Money for schools unchanged

Alexis Barker
NLJ News Editor
 
School funding will remain unchanged despite more than $300 million in shortfalls after the Wyoming House of Representatives and Senate were unable to reach an agreement on cuts during the session that ended on April 7. This lack of action, according to local representatives, is the biggest failure of this year’s session, pushing the education-funding dilemma down the road. 
“The lack of passage of an education funding bill is the black eye that the state is going to have to deal with,” said Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Sundance, during a conversation with the News Letter Journal last week.
Legislators basically just postponed the inevitable, he said. 
“Education funding has been kicked down the road basically,” Neiman said. “We were not able to come to a resolution. The House was less willing to make cuts, and the Senate was unwilling to add taxes, so we came to a deadlock, walking away with nothing resolved. There are no winners in that. I think we needed to come to some kind of decision.” 
According to Rep. Hans Hunt, R-Newcastle, House Bill 173 would have provided some changes in the funding model, initially leaving the House with a half-cent sales tax, which would have gone into effect in three to four years, based on the balance of the state’s rainy-day fund. This bill, he said, was killed when the conference committee was unable to agree on the difference in the bills presented by each body. 
“Because of this, education will continue to be funded at the same level for the remainder of this biennium,” Hunt said. 
According to Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, the lack of agreement will continue to draw down the state’s savings and cause cuts to the parts of state government funded from the general fund, which took a $430 million hit during this legislative session. 
Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, was one of six legislators serving on the Joint Conference Committee discussing HB 173. She stated that they worked hard to find common ground between the House and the Senate, but in the end the group was unable to. 
“The House continues to want to permanently divert money from income sources into education, while the Senate’s position is to be transparent and let the people know how much is diverted and where it came from,” Driskill said. “Once again, the Senate held true to no new taxes until education is brought under control and has an honest spending plan going forward.”
Steinmetz added that both legislative bodies have a very different approach when it comes to funding education in the state and the lack of an agreement is essentially unfair to the other agencies and departments that are facing cuts.
“To me it is not fair that K-12 education does not have to come to the table and be a part of team Wyoming, working together to solve the state’s financial woes,” Steinmetz said in a conversation with the News Letter Journal. “Hopefully we can continue the discussion. We spent a lot of time and money on recalibration and came to no solution. We put in a lot of time and effort to get very little result and that is discouraging.” 
 “Under the current model, taxes will have to be raised over $1 billion in the next decade to keep up with education – this is unsustainable,” Driskill added. “A fiscal cliff of cuts of up to 30% is in the future for education if a solution cannot be found soon.” 
And a solution is exactly what is needed, according to Weston County School District No. 1 Superintendent Brad LaCroix. 
“Sure, there is a money crunch. I don’t think they are lying but we have to look for solutions,” LaCroix said. 
When looking at education, he said, you cannot just look at the money side of things but also at the basket of goods, what we want a Wyoming high school graduate to look like. LaCroix noted that the Legislature must also consider the draw that the Wyoming education system has in bringing new families and teachers into the area. 
“When we talk about education, we are talking about the livelihood of families, about the economics of Wyoming,” LaCroix said. “We want to be viable to young families, and having good schools, housing and medical access are the packages that we are going to have to offer.” 
If times are as tough as the legislators say, he said, it is crucial that the local boards have the time to address the needs and do what is best for the people they represent. 
“There has to be a system in education that is more consistent than a knee-jerk reaction in April,” LaCroix said. “The whole idea that there are going to be no gives and no takes … for as much as we say we aren’t like D.C. (the federal government), we sure do behave a lot like D.C.” 
LaCroix stressed that those seeking a solution must focus on what the state wants for our students and children, because if they don’t, then they are just a bunch of adults not getting along. 
With the hopes of addressing the K-12 funding issues in the state, Steinmetz reported that Gov. Mark Gordon plans to create a committee to look at the issue. 
“We have pretty big differences and we are in a deadlock where we are. We are having trouble finding common ground and will continue to do so,” Steinmetz said, noting that the governor’s committee should hopefully help find some common ground the two legislative bodies can agree on.