Wyoming lawmakers consider measures to tackle student discipline
CASPER — State lawmakers recently met in Casper to discuss upcoming legislation in the education realm.
One of the big topics during the two-day Joint Education Committee meeting was student discipline and how schools might better handle parsing out punishments.
Four draft bills relating to discipline were presented to the committee for consideration.
The first draft, 26LSO-0088, would require the state board of education to create policies on the use of “reasonable force by school district employees in removal of a student.”
It would also give all school district employees the ability to discipline and punish students, which caused concern from a superintendent in attendance.
Sheridan County School District #1 Superintendent Jeff Jones told the committee he is worried that provision may not be legal and could create some issues. Instead, he supported language used further down in the draft that indicated school district employees could enforce school policies.
“So if you’re a coach and somebody’s acting out of line, you have the authority to enforce the expectations,” Jones said. “That’s different than assigning a suspension.”
The committee later asked the Legislative Service Office to work on amending the bill draft to take in Jones’ recommendation.
The bill would also prohibit school administration from returning a student to a class from which they were removed without the express permission of the teacher.
Included in the bill draft are provisions guaranteeing that teachers are backed by administration in their choices of discipline, a hopeful fix to a common complaint from teachers nationwide.
The committee voted to move the bill to the next meeting and work on adding amendments to the draft based on Wyoming Department of Education recommendations and the removal of the word “punishment” from various portions of the bill.
Teacher Bill of Rights
Much like the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, a Teacher Bill of Rights would outline basic rights teachers have in the classroom. Most often, these are related to feelings of safety and support from administration.
The proposed version from the committee meeting, 26LSO-0091, aimed to do just that.
“The purpose of this act is to recognize, affirm, and protect the rights of certified teachers, paraprofessionals and all other public education staff in public schools by establishing fundamental guarantees relating to working conditions, academic freedom, professional respect, and support,” according to the bill’s drafting instructions given to the Legislative Service Office.
The committee discussed how much of the 26-page bill was actually necessary. Jones said he believes most of it is unnecessary.
“I get concerned that I’m going to spend February to August next year trying to stay out of jail with the policies that we have to create that correlate with the new law,” Jones said on the length and extent of the legislation.
Lead by example
Another bill draft presented to the committee would require the state superintendent of public instruction to craft model policies related to student discipline to guide school districts on their own policies.
The bill draft for 26LSO-0089 would add that requirement to a list of model policies the superintendent is already required to create. It does not require any school district to adopt the model policies.
Dicky Shanor, the Wyoming Department of Education’s chief of staff, said Superintendent Megan Degenfelder prefers another draft, 26LSO-0088. He said department officials believe anything that 26LSO-0089 hopes to accomplish could be done in 26LSO-0088.
The final draft of a third measure, 26LSO-0090, discussed during the meeting took a very different approach than the previous three.
This bill, which would have created a categorical grant for school districts to provide teachers and other staff with professional development related to student success, was killed by the committee.
This story was published on August 30, 2025.