to public school officials, Riverton Schools Superintendent Jodi Ibach said.
That lack of information “doesn’t provide for a lot of safety for children – especially in this day and age when we have so many issues with child trafficking,” she pointed out.
“We have some really great homeschool families, and they do an amazing job educating their students,” Ibach said. “(But) that’s not all home school families.”
“The ones that we worry about are the parents that are not truly educating their students.”
If those parents end up sending their undereducated students to public school later in life, Ibach said it “sets us up for failure as a public school, because … we’ll get a fourth-grader who doesn’t know their letters and can’t add or subtract, or we’ll get some that are reading at a first-grade level.”
“That’s where the injustice is done,” she said. “It’s just unfair to the children not to provide some sort of accountability … so that we can make sure (our) children are educated.”
Funding
Manning also expressed concern this week that HB 199 would “bankrupt” the state public school foundation program account.
That account is projected to hold about $118 million at the end of this biennium, Wyoming School Boards Association Executive Director Brian Farmer told the House Education Committee last week – and HB 199 is expected to cost about $45 million per year to implement.
“That means that we’re draining the school foundation program down to only about $30 million at the end of the biennium,” Farmer said. “(And) that $30 million gets drained down by any of the property tax bills that pass that fail to fund the school foundation program. …
“It has the possibility of what’s called a structural deficit in the school foundation program.”
Lander resident Michelle Escudero testified during last week’s House Education Committee meeting too, calling HB 199 “a voucher program that will take funds away from our public schools.”
“The voucher program lacks fiscal and academic accountability for our hard-earned taxpayer dollars,” she said. “(It) will do tremendous harm to our public school system.”
Former Fremont County educator Vicki Swenson agreed during her testimony that “taking money from public education is not common sense and it is not right.”
“Would you take money from WYDOT that had already been appropriated for roads and bridges and give it to (a) private company because some people thought, or the company thought, that they could do a different job, or a better job? I think not,” she said. “It is not different (for) education. … This is money that has already been appropriated to public education, and for you to take it away is not right, and it doesn’t make sense.”
Lawmakers proposed an amendment to HB 199 this week that would fund the ESA program through the state general fund instead of the school foundation account, but that amendment failed.
They also proposed multiple amendments to incorporate more accountability into the program, but most of those failed as well.
The accountability amendment that did pass states that ESA students must be “assessed on academic progress,” but some lawmakers said that language was vague, especially compared to the original requirement that ESA students take a statewide assessment or “a nationally normed achievement exam.”
HB 199 was approved on third reading in the Wyoming House of Representatives on Wednesday, January 29, and received for introduction in the Wyoming Senate on Thursday.