Committee Meeting Information
September 20 and 21, 2006
Cody Holiday Inn
Cody, Wyoming
Committee Members Present
Senator Henry H.R. “Hank” Coe, Co-Chairman
Representative Jeff Wasserburger, Co-Chairman
Senator Tex Boggs
Senator Kit Jennings
Senator Charles Townsend
Representative Debbie Hammons
Representative Patrick Goggles
Representative Del McOmie
Representative Lorraine Quarberg
Representative Dave Zwonitzer
Committee Members Absent
Senator Robert Peck
Representative Steve Harshman
Representative Becket Hinckley
Representative Kurt Bucholz
other Legislators Present
Representative Elaine Harvey
Senator Mike Massie
Legislative Service Office Staff
Dave Nelson, School Finance Manager, Brenda
Long, School Finance Analyst, Matthew Sackett, Associate Research Analyst, Joseph
A. Rodriguez, Staff Attorney
Others Present at Meeting
Please refer to Appendix 1 to review the
Committee Sign-in Sheet
for a list of other individuals who attended the meeting.
Executive Summary
The Committee met
for two days in Cody,
Wyoming.
On the first day of the meeting the Co-chairman appointed 4 four members
of the Committee to a Subcommittee on Charter Schools. The Committee heard testimony from the
Wyoming Community College Commission and various community college presidents
regarding funding and revenues. The
Committee was given a presentation by the
Wyoming School
– University Partnership and heard presentations from the WDE regarding
career-technical education, alternative/virtual schools and the school data
system. In addition the Committee
adjourned to executive session to discuss issues surrounding the ongoing school
finance litigation. On the second day the Committee heard testimony from the
School Facilities Commission on their guidelines and full day kindergarten. The Committee heard presentations regarding
the Wind River Job Corps and National Board Teacher Certification. The WDE presented updates to the Committee
regarding block grant model administration, funding model technical
corrections, at-risk students, the PAWS student assessment, the summer school
and extended day programs. school district rebate and recapture, and school
finance litigation expenditures. The
Committee also heard testimony from its consultants, Dr. Picus and Dr. Odden,
regarding the expenditure study of district resourcing of educational
programs. The next meeting of the
Committee will be October 25, 2006 in Casper.
Call To Order/Opening
Remarks (September 20, 2006)
Co-Chairman Coe
called the meeting to order at 8:37a.m.
Co-Chairman Coe welcomed everyone to Cody. The
following sections summarize the Committee proceedings by topic. Please refer to Appendix 2 to review the
Committee Meeting Agenda.
Appointment of
Charter School Subcommittee
Co-Chairman Coe
announced that he and Co-Chairman Wasserburger have decided to appoint
Representative McOmie, Senator Boggs, Senator Jennings and Representative
Hammons to the Charter School Subcommittee.
Approval of
Minutes
Upon motion by
Senator Jennings and seconded by Representative McOmie the minutes of the June
9, 2006 meeting of the Joint Education Interim Committee were approved as
presented.
Community college
funding & revenues
Dr. Jim Rose, Wyoming
Community College Commission addressed the Committee and supplied the Committee
with Appendix 3. Dr. Rose gave a history
of the Wyoming
community college system and its funding model.
The Current funding model has a number of steps and is very
complex. There is very little linkage of
the funding model to the Commission's strategic plan. The Commission is proposing that in early
2007 a draft funding model is presented to the Committee and then the
Commission would meet with various constituent groups culminating in early May
of 2007 when new rules and regulations could be put in place before making
their biennial budget request in the fall of 2007. The Committee wants the Commission to
explore, in addition to the funding model, the issues of a revenue source in
the form a statewide mill levy and corresponding changes in the governance regarding
community colleges.
Various Community
College Presidents spoke to the committee regarding salaries. Walt Nolte the president of
Casper College
gave the Committee Appendix 4. The
Commission is requesting salary increase as follows: 20% for faculty; 18% for classified staff;
and 10% for administrative staff. The
total supplemental request for salaries is about 16.5 million. Salaries are such that they cannot fill
positions within the colleges. President
Nolte also stated that there will be future problems with an A&I ruling
that suggests after the current biennium the community colleges will receive
reimbursement on medical insurance at 62%, instead of the current 85%, for only
those employees they have that are state supported. This is a potential 8.7 million dollar hit to
the community college budgets. The
Commission is requesting some type of legislation to clarify this issue on
behalf of the colleges. The 3% carryover
rule does not allow the colleges to prepare adequately for the insurance
hit. Co-Chairman Coe requested that LSO
look at this issue and bring something back to the committee at the November
meeting to address the insurance problem.
Joanne McFarland
President of Central
Wyoming College
indicated that there is another A&I interpretation indicating that the
state should only pick up 62% of any increase in salaries. The colleges only received 62% of the
3.5% cost of living increase for state
employees which cost the community colleges about $400,000 dollars to make sure
employees received the full increase. Dr.
