3
1 Afton, Wyoming, September 23, 2002, 1:30 p.m.
2
3 MS. DEVIN: Thank you so much for making the
4 trip here to this beautiful country. We're pleased to
5 be in Afton. And I will tell you that we are expecting
6 two more committee members yet. That will be
7 Representative Shivler and Representative Robinson.
8 And Representative Simon's husband is gravely ill at
9 this point, and she is not able to make it. And
10 unfortunately, my co-chair was called back to
11 Washington at the last minute. We had expected him.
12 I've talked to several of you. I thank the
13 staff and the Department of Ed and those who have
14 accommodated. We have shifted this schedule several
15 times in order to accommodate getting the best use of
16 the committee's time and people here. We literally
17 have had people who are somewhere today, can be in
18 tomorrow morning and have to fly out tomorrow
19 afternoon. We have a stakeholder meeting for voc-ed
20 taking place in Jackson as we speak who are then going
21 to come here to give us the report.
22 So I know some of you have made some requests
23 for some agenda changes or shifts if we can. We will
24 do our best to accommodate those. And there is a
25 possibility if we can shift some of those that we can
4
1 do more than one tomorrow morning. So we have some
2 people trying to arrange that for us.
3 And with that I would like to go ahead and
4 ask staff to give us a briefing. I will tell you that
5 they have made an extensive effort as well as all the
6 committees working to use this committee time well. We
7 met in June. There simply was not enough new material
8 ready with the working groups to make a July and August
9 meeting worthwhile, and that is why you saw the meeting
10 moved. But I will tell you there has been hard work
11 going on all of that time and a lot, hundreds of people
12 across the state involved on many of these issues, and
13 they have been doing some good work.
14 Also of interest to you the school capital
15 facilities select committee has met and the commission
16 is on board and working very hard. I think they knew
17 they were getting a very big job, but the job has
18 turned out to be even bigger than they had anticipated
19 and frankly more of the projects are being worked on by
20 them than we had anticipated because of their level of
21 ability to deal with the project. So those meetings
22 are occurring fairly frequently.
23 From this time on I would anticipate we have
24 a fairly heavy schedule. We have a three-day meeting
25 scheduled for October, which will be quite intense. We
5
1 have three days again for November I believe and two
2 reserved for December. And I would anticipate with the
3 weight of those studies coming in and the magnitude of
4 them that we will probably use those days and most of
5 them, so do put in your plan. I don't anticipate the
6 changes that we've experienced so far by going forward.
7 But staff then, I guess, Mr. Nelson, would
8 you appraise us of the areas of out there that are --
9 what is happening?
10 MR. NELSON: Be happy to, Madam Chairman.
11 What Mary handed out are kind of two little documents.
12 One is a summary of all the studies that are school
13 finance related that are assigned to this committee
14 that we will be working on and hopefully putting
15 something together before the session. And the other
16 one is kind of a schedule of the meetings as we set
17 them up as Madam Chairman pointed out the dates and
18 what we hope to be the major topics of those meetings.
19 And I'll just briefly go through the studies.
20 I know you probably are aware of these and are in tune,
21 but kind of help you to keep track of where we're at.
22 First one on the vocational education study MPR will be
23 here tomorrow. They will be here. Mr. Klein who is
24 working with MPR will be here to present his financial
25 report tomorrow. So the bulk of that work will be
6
1 forwarded to you, his data and his recommendations.
2 He's met with the state board on these recommendations
3 and they have forwarded the report. At that point then
4 it's hopeful we can, after your review and your
5 directives work with MAP, to develop some kind of
6 cost-based adjustment to present to you at your
7 November meeting. And that is essentially that study.
8 The reading assessment and intervention study
9 is being worked with. MAP is under contract to look at
10 this component and to present you with some
11 information, recommendations and adjustment of
12 cost-based adjustment for the reading assessment and
13 intervention program that's currently in statute.
14 The special ed study you will get an update
15 this afternoon. It's anticipated the final record be
16 made available at your October meeting. State groups
17 are in fact have been meeting also along on this. The
18 data has been collected, and they will present to you a
19 report in October.
20 The at risk study also is under way. The
21 state department has contracted with an individual to
22 go out and to review the at risk funding adjustment and
23 also the component that puts together the qualifying
24 adjustment is being reviewed. And so it's anticipated
25 you will get a report in October on the at risk study.
