Sheridan school officials voice support for better teacher pay, funding for counselors

SHERIDAN — Wyoming is recalibrating its school funding model this summer.

The Wyoming Legislature’s Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration began its interim work this week. The committee is tasked with recalibrating the state’s K-12 school block grant funding model.

In 1995, the Wyoming Supreme Court ordered the legislature to adjust funding levels every two years to account for inflation and review the state’s school funding model every five years to keep up with costs or change its components.

Lawmakers last adopted a school finance recalibration bill that became law in 2011. In 2018, lawmakers cut K-12 school funding by about $30 million.

Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher ruled earlier this year the state’s school funding model is “unconstitutional” and “no longer cost-based,” finding the state has unconstitutionally underfunded its public schools. In that ruling, he found the state had failed to properly fund costs for “quality educational goods and services,” as well as provide adequate funding for teacher and staff salaries and failed to provide adequate funding for mental health counselors, school resource officers, nutritional programs and computers for students.

Sheridan County School District 1 — which includes Dayton, Ranchester and Big Horn in Sheridan County — Superintendent Jeff Jones echoed the push for mental health counselors in Wyoming’s elementary schools. Jones was previously a school counselor before becoming SCSD1’s superintendent.

The state’s current funding model pays for counselors at middle and high schools, though not at elementary schools.

Jones shared a story from his time as a counselor about a young student who told him during her first week of sixth grade that she had been sexually abused by her father for two years. Jones said he hoped the story would illustrate the need for counselors at Wyoming’s elementary schools because that student could have told a trusted counselor about the abuse during fourth or fifth grade.

“Even though elementary school counselors haven’t been in the funding model, our district pays to have them at each of our elementaries because it's important,” Jones said. “Moving forward, I hope the school counselors will be determined as worthy additions to the Wyoming public school funding model.”

SCSD1 Business Manager Jeremy Smith urged the committee to address two components of teacher and staff salaries: starting wages for teachers and regional cost adjustments.

Smith said the state should base starting salaries for teachers on engineers' and nurses’ wages because the three professions require similar educations. According to National Education Association data, Wyoming’s base teacher starting pay would rank 48th in the nation, including Washington, D.C. Some districts subsidize starting salaries, including SCSD1, which improves the state's average starting salary.

“No one (on) the planet thinks that the base model salary of $40,562 for this year was appropriate. Nobody,” Smith said.

According to the district’s salary schedule, SCSD1’s starting teacher salary is $48,401.

Sheridan County School District 3 — which includes students from Arvada, Clearmont and the surrounding rural area — Superintendent Chase Christensen also urged the committee to improve funding for starting teacher salaries. He said teachers across the nation work an average of 53 hours a week, and SCSD3 teachers work 41 weeks. That roughly equates to working 40 hours for each of a calendar year’s 52 weeks.

“Our teachers work as many hours and as hard as any position in the state, and they should be paid as such,” Christensen said.

Smith said the state’s current regional cost adjustment structure is flawed. He noted Sheridan County School District 2 — which encompasses Sheridan and Story — receives more funding for salaries, despite SCSD1 staff living and shopping in the same communities.

“Please, for the love of God, do not kick the can down the road on this one. You have to do something because what you’re doing now is not right,” Smith said.

This story was published on June 19, 2025.