Campbell County school district changing bathroom, gun policies

GILLETTE — The Campbell County School District is officially changing its policies on guns and bathrooms following bills passed by the Wyoming Legislature during this year’s legislative session.

Some specifics of enforcement policy when it comes to House Bill 172, which bans public schools from prohibiting concealed carry on campus, and Senate File 62, which requires students to use the bathroom associated with their gender assignment at birth, may not be settled until they go into effect.

Multiple CCSD administrators said they’d never heard of a student or parent taking issue with the district’s current policies when it comes to its concealed carry rules or student bathroom use.

At a meeting last week, school board member Mark Christensen expressed his frustration over perceived inconsistent intent in the two rulings.

“I find it ironic that the Legislature took six pages of law to tell us how to use the right restroom when we don’t have a problem with using the right restroom, but then they took another 10 pages to tell us we can’t regulate guns,” Christensen said.

The new bathroom policy, which took effect immediately, is not a significant departure from the school district’s current policies, but it puts a more discipline-heavy approach for students in place.

“We really just try to work with individuals and see them where they’re at, and that’s always been the custom for us,” said board chair Lisa Durgin. “We just don’t have any issues with anything outside of what we’d deal with on an individual basis.”

In the past, the school district has provided gender-neutral restrooms for students who want to use them. Transgender, nonbinary and intersex students would ostensibly be required to use particular restrooms; the bill requires schools to provide “reasonable accommodation” for all students.

“If a student does feel uncomfortable (using a sex-designated restroom), they’re going to go to an adult, and that’ll reach an administrator,” said Associate Superintendent for Instructional Support David Bartlett.

It’s difficult to determine how lawmakers intended the bill to affect intersex students. At a voter forum with local lawmakers in Gillette in early January, Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, said intersex people would have to “go a certain direction” when it comes to following sex-specific legislation, such as House Bill 32.

“It does carve out for those people an opportunity to, you know, … go a certain direction,” Bear said. “But once they have made that choice and become of age, then they will fall into one of those categories. I don’t think it gets that detailed in the bill.”

The new legislation requires school boards to take on policy that includes disciplinary action against students and staff out of compliance with the new bathroom rules. The policy would be in effect not just at the school site, but at any school-sponsored activity.

Bartlett said students out of compliance with the bathroom rule would be committing “woeful disobedience,” a term used by the district’s disciplinary policy meaning students can be suspended or expelled.

He added that the board’s policy committee is in the process of developing language to match the statute’s requirements, but that the board is covered “for the short term.” He added that the board would be meeting with building administrators in the near future, who will inform staff and coaches about the new policies.

When it comes to House Bill 172, Bartlett said the new legislation effectively replaced the district’s existing gun policies at its elementary and high schools and creates a misdemeanor offense for anyone who “knowingly prohibits entry to another person for lawfully carrying a concealed carry weapon.”

The bill allows the school district to require that guns or ammunition are stored in a secure container, such as a lockbox, while it’s not being carried.

The district is also allowed to regulate the rules for concealed carry when it comes to its employees and volunteers and establish certain ongoing gun use training requirements — which are outlined in the statute — for its employees.

That legislation goes into effect July 1 of this year.

Alison Ochs Gee, the school board’s legal counsel, said it will be important for the board’s policy committee to review the differences between the old concealed carry policy, which the board adopted in 2020 for specifically rural schools, and the new statute.

“There’s a lot of risk analysis involved,” Ochs Gee said. “Leave it to the lawyer.”

She also said that the more stringent gun safety training requirements included in the 2020 policy, while not explicitly limited in the new legislation, may be challenged in court on the basis that the new policy circumvents it completely.

Superintendent Alex Ayers said that the board has three choices: it could elect to extend its concealed carry policy for rural school educators to all schools, implement a modified concealed carry policy adapted to the new statute, or eliminate guidelines for teachers and volunteers altogether.

That policy change would be opened for public comment over a 45-day period, after the board passes the policy on a first reading. The end of the public comment period would have to fall before July 1.

“Relatively soon, we need to know if you’d like to continue with the policy, make changes or eliminate it altogether,” Ayers said.

This story was published on April 15, 2025.