House committee kills bill that would approve three additional charter schools by summer

Mar. 4—CHEYENNE — The town of Alpine is growing rapidly, and residents are looking for the fastest way to build a new school in their area.

Resident Jeff Daughtery told members of the House Education Committee on Monday that Alpine schoolchildren travel by bus one to two hours a day to get to school. For elementary school, students bus to Etna to attend a K-4 school, and then switch over to Afton to complete their secondary education.

Senate File 128, "Approval of charter school," was sponsored by Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, and co-sponsored by Rep. Andrew Byron, R-Jackson. The bill, as written, allowed the Wyoming Charter School Authorizing Board to authorize the operation of three charter schools after July 1. Dockstader told committee members his community is growing and needs a new school to compensate for its rapid growth.

"We can't do legislation specific to a community, but they are ready to go, just as two other communities are ready to go with it," Dockstader said. "We felt like this would be a route to go to put everything in place and get it lined up."

Dockstader said representatives with the public school system told him they preferred to get a charter school at the state level, through the state charter school authorizing board. If they applied for a K-12 public school, a current Most Cost Effective Remedy (MCER) study suggested it would take another six to eight years before the state would pay to build a new facility.

There are donations already set up through the local school charter board to build the school now, Dockstader said. He added the community considered leasing that school to the state, which Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, confirmed the state is required to do.

Wyoming School Boards Association spokesperson Ken Decaria said the state is still waiting to receive fiscal and academic impact reports from charter schools that have already been authorized. This bill, which allowed the establishment of three more schools, is "premature," he added.

"This original legislation was supposed to be a look to see how these charter schools would work," Decaria said. "We're still building this airplane while we're flying it."

Only two of the three authorized charter schools are open, he added, which costs the state at least $12 million so far.

The other issue was that two more charter schools were added under the bill — this could potentially be a case for "special legislation," Decaria said, since there is already anticipation for this school in a specific community.

Wyoming Education Association Executive Director Ron Sniffin echoed Decaria's remarks, adding that the test would be to see the impact that charter schools would have on the School Foundation Program (SFP) account, school construction and rural communities.

"The charter school bill was intended to explore other options, but explore them slowly and carefully," Sniffin said. "We ask that you let the original intent of the charter school bill play out."

The need to fund K-12 public schools construction across Wyoming is a hot topic of debate this budget session for the 2025-26 biennium, especially after senators voted to eliminate this funding in their version of the budget.

Rep. Landon Brown, R-Cheyenne, who is House chair of the Legislature's Select School Facilities Committee, noted that this "state sucks at building schools fast." With so much contention around funding for the construction of K-12 public schools, Brown questioned whether passing a state statute requiring the construction of three new charter schools was the right path to go down.

"When building a school becomes one of the biggest issues of our entire state budget, that's when you know we're doing something wrong," Brown said.

He added that there is currently a $2 million allocation for the construction of one charter school in the 2025-26 biennium, which the House adopted in its version of the budget. While "understanding the plight" faced by constituents in Dockstader's district, Brown said he would vote against the bill.

The bill failed to pass committee by a vote of 6-3, with naye votes from Reps. Brown; David Northrup, R-Powell; Ryan Berger, R-Evanston; Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie; Ken Clouston, R-Gillette, and Jerry Obermueller, R-Casper.

Hannah Shields is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's state government reporter. She can be reached at 307-633-3167 or hshields@wyomingnews.com. You can follow her on X @happyfeet004.