On first inspection, our page one story about the conversation that took place at last week’s school board meeting over the deteriorating condition of the seats in Crouch Auditorium may seem to be inconsequential.
But it may be the most important story in this issue because it illustrates the fatal flaw in the way education has been governed in Wyoming (and across the country) for the past two decades or more, and it demonstrates perfectly why a true return to local control of education will go a long way towards helping Wyoming survive its school funding crisis.
When Trustee Tom Wright suggested the board start setting aside funds to proactively address a maintenance issue certain to confront the district in the near future, it was pointed out that such “hoarding” could potentially result in a decrease in maintenance funding from the state because school districts are limited in the amount of money that can be held in reserves.
The fact that the solution offered by Trustee Wright— a clear example of responsible local control of a school construction/budgeting issue— could be thwarted by such a restriction defies belief, but it also points to the factor most responsible for the situation we are confronted with at present.
A lack of trust.
Rules and regulations that limit the amount of money that can be saved by school districts shows a clear distrust of officials in those districts by lawmakers and other state officials, but it also demonstrates a distrust of our ability as taxpayers and voters to responsibly select good leadership for our school districts and responsibly govern ourselves.
The situation worsenend considerably after school districts successfully sued the state nearly two decades ago, and the significant increase in state funding for education that occurred as a result of those court decisions was used to justify a pile of new rules and regulations that have been handed down by the state every year since.
Wyoming officials no longer have the luxury of claiming that these types of regulations are necessary to ensure that the state is getting the right amount of “bang for its buck” when it comes to education, however, because the bucks have run out and the tough decisions that will have to be made in education are best made at the local level. The legislature has already begun to hold meetings to discuss a recalibration of the state’s school funding model, and while we understand and support their efforts to further trim education spending in Wyoming, we hope they will do so in a manner that allows communities to ultimately decide how those cuts are implemented.
By its nature, an overly specific solution from the state level will, at best, produce inequities in the way school districts are funded, but it is even more likely that it will erode the quality of education across Wyoming because the collective solution will be geared towards the “least common denominator.”
We know that it is unlikely that legislators or other state officials will trust school boards (or the people that vote for them) enough to use recalibration to provide more control of schools to communities (even though it is the right thing to do), but we ask that they at least consider changing the current rules that cap allowable reserves to avoid discouraging responsible saving. It won’t help in the present school funding crisis, but it will come in handy in the next one. More importantly, it will be a show of faith and trust in local officials and the people who vote for them, and we must begin to rebuild that trust somewhere. We challenge the State of Wyoming to take the first step.