Lawmakers eye school vouchers amid constitutional warnings
CASPER — Wyoming is moving toward school vouchers even as lawmakers have been warned that courts could strike them down as unconstitutional.
Members of the Joint Education Committee met in Cheyenne on Tuesday to debate a series of draft bills that would drastically reshape K-12 schooling in Wyoming, putting more power – and money – in the hands of parents.
One of the most significant bills would create a statewide school voucher system for some Wyoming families, allowing them to put public funds toward private schools, tutoring and other educational services for the first time.
Yet, as the panel weighed the bill proposed by Speaker of the House Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, lawmakers heard that their efforts could run afoul of the Wyoming Constitution.
Officials from the Legislative Service Office acknowledged that the Legislature is in unknown territory as lawmakers look to navigate the state constitution as part of a broad push by conservatives to expand school choice in Wyoming and across the country.
“When I was looking at it, I decided, ‘Well, I want to try to make this as constitutional as I can,’” Sommers said.
Sommers’ proposal would create an entirely new “education savings account,” or voucher program, run through the state superintendent of public instruction and Wyoming Department of Education. The state would give families who make less than 250% of the federal poverty level $3,000 per child each year to go toward educational costs.
The money would support “educational services,” including tuition to a private school and tutoring, as well as school uniforms, textbooks and advanced placement test fees.
The Legislature would fund the program with $40 million in general fund dollars, though lawmakers would need to designate more money so that the Department of Education could hire additional staff to run the new program.
As it stands, half of the money would go to families with K-12 students, while the other half would go toward paying for preschool and early childhood education.
The program would not exclude religious organizations, allowing families to use the money to pay for Catholic schools.
“My intent was to provide a vehicle for funding for both school choice and early education, both of which I believe are important to parents in the state of Wyoming,” Sommers said.
Sommers used bills that failed during the last legislative session as a basis for the draft, including proposals by Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, and Rep. Ocean Andrew, R-Laramie, which would have allowed any family to access $6,000 per child in state funds to put toward education.
However, he said he narrowed and altered the program to avoid potential conflicts with the state constitution.
The Wyoming Constitution broadly prohibits the state from giving residents money except “for necessary support of the poor,” which Sommers said led him to limit the families who could participate in the program.
The draft bill also includes the requirement that students with vouchers take statewide standardized tests to ensure that they have access to the “adequate” education guaranteed by the state constitution.
However, Tania Hytrek, an administrator with the LSO, warned that even with the changes, the school voucher system could run up against the Wyoming Constitution. An LSO memo submitted to the committee last month highlighted six separate “constitutional concerns.”
The Wyoming Constitution bans giving state funds to religious organizations and “any person, corporation or community not under the absolute control of the state,” both of which prove a legal challenge for a school voucher system.
Wyoming also has an extensive history of court rulings that have concluded the state constitution guarantees the “adequacy and equity of funding,” a principle with which the voucher system could conflict, according to the memo.
Hytrek told lawmakers that the final fate of a school voucher system would likely be decided by the courts.
“I don’t know that anyone can sit at this table and tell you definitively this is constitutional or it’s not constitutional,” she said. “There hasn’t been a case like this before the Wyoming Supreme Court. There hasn’t been a case like this before the United States Supreme Court taking into consideration Wyoming’s constitutional provisions and our school finance litigation.”
Lawmakers on the committee struggled to find a clear path forward, debating how to advance a school voucher system while avoiding the constitutional concerns.
Rep. Martha Lawley, R-Worland, said lawmakers had to find a middle ground between their goal of expanding school choice and the Wyoming Constitution.
“[It’s] a matter of balancing some of those interests and going too far,” she said.
Some of those who testified backed school vouchers but said that Sommer’s proposal didn’t go far enough, further clouding questions around the constitutionality of the draft bill.
Dicky Shanor, the chief of staff for State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, said Degenfelder supported school vouchers but believed that lawmakers should expand the program to every family with K-12 students in Wyoming while also increasing the stipend.
“We really need to look at that $3,000 amount and get it closer to what the per-pupil expenditure is because the consequence of not doing that is providing almost a false option,” Shanor said. “If it’s not enough, no one’s going to use it and then the program will be determined to be a failure.”
Rep. David Northrup, R-Powell, the chairman of the House Education Committee, ultimately announced that the panel will move forward with the bill, amending and voting on it during the group’s November meeting.
As the committee continues to ready a school voucher system ahead of the 2024 legislative session, Brian Farmer, the executive director of the Wyoming School Boards Association, encouraged lawmakers to stick with what he said was a “guiding principle” in the state’s K-12 schooling.
“When you receive public dollars – dollars from the state of Wyoming – they must come with accountability and they must come with transparency,” he said.
This story was published on August 12, 2023.
