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Board hears legislative update; trustees warned lab-school, capital and other bills could cost the district
Summary
District staff and trustees reviewed several pending state bills — including a lab-school funding bill, vouchers and a constitutional capital-construction amendment — that district leaders said could reduce local flexibility and create budget shortfalls if adopted in current forms.
Albany County School District #1 trustees spent a substantial portion of their February work session reviewing several pending bills at the Wyoming Legislature that district staff said could materially affect district finances, staffing and governance.
Tristan Green, district staff, summarized the district's concerns about language in a proposal to reconstitute the lab school as a separate school on the University of Wyoming campus (current bill reference discussed in the meeting: Senate File 126). Green said the bill's funding mechanics would be "a net zero to the state" but not to the district. He estimated that, under provisions discussed at the time of the meeting, the district could lose roughly $3 million in revenue associated with the lab school ADM calculation while continuing to carry roughly $2 million in related school-level expenses — producing an estimated roughly $1 million shortfall in the district's operating budget if the bill were enacted in current form.
Green explained the driver: state funding for schools uses a formula including a three-year rolling average of average daily membership (ADM). If a school's ADM is diverted to a…
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