Money trouble — Superintendent LaCroix seeks ‘attrition plan’ amid financial challenges

Seeking to avoid a reduction in force (RIF), Weston County School District No. 1 Superintendent Brad LaCroix is crafting what he calls an “attrition plan” before the flurry of financial problems the district is confronting turns into an insurmountable storm.

The district is acknowledging several financial challenges that would put them in a pickle even if they came one by one: decreasing class sizes, an aging pool facility, and rising costs of employee benefits — not to mention the impact of potential legislation.

“My main hope is with any of these decisions, we really think about what it does for students and student learning,” LaCroix said.

The decline in local enrollment is perhaps the most significant challenge because a school district’s average daily membership is one of the primary factors that affects how much funding it receives from the state. Twenty years ago, the kindergarten class unit size was between 100 and 125 students, LaCroix told the News Letter Journal. It now
averages about 40 to 45, and the projected 2025-26 kindergarten class size at Newcastle Elementary School is going to be even smaller.

The state’s funding model aims for districts to have about 20 students in a class, “give or take five either way,” he said, noting that elementary schools might have 15 students per class, while high schools may have 25 students per class. As districts report less students, they are provided with less money to hire teachers. Because of that, LaCroix said he intends to create a plan to forecast what the district will look like in eight years – for example, if the high school has 120 students instead of the 400 it had two decades ago.

LaCroix said the district is also challenged by a state rule that says funding for preventive maintenance must come out of the district’s general fund instead of its major maintenance fund. This means the district will have to make some tough choices to fund necessary maintenance on the 20-year-old Kozisek Aquatic Center. The pool needs a new liner, and that will cost about $250,000, according to LaCroix. At the same time, the building’soutside needs to be weather-treated, which is another roughly $250,000. The district doesn’t have enough money to cover those amounts in its “10% money” fund, which is major maintenance funding that is reserved for facilities such as pools and football fields.

“To keep that venue for swim lessons, for competition swimming, for open swim to the public, we’re really sort of scrambling right now to look at other means of doing that,” he said.

Adam Ertman, the district’s maintenance director, said at the Jan. 8 school board meeting that the district’s 10% money fund for maintenance is $90,000 per year, “which is nothing.” He noted the district was fortunate that its work on the football field in summer 2024 was eligible for major maintenance funding because it was considered landscaping.

LaCroix told the News Letter Journal he’s also wondering whether the Wyoming Legislature will adjust spending on public education this year, and how those dollars will be earmarked.

According to LaCroix, staff members deserve to receive pay increases and should not have to pay more for benefits, but those costs are also rising.

“So we’ve got some real challenges in front of us just because the variables aren’t really good,” he admitted.

LaCroix said reduction-in-force scenarios, which he has experienced early in his career, are miserable for staff and children, so  the administration is preparing by forecasting staffing patterns and programs while anxiously waiting to find out what the carryover will be and what legislators will do.

He anticipates he will be able to have a plan “in alignment” with new legislation and projected student numbers in the late spring or early summer, when he understands “where the legislation is going to end up.”

“I don’t think it’s time to panic,” he said. “It’s early in the legislative session. There’s a lot of variables out there.”

LaCroix said he will examine where the district lies in comparison with the state’s funding model and what he anticipates student numbers will be, and he expressed confidence in the ability of district leadership to come up with a plan if the state doesn’t backfill property tax money.

Funding Special Olympics participation

Special Olympics participation for Weston County students is facing financial hurdles because of restrictions on the use of federal funds, and Taren Olson, director of special education for Weston County School District No. 1, said at the school board’s Jan. 8 meeting that the board needs to decide whether it wants to include funding for Special Olympics participation in its general fund budget this year.

According to Olson, the Wyoming Department of Education informed school districts a few years ago that Special Olympics purchases would no longer be a way in which districts could use Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part B federal grant funding. The district had historically included Special Olympics skiing opportunities in its proposed purchases for that funding.

The restriction is somewhat confusing, Olson said, because even though special education grant funding can’t cover the expenses for students who want to participate in Special Olympics events, adaptive physical education field trips to teach students those very skills are still eligible for that funding. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that there will be an impact on students this year. Carrie Pilcher, the Special Olympics of Wyoming Area 4 director, is working with the state program to help the district’s families pay to register any eligible school-age athletes for the winter season through Area 4 so they can participate in the Special Olympics Area Games at Terry Peak on Feb. 19 in Lead, South Dakota. A couple of private donors have also offered to help fund local students’ participation in the games, and Olson said at the meeting that Terry Peak is still allowing the district’s students to participate even if they aren’t officially part of Special Olympics because they can’t afford the registration fees.

However, those solutions are only temporary, and Olson told the NLJ that “the bigger issue is funding to create and sustain a community program for athletes to participate in any sports offered by Special Olympics in all seasons.”

She said Pilcher is eager to help families and community members who want to start a Newcastle area Special Olympics program for school-age athletes. According to Olson, the sponsorship proposal the district prepared in 2024 for a local business to support a team hasn’t been successful.