7
1 You can see October will be a lot of reports.
2 The small school study, the state department
3 has been working on a definition. They have used their
4 school district advisory group that is set up by
5 statute to work with the state department on financing
6 issues and reporting issues. This group has been
7 working on that and on small school data collection
8 efforts. What they have focused on is going for school
9 level data and they have put together with the state
10 department, a set of data that is being collected this
11 current school year. Our hopes are that at the end of
12 the school year that data can be used to re-look at the
13 small school adjustment and to use the data for that
14 purpose. And you will receive a report on a definition
15 probably at the October meeting that could be used in
16 hand with the refined adjustment. We anticipate it to
17 be later. The data would not be available until the
18 end of next school year.
19 The regional cost adjustment study, the
20 Division of Economic Analysis has contracted with
21 expertise. Dr. Godby is here today. He will give you
22 a brief update on where he's at right now with the
23 expectation that a final report will be given to you in
24 October.
25 And the certified staff compensation study,
8
1 the co-chairs of the committee have revised the
2 contract pursuant to the last meeting. We went out,
3 solicited comments from representatives of the
4 education community on the study. We did get one, we
5 received one comment. We have copies of that. And it
6 was from the Wyoming Education Association. And I'll
7 let Mary distribute those. We received that at the end
8 of July. We made that available to the consultant who
9 is working on the compensation study, and he revised
10 his scope of work to include this information. And
11 again we're looking forward to an October report on the
12 certified staff compensation component.
13 One additional thing that is not on the list
14 but is an issue that will come to you, and it's the
15 certified staff compensation or certified staff
16 adjustment within the compensation component that's in
17 the block grant model. Last year we did not have
18 sufficient data to complete that adjustment. It deals
19 with classified staff and providing minimum adjustment
20 for experienced and for seniority, that sort of thing.
21 And we needed additional information to complete an
22 experience profile for that component. So that will be
23 available this year. And I believe the state
24 department will bring forward a recommendation to you
25 probably in October or November depending on when that
9
1 information has been completed. They have been working
2 with MAP through enhanced data and will have a proposal
3 to bring forward to the committee. It will involve
4 probably a change to the dollar per ADM amount and a
5 refinement of that compensation adjustment. In statute
6 we did not effectuate it until the '03/'04 school year,
7 so we did adopt it with the understanding we will
8 refine the data that went into that piece. So that
9 will be coming at you as well.
10 The data facilitation board has been meeting.
11 Senator Scott and Sessions are here. They have
12 participated in all the meetings. They have met twice
13 since the June meeting. They are focusing on a
14 statewide data base efforts. Currently they're working
15 on a provision that would provide a recommendation to
16 put forth some kind of statewide data base pertaining
17 to student assessment tracking data, that is somewhat
18 of a rush to get through due to the graduation
19 requirements that the state board has put a time limit
20 forward, so they're trying to work with an existing
21 group that's been set up that involves the state
22 department and districts. It's called the Body of
23 Evidence Student Based Tracking Group that has already
24 been working in this area. And I think that they will
25 work in cohort to bring you some sort of a
10
1 recommendation probably at your October meeting that
2 would carry that forward combined with a larger
3 encompassing statewide data for education, statewide
4 education data base that probably would be creating
5 some kind of group that would go forward and come back
6 with you in maybe another year or so. It could be down
7 the road. But with the emphasis on the student
8 tracking information that would be necessary to bring
9 together the graduation information they'll all need to
10 apply with the state board regulations.
11 The other big area that this committee is
12 assigned is the federal No Child Left Behind
13 requirements. You will get a presentation tomorrow on
14 that and some recommendations. Probably we're hoping a
15 good chunk of the information can be assembled tomorrow
16 and carry forward to the November meeting so that
17 October would be available for these other things. So
18 that's kind of the game plan. And with that I'll sit
19 down.
20 MS. DEVIN: Okay. Committee, any questions
21 on that report?
22 MR. LOCKHART: Higher education --
23 MR. NELSON: That will be an agenda meeting
24 at the October committee meeting. The way the agenda
25 is set up is probably Friday would be devoted to a day
11
1 with the university and community colleges.
