Legislative Update - August 2026

August was an incredibly busy month for WEA and its members. Amidst the hustle of back-to-school activities across the state, Wyoming held pivotal primary elections, and the joint committees on Education and Recalibration held interim meetings.

PRIMARY ELECTION

Last month, the far-right Freedom Caucus – who are largely responsible for significant attacks on public education – held roughly 36 seats in the House. After this election, the caucus lost all but 10 of its seats. This also means that, in the upcoming legislative session, there will be roughly 30 new House members and 14 new Senate members. The WEA Political Action Committee for Education (WEA PACE) worked incredibly hard to support pro-public education candidates, both incumbent and challengers alike. Overall, 91% of WEA PACE-endorsed candidates won their primary elections!

JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE

The Joint Education Committee (JEC) met to discuss several topics, including the definition of the “basket of goods,” student discipline, and state education grants for non-public schools.

The “basket of goods” is the collection of resources and services used to determine the cost of providing a quality education in Wyoming. This should be reviewed as part of every school funding recalibration, but it has not been during many past recalibrations. A proposal to put the current definition into state law was defeated. Putting the definition into statute could make it much more difficult to update as the needs of students, schools, and Wyoming’s workforce change.

The committee also discussed a proposal to provide state grant dollars to non-public schools. The initial intent was to explore how BOCES, BOCHES, and state-authorized charter schools could access these grants. The discussion also included whether these dollars, more than 80% of which come from school foundation funding, could be provided to private and parochial schools.

The committee identified significant constitutional concerns with providing school foundation dollars to non-public schools and will continue to explore how grant dollars can support programs and services that school districts already contract for, including those provided through BOCES and BOCHES. The committee will also explore how charter schools may be able to access these grants.

The WEA participated in the working group on student discipline, which resulted in a bill draft that will be discussed at the JEC’s November meeting.

In September, the committee will meet to discuss a new external cost adjustment.

SELECT COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL FINANCE RECALIBRATION

The committee was tasked with addressing shortcomings in the 2025 recalibration. Specifically, it has yet to address issues raised in litigation regarding school resource officers, nutrition, and 1-to-1 technology for students. An unintended consequence of the recalibration was also a shortfall in funding for student activities. The committee worked quickly to address many of these issues.

Remember that the Wyoming Supreme Court has not yet issued a ruling on the lower court’s decision regarding WEA’s school finance litigation. However, several committee members wanted to follow the lower court’s order, believing the Supreme Court would be watching how the committee addressed these shortcomings.

Four bill drafts were ordered to address each of these issues. The bills are being drafted for the October 21 meeting in Casper, and no official fiscal analysis has been provided. However, the recalibration consultants provided enough information to develop a rough estimate. As currently envisioned, the bills could provide at least an additional $70 million per year for Wyoming schools.

One concern is whether these additional funds would be provided as part of the block grant or as categorical funding (block grants allow districts to spend money as they see fit; categorical funding tells them specifically how they must spend those dollars). WEA believes these dollars are best allocated through the block grant to give districts greater flexibility to meet their individual needs.

The October meeting will be the committee’s last meeting before the 2027 legislative session.

A FINAL NOTE

Thank you to all of our members and advocates who showed up to vote and change the composition of both chambers of Wyoming’s legislature. That said, we have to continue the fight! The general election on Nov. 3 will determine school board compositions, and voters will be asked to consider a ballot measure that would cut property taxes by 50% with no plan to address the massive revenue shortfall this would cause. Proposition 1 would be catastrophic for education and many other services, visit Vote No on Prop 1 to learn more.

In solidarity!