(Lander, WY) – Jonathan Weaver interviewed for the assistant middle school Nordic coaching job last November, with the season a few weeks out and his own work calendar already full. Weaver was aware that Wyoming coaches needed a state permit, and he knew that if he had to chase one down, there was no time to spare.
“I said, ‘Hey, do I need to get on this? Because if so, I’m going to start right now,'” Weaver said.
According to Weaver, Lander Valley High School athletic director Matt George told him he had a year to get it done.
Nine months later, Weaver has not been paid for the season he coached. Neither have five other Fremont County School District 1 coaches in similar situations. On Aug. 18, the school board is expected to vote publicly on whether to pay them.
The dispute centers on a Wyoming statute governing certification and compensation for public-school employees. State law generally prohibits someone from teaching or supervising in a public school and receiving public compensation unless, while doing the work, they hold or are a qualified candidate for the required certificate or permit.
The coaches at the center of it did not have their permits finalized during the season they worked. The coaches say district officials have told them that paying the stipends could put the district in violation of state law and expose it to financial penalties or accreditation consequences.
Weaver said that explanation has come to him mostly from superintendent Mike Harris.
“What I’m hearing is that the state has told the district, if you don’t pay these people, then you can avoid being penalized,” Weaver said. “So it seems to me that the state is who’s advocating to the district, don’t pay these people, and you get away with this problem. The fact that the Department of Ed is encouraging a school district to not pay employees who have done jobs is pretty bonkers.”
(County 10 had not independently confirmed before publication that the Wyoming Department of Education had given the district that guidance.)
Matt George declined to discuss the specifics.
“I am not comfortable with discussing it except to state that it is a really crummy situation for the district, myself, and our hard-working coaches,” he said.
County 10 was not able to reach other district officials before publication. (Editor’s Note: After this article’s publication, County 10 was made aware that FCSD #1 Superintendent Mike Harris was able to respond to the article’s author’s request for comment Monday afternoon, after the given deadline of Monday morning, which the author did not see until after submitting the article for final edits/publication. I have added Superintendent Harris’ response to the bottom of the article.)
The six coaches got here by different routes, but the three who spoke to County 10 all say some version of the same thing. A district employee told them the permit could wait.
Weaver finished everything else the district asked of him, including a background check and required trainings on suicide prevention and anti-bullying, a month before the season started. Midway through the winter, a district administrator called to tell him his permit was not on file and that he could not be paid without it. He said he explained he was working about 60 hours a week between his job and coaching and could not start the paperwork until the season ended. He said he was told that was fine, and that being paid late was not a problem.
He started the permit the day after the season ended. In late March, George emailed to say the business office had determined that because Weaver had not begun the process before the season was over, he was not eligible for his stipend at all.
Brady Fullerton, the JV boys basketball coach and an assistant under Stu Mullins on the varsity team, ran into the calendar instead. He learned he needed the certification three weeks before the basketball season ended, and the hands-on courses required for it are only offered on a limited schedule. One of them fell during the regional basketball tournament. He took the last one the Sunday after the state tournament, and his certification cleared about a month after the season ended. Nobody told him he would not be paid until he asked.
“At some point it’s got to be the school’s responsibility to make sure their coaches are certified,” Fullerton said.
KayKay Sandall skied for Lander and coached here once before, around 2023, before moving out of state for college. She applied in August to come back and coach Nordic, and did not learn she had the job until six days before the season started. Her old certification had lapsed by then, which she said she disclosed in her application.
“When I got the call informing me that I had been hired, I was told that I would have to complete the district trainings, first aid, CPR, all those things, in addition to getting my state certification, and that I would have until the end of the school year to complete my state certification,” Sandall said. “I trusted that information.”
She was still finishing her college semester out of state and could not start any district paperwork remotely because the district’s system still had her contact information from her first stint, and she was locked out of it. She got back to Lander around Dec. 18, roughly three weeks into the season, and went into the district office in person to sort it out. Until she did, she said, she was not cleared to be on the snow at all.
“I couldn’t legally coach when I got back because I hadn’t completed the district requirements,” she said.
She finished the district requirements quickly, gathered what she needed for the state application through January, and submitted it at the end of the month. Six weeks later, it came back declined. She was missing one course: care and prevention of athletic injuries.
That course is offered mostly in the summer. Two sessions ran during the season, one in Torrington and one she believes was in Gillette, either of which would have meant missing multiple days of practice and driving most of the way across the state.
“I didn’t think that that would be the expectation, given that I had until the end of the school year,” Sandall said.
Wyoming’s Professional Teaching Standards Board offers another path for coaches who have not completed all of the requirements for a standard coaching permit. A Transitional Coaching Permit is available to applicants who are unable to meet all of those requirements and is valid for three years in a specific coaching position. Under rules adopted in 2022, PTSB also allows applicants seeking a transitional permit who have not completed the required Care and Prevention of Athletic Injuries course to receive the permit with the condition that they complete the course within one year.