2 MS. SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, I want to take
3 a minute to thank, and I think the people should know
4 this is I would like to thank the state department and
5 tell them how wonderful they have been on that data
6 facilitation meeting. And I just have to say I think
7 that progress is being made to protect that time in the
8 classroom. And we couldn't have done it without them.
9 I just have to say that. Every time we met it's been
10 really good.
11 MS. DEVIN: I thank you because I do
12 understand it's been time consuming but beneficial,
13 quite a work load.
14 MR. LOCKHART: One thing is apparent from
15 that was the extent to which our system and
16 specifically our legislature is putting data demands on
17 the school districts and reporting demands on the
18 school districts, and the extent to which this is
19 starting to go take resources away from the classroom
20 you have to get into the nuts and bolts of it to see
21 how complicated the demands are.
22 MS. DEVIN: I appreciate that. Apparently a
23 lot of states are finding, I was reading last night the
24 states that have invested in student achievement data
25 gathering systems. And I guess Dave or of the
12
1 department part of my question would be I noticed the
2 state of Georgia, state of Ohio, but several have made
3 substantial investments in these types of systems.
4 And, committee members, I guess has anyone looked at
5 that and whether any of that can be used. Do we have
6 to reinvent the wheel?
7 MS. SESSIONS: Madam Chairman, no, I think
8 that's the way it's going, is the people we've been
9 introduced to and many things already are trying to be
10 done in the process of working through it to see what
11 we can adapt and use and then come forward with a
12 plan. It's using what is already out there and trying
13 to see what we can do and then working with school
14 districts to decide what data is needed and how the
15 whole thing, we have common definition of data, that's
16 another goal so that when you ask for a classroom and
17 student-teacher ratio there is an explanation there and
18 maybe there will be couple, three different
19 student-teacher ratios, but they will explain what it
20 means from every school. And that kind of thing is
21 something that will really be beneficial, maybe stop
22 some of the -- I guess it's stopped maybe the distrust
23 of some of the numbers.
24 MS. DEVIN: Then the working group that
25 you're talking about can integrate some of what is out
13
1 there along with that.
2 MR. LOCKHART: There is some ongoing national
3 effort, some of which is in the private sector and some
4 more joint, that are in the process of producing some
5 data systems that talk about platforms with open
6 access, and frankly they lose me after a while. But it
7 looks like there is some national things we can tie
8 into that will help quite a bit. And understand it's
9 much more than just data on student achievement and
10 assessment. It's all the data required to run our
11 system plus a lot of other things. And it does look
12 like maybe gotten access.
13 MS. DEVIN: That's an excellent point because
14 although we're emphasizing this piece is what the
15 districts are heavily asking, there is also the
16 financial piece that can be a part of this data, the
17 financial reporting pieces. And but what we've found I
18 think in the discussion is that we're further along in
19 that. We've been working on it longer and we've pulled
20 it together, so it will be a part of this system. The
21 hope as was described to me is that this data can be
22 entered once and sometimes entered at the district
23 level just once, and then when people need to retrieve
24 it there will be multiple ways that you can retrieve
25 that data and not have to ask separate questions or
14
1 questionnaires or go out again. At least that's our
2 goal that we get a user friendly piece that doesn't
3 take a lot of time.
4 Our voc-ed study is ahead of schedule. I'm
5 hoping this committee might be able to recommend some
6 drafting beginnings on that so that we can perhaps get
7 that report off of the table for October with our
8 loaded schedule and then look at it again in November.
9 Special education may be more complex. We
10 may not be quite at that point, but we are getting a
11 major piece of that in. I will say this is due to the
12 diligence of the working groups and the consultants
13 with us that we are that far.
14 I think that the only other comment I have on
15 this workload small schools indeed will take an
16 additional year as we had anticipated. We are looking
17 at two or three different methods to come at that,
18 including the collection of the data that was mentioned
19 to you and perhaps more than one prototype development,
20 some costing out of the actual basket in small schools,
21 delivery of that basket in small schools. We're
22 looking at multiple approaches to try to get good data
23 on that.
24 The federal piece which we will discuss
25 tomorrow, a great number of these things, including
15
1 this data work, was extremely timely in that should we
2 get this developed it may well take a tremendous burden
3 of those pieces. We may not have a great deal of
4 legislation, but if we are able to feel comfortable I
5 would like to consider moving to draft on that also
6 tomorrow and then look at it again in November because
7 those are pieces that we can I think do.
