Self Sufficiency Studies

Wyoming Education Association

In 2004 First Lady Nancy Freudenthal and other professionals commissioned a study to determine at what salary level various sized families can be considered “self-sufficient” in each county in Wyoming. Following is information taken from the Self-Sufficiency Standard Study “Frequently Asked Questions”:

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The Wyoming Self-Sufficiency Standard

Ø What is it?

o The Wyoming Self-Sufficiency Standard calculates how much money working adults need to meet their basic needs without subsidies of any kind.

o It accounts for varying costs of living and working by family size and composition and by where these families reside in Wyoming.

o The Standard is a no-frills budget that does not allow for entertainment, fast food, savings, credit card debt or emergency expenses such as car repairs.

Ø Why does it matter?

It is important to remember that any time a family does not make enough to cover these basic costs, the community or state must find ways to pay for them.

How to Use the WEA’s

“Self-Sufficiency Standards as Compared to

Education Employee Salaries in Wyoming” Charts

1. It is important to note that all charts compare self-sufficiency data that is one year behind the accompanying salary data, only because that was the most up-to-date self-sufficiency data available. Keep in mind that, due to inflation, the salaries shown are therefore already behind what the self-sufficiency would compute to for the current year.

2. Separate charts are prepared for color and black & white. Color has a bigger visual impact, but if you don’t have a color printer, please use the B&W version for better readability.

3. Charts are divided into K-12 ESP (Classified), K-12 Certified, and Higher Ed (all categories of HE are shown in one document). Where data has not been provided to WEA for certain job categories or for certain institutions, it is so noted.

4. The Wyoming Self-Sufficiency Standard actually encompasses figures for 70 different family types, but we have selected for illustration purposes only one family configuration for each category of education employees.

5. Likewise, K-12 ESP job categories in many districts are quite numerous, so we have only selected certain categories for demonstration. If you would like a chart prepared for your use with different parameters, please contact Kathy Scheurman at WEA: kscheurman@nea.org.

6. For K-12 Certified, and for limited districts for K-12 ESP, documents are prepared for both 2005-06 and 2006-07 for comparison purposes. For other districts’ K-12 ESP, a 2005-06 chart can be prepared upon request to Kathy Scheurman at WEA. Higher Ed. data for 2005-06 is not available at WEA.

7. Scroll through the appropriate document to find the comparison chart for your job category and your school district or community college. To print just that page, click “Print”, and then under “Page Range”, click the radio button for “Pages”, and specify just the one(s) you want.