Rose indicated that the Commission is having trouble getting a clarification
from A&I regarding these issues.
A motion was made by
Senator Jennings to have the Committee chairs write a letter to A&I to
explain their rationale and statutory interpretations regarding the insurance. The motion was seconded by Representative
Goggles. After further discussion the motion
carried.
Wyoming
School/University Partnership
Audrey Kleinsasser
director of the Wyoming
School – University
Partnership presented the Committee with Appendix 5. Most
educators have a profound moral calling to become a teacher. Often this calling gets dirtied up in
everyday life. The question is how do
you engage the youth? How do you prepare them to operate in a social
and democratic setting? The mission of
the Partnership is to implement the collaborative efforts of the University of
Wyoming, member school districts, the
Department of Education, the Wyoming Education Association, and the community
colleges in carrying out simultaneously the improvement of teacher education
and the renewal of schools.
School Finance
Court Issues/Litigation Update.
Mike O'Donnell,
State's Counsel, provided the Committee with a litigation update regarding the
school finance case during executive session.
School Facilities
Guidelines and Accommodation of Full-Day Kindergarten Programs.
Donna Murry of the
SFC presented the Committee with Appendix 19 and 20. Appendix 19 shows a list of schools providing
full day Kindergarten and where there is over capacity or under capacity. They are looking for solutions such as
reconfiguring schools, to deal with lack of capacity issues. A utilization
study needs to be done to accommodate full day kindergarten. Do not know what the price tag will be for
the long term solutions. Some of the
remedies will have to be new money.
Wyoming Department
of Education Reports.
Block Grant Model
Foundation Program Rules & Regulations
Fred Hansen of the
WDE provided the Committee with Appendix 21.
These rules and regulations were the result of changes to statute.
Model
Technical Corrections, Version 1c
Fred Hansen, WDE and
Brenda Long of LSO provided the Committee with a listing of all the changes
made to the model between versions 1b passed by the legislature and 1c the most
current version. See Appendix 22.
Contemplating a change in the law in regard to certain technical
corrections. The technical corrections
resulted in an estimated 4.1 million dollar change from the 2006 session
estimate or about .4% of change in funding statewide.
Rebated Recapture Fiscal Updates
Fred Hansen of the
WDE and Brenda Long of LSO gave the Committee Appendix 23 and 24. There are about 70 million dollars in
rebated/recapture funds. Constitutional
Amendment B deals with this issue. The
new estimates are significantly higher for rebate and recapture.
District Litigation Expenditures- Update
Fred Hansen of the WDE
gave the Committee Appendix 25. For the period
beginning on March 1, 2003 through March 1, 2006 slightly over 2 million
dollars has been expended in litigation expenses.
Career-Technical Education
Teri Wigert of the WDE briefed the Committee regarding this issue and gave
the Committee Appendix 6. The term
career-technical education(CTE) is synonymous with the term vocational
education. Ms. Wigert presented a brief
history of CTE in Wyoming. Ms. Wigert said that the early studies were
about determining the cost of CTE while the study currently being undertaken is
focused on the development of a strategic plan for the delivery of CTE. Ms. Wigert indicated that the notion of
career clusters is being established in this area through a process of course
sequencing. To assist in career planning
the Department has prepared guides to give all students in grades 8-12
information on the programs. Ms. Wigert
indicated that there are 478 CTE programs being offered across the state. 98% of Wyoming
students take a vocational course at some point in their high school
career. To date just over 4 million
dollars has been spent in adjusting the programs. Ms. Wigert indicated that with recalibration
the state will distribute approximately 5.2 million dollars this year for CTE.
At-Risk Programs
Mary Kay Hill of the
WDE presented the Committee with Appendix 28.
They were faced with two issues.
The first was to refine the definitions of mobile students which they
have done through rule and regulation. The
second was an extensive study of the effectiveness of at risk programs. There is a lot of overlap in regard to the
expenditure – allocation study and the at risk effectiveness study.
Alternative Schools/Virtual Schools
Jim Woodward of the
WDE addressed the Committee and gave them Appendix 7, 8 and 9. Mr. Woodward indicated that 21 school
districts have alternative schools and 23 alternative schools operate in
Wyoming. The WDE has decided not to combine the rules
and regulations for alternative and virtual schools. Alternative schools may be virtual schools
but not all virtual schools will be alternative schools. The WDE can approve an alternative school
within a school so long as they are separate entities. Dr. Picus indicated that when they considered
alternative schools they were thinking about children with multiple social and
emotional difficulties. Dr. Picus is
proposing for alternative schools larger than 49 students is to actually use
the funding model as written but treat all of the students as meeting the at
risk criteria. This would result in a
small net loss for the larger alternative schools but the effect would be
minimal. Following the Picus proposal
would require a legislative change.