Sandall said that when she was hired, she was told to just get certified through PTSB, and wasn’t given any further instruction.
“I saw that information on the PTSB website; I wasn’t sure if that would still apply to me since I had coached with the transitional permit before,” Sandall explained. “I called PTSB and explained my situation to them. The lady I talked to said it would. However, I never actually spoke to my caseworker until my application had been rejected.”
“It turns out, because I had been a transitional coach before, that was no longer applicable for me,” Sandall added. “I don’t think the lady I talked to originally fully understood my situation. After my application had been declined, I had 30 days to correct it (which meant getting the Care and Prevention of Athletic Injuries course) before they dropped my application entirely and I would’ve had to start from scratch. That is why I had to get the class so quickly.”
Weaver’s unpaid stipend is a little over $1,500. For Fullerton, the stipend is the smaller number. He is paid hourly at his job and cut out early for practices and games across four months.
“None of us do this for the money,” he said. “All the hours and days I miss for work. I get paid hourly at work and take off early for four months. I end up missing out on about $7,000 from how much work I miss. We did the job, you let us do the job, and now you don’t want to pay us.”
None of the three argues that the certification requirement is wrong.
“I make no misgivings that I should have gotten a permit,” Weaver said. “The reason I didn’t is because I was told I didn’t need to. I’m a big believer that your educators should be certified and licensed and qualified. If I had been told, hey, you need to get this, then I would have gotten it.”
Weaver runs admissions for wilderness medicine courses at NOLS, and he keeps coming back to how his own workplace handles the same problem. If an instructor’s certification has lapsed, it’s the organization’s job to catch it before the course starts. If the organization misses it and the instructor goes into the field anyway, the organization still owes them for the work.
“Ideally, I would have gotten a call from somebody who said, ‘Hey, you don’t have a permit, don’t show up to practice on day one,'” he said. “But that never happened.”
What frustrates him is that the board seems to be weighing whether the coaches deserve to be paid rather than whether they are owed.
“From my perspective, it’s a legal question,” Weaver said. “It’s effectively a breach of contract. What the board seems to think is that they can retroactively declare us as volunteers.”
Coaches in the district do not sign written contracts.
The board reached a consensus in June that the coaches should be paid, according to Weaver, but no money came at the end of June or the end of July. In mid July, according to Weaver, business manager Travis Sweeney asked the board to record his opposition to the decision. The coaches were told the decision stood.
School board member Mara Gans said that, per the guidance of the district’s legal counsel, the board will vote on whether or not to pay the coaches as an action at its Aug. 18 meeting, tomorrow night.
Weaver is not sure whether that helps him.
“I think a public vote is advantageous because they will be held accountable publicly,” he said. “My concern is that there are board members who were generally opposed to paying us, but were like, whatever, it’s fine. If they were forced to put a hard yes or no on it, I don’t know that they would be willing to put that yes on it.”
Going forward, the rules are clearer. The revised activities handbook requires coaches to be certified by the first day of the season, and the district will tell them not to coach if they are not.
Whether Weaver coaches again depends on Tuesday.
“Coaching these kids is one of the joys of my life,” he said. “But I’m not going to work for a district that’s not going to pay me.”
Editor’s Note – Superintendent Mike Harris’ response, as mentioned above:
“…The school district is bound by state statute with regard to paying personnel who require certification, endorsement, and/or permit for their position. This includes coaches, which are required to hold either an endorsement (if they are also certified teachers) or a permit (if they are not certified teachers). The specific statute in this case is W.S. 21-7-303(a):
21-7-303. Certificate or permit required; exception.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (b), (c) or (d) of this section, no person shall teach or supervise in a public school in this state and receive compensation therefor out of any public fund who at the time of rendering such services is not a holder of or a candidate and qualified for a certificate or permit issued or to be issued under the laws of this state and the rules and regulations of the Wyoming professional teaching standards board pursuant to W.S. 21-2-802.
“The reason why certain coaches haven’t been paid concerns this statute. Each employee whose position requires certification, endorsement, and/or permit is responsible for obtaining and maintaining those credentials. This holds true for teachers, administrators, coaches, and anyone else whose position falls under the purview of Wyoming’s Professional Teaching Standards Board (PTSB).
“At this week’s meeting, the Fremont #1 school board is scheduled to discuss the potential payment of coaches who were employed by the district last school year but did not have the required PTSB permit. To pay them would seemingly conflict with W.S. 21-7-303(a), but to not pay them would be to deny them compensation for the time they spent coaching. On the advice of school district legal counsel, resolving this dilemma will require an open discussion and a public vote of the board. …As noted during last month’s school board meeting, any decision to pay or not pay these coaches rests with the school board.”