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Community colleges ask committee to study sustainable funding for CTE programs and Wyoming Works investments
Summary
Community college leaders asked the Joint Education Committee to study sustainable funding approaches for career-and-technical-education (CTE) programs and the Wyoming Works startup costs local colleges face when creating new workforce programs.
Representatives of Wyoming community colleges told the Joint Education Committee on March 5 that community colleges are standing up career-and-technical-education programs in direct response to local industry needs but that initial capital costs — for equipment, vehicles and other start-up investments — create a sustainability challenge for small colleges.
Dr. Moritz (Community College Commission) said programs such as power-line technology were created after requests from industry (Rocky Mountain Power, cited in testimony) and used Wyoming Works funding for capital purchases. He noted Wyoming Works received appropriations in 2019 and 2021 but that long-term sustainability would require a funding mechanism beyond sporadic appropriations.
The Wyoming Association of Community College Trustees (WACCT) offered to brief the committee on governance, funding and program outcomes and urged the committee to consider how scholarship and workforce programs — including Hathaway, Wyoming’s Tomorrow and Wyoming Works — interact with CTE capacity at community colleges.
Ending: Committee members encouraged follow-up briefings and suggested adding community-college CTE funding sustainability and program-capacity planning to interim topics, coordinated with Hathaway and CTE discussions.