Terri Wigert and Chuck
Mitchell of the WDE addressed the Committee regarding virtual schools. The WDE has crafted rules and regulations for
virtual education which is a type of distance education. The Department uses the terms virtual
education interchangeably with distance education. Wyoming
is one of only a few states that do not have in place a written policy dealing
with virtual education. Currently there are no statutes dealing with virtual
education nor are there any funding mechanisms available for the funding of
virtual schools. The WDE will come back
to the Committee with funding proposals.
Boyd Brown, Don
Dihle, Ed Weber and Roger Larson of Campbell
County School
District 1 and Gene Meier and Richard Ferris Sr. of Fremont
County School District
21 addressed the Committee regarding their virtual schools. Campbell
County presented the Committee with Appendix
11 and Fremont
County presented the Committee with
Appendix 12.
Campbell County
is doing a pilot program.. They are
working with K-6 students and a company called K-12 Incorporated. Virtual
Schools provide an educational option to school aged children in
Wyoming who perhaps did
not fit or function well in a traditional school. The cost of a virtual education is about 30%
less than a brick and mortar education. Fremont
County School District
21 started their virtual school 3 years ago to address their high rate of
dropouts.
Statewide Data System
Teri Wigert and Meredith
Bickell of the WDE updated the Committee on the statewide data education
system. The system was to allow
different software applications in a district to share data and ultimately for
the WDE to be able to collect the data at an individualized student level. In 2005 the WDE created the WISER ID
statewide student record identifier which enables the WDE to assign a statewide
unique identifier to each student in the state which helps the WDE to fulfill
the requirements of NCLB. To date the
cost of implementing the system has been about 4.5 million over 5 years. The system works with both PAWS and with the
Hathaway plan.
PAWS Student Assessment/CLB-YP Results
Jim Woodward of the
WDE provided the Committee with Appendix 26 and 27. There is not a fair comparison between WYCASS
and PAWS. The testing showed that there
are 5 high priority districts. On the whole schools did better in math than
they did in language arts.
Summer School-Extended Day Program
Ruth Sommers, and the Summer School Design Team of Natrona County
presented the Committee with Appendix 16, 17 and 18. All but 3 districts applied for and received
funding for summer school and extended day programs. Adding of the enrichment program was a big
benefit incentive for participation in the program. Provided the committee with the changes in
the rules.
Natrona County
had schools work with their own kids instead of centralizing the services for
the programs
Wind River Job Corps
Sandy Barton of Fremont County BOCES presented the Committee Appendix
15. Job Corps is the nation’s largest
residential education and vocational training program for economically
disadvantaged youth between 16-24. Wind
River Job Corps will train students in several areas like automotive mechanics
and repair, business clerical, computer occupations, construction, culinary
arts, health occupations, energy and CDL/Heavy Equipment. Job Corps programs have an 87% success
rate. The city of Riverton has donated 150 acres of land for
placement of the program. Ms. Barton is
asking for the support of the Education Committee.
Representative Goggles made a motion to support, by resolution, the
application of the Wind River Job Corps.
Motion seconded by Representative Quarberg. After discussion the motion carried.
National Board
Teacher Certification
Mary Garland Elbogen
spoke to the Committee regarding the National Board Teacher Certification. In 2004-2005 58 teachers were national board certified. The program currently has 96 teachers who have
taken the test. In this class they have
158 applicants. There are teachers from 22
of 23 counties participating in the program.
They have a total budget of $781,000 of which $328,000 was appropriated
by the legislature. The remainder of
their budget is made up primarily of private donations.
Allocation-Expenditure
Study of District Resourcing of Education Programs.
Dr. Larry Picus and Dr.
Allan Odden presented the Committee with Appendix 13 and 14. Dr. Odden gave a summary of the studies that
they are going to be doing in Wyoming. Picus and Odden will be doing two studies
that have never been done before to determine how much money is in the
educational system and where it is going.
They will be working with advanced doctoral students from the University of
Wyoming and will be using some of the information
gathered by the WDE.
Public Comment
Representative
Harvey and Sherry Monk Principal of the
Lovell Middle School
addressed the Committee concerning the Hathaway plan. They are both concerned that the success
curriculum does not allow a lot of time for students to explore their
educational options which would close out opportunities for students. Ms. Monk is also concerned that the success
curriculum will not play well with small schools as they really do not have the
resources to provide the success curriculum.
Other
Business/Future Committee Meetings
Next meeting will be October 25,
2006 in Casper.
Meeting
Adjournment
There being no
further business, Co-Chairman Wasserburger adjourned the meeting at 12:21 p.m.
Respectfully
submitted,
Senator Coe,
Co-Chairman