8 So with that and your tentative schedule in
9 front of you for your additional committee meetings I
10 think that pretty much lays out a full plate of work.
11 And we have had item number three, the St.
12 Stephens School approach us for the meeting that we had
13 to cancel in August I believe, they were originally
14 scheduled, and they were gracious enough to make the
15 trip here. But they have indeed had a number of years
16 of history with the Department of Education and serve a
17 special need. I'm not sure how many people on the
18 committee are fully aware. I've had to ask a lot of
19 questions. So, Senator Peck and presenters, any
20 history that you might be able to give us some of the
21 committee will know and have been through it, but many
22 members will not have been through any legislative
23 actions with St. Stephens before. So feel free to
24 elaborate.
25 We do have a court reporter here, which is
16
1 the practice with of the Education Committee, so those
2 of you who are speaking if you would identify yourself
3 and if you are representing anyone other than yourself
4 or representing yourself, please state that so she can
5 get that information. I guess I will open that agenda
6 item to whomever would like to speak.
7 MR. HEADLEY: Thank you, members of the
8 committee, I appreciate you putting this on your
9 primary agenda. Brief history, we've been working with
10 Senator Peck and the Fremont County representatives,
11 Harry Tipton and Cal Case, and there is some
12 correspondence to the Attorney General and to Senator
13 Irene Devin, yourself here.
14 And in short, years ago 1992 the legislature
15 supplemented us in the amount of $250,000 that was
16 through the entrance of contested taxes held in
17 escrow. And since then that has run out. I don't know
18 when it stopped because I've been away, but it's
19 stopped. And the St. Stephens Indian School Board
20 asked us to contact the Fremont County legislature to
21 see how we can get extra funding through the state some
22 way, somehow, what avenue. And the idea came up with
23 the possibility of contracted services. And so we are
24 here to ask some way to apply for those kind of
25 contracted services with the legislature.
17
1 MS. DEVIN: Can you tell us how many children
2 are in your school and why they might attend your
3 school versus another school, who sponsors your school
4 and a little bit about it? I'm not sure all, maybe I
5 was the only one who had to ask those questions, but
6 I'm sure all the legislators who live further away
7 aren't as familiar as we should be.
8 MR. HEADLEY: St. Stephens was formerly a
9 Catholic high school, and we became a Bureau of Indian
10 Affairs contract school, 638 in the Self-Determination
11 Act. Then it evolved into a grant school, so now it is
12 a Bureau of Indian Affairs grant school, meaning that
13 it's under the Shoshoni and Arapaho tribes. And we
14 have approximately 80 high school students and 155 K-8.
15 MS. DEVIN: Again please the numbers?
16 MR. HEADLEY: Approximately 80 high school
17 students and 155 K-8 students. And it's been
18 fluctuating in that some students are leaving, getting
19 in others students as well. So our funding is
20 approximately 3,730 per student.
21 MS. DEVIN: And your funding was how much per
22 student?
23 MR. HEADLEY: 3,730.
24 MR. SWEENEY: I believe you all received a
25 handout showing that figure on there.
18
1 MS. DEVIN: Thank you. Now, students
2 attending this school, where do they come from? Do
3 they have a choice of going to this school, to other
4 schools? Are there particular services that you do
5 present to this group of students that they see as
6 valuable? Just to try to get a picture of the school.
7 MR. HEADLEY: We try to offer as many classes
8 as possible in terms of electives for high school. And
9 the students come from the St. Stephens Arapaho area,
10 and they can go to Arapaho elementary school or
11 Riverton they can go to boarding schools. But St.
12 Stephens serves the whole reservation, so our busses go
13 all over the reservation.
14 MS. DEVIN: Do you have your own bus system?
15 MR. HEADLEY: Yes.
16 MS. DEVIN: What about, you have the school
17 lunch and that type of thing?
18 MR. HEADLEY: Yes.
19 MR. SWEENEY: That's the state, the school
20 lunch.
21 MS. DEVIN: And tell us about, Senator Peck
22 or one of you gentlemen, the nature of the history of
23 your relationship with the legislature and the state
24 department. What types, you contracted -- I know money
25 is not appropriated directly to the school for
19
1 constitutional prohibitions and so forth, but it has
2 been in the past as I understand there have been some
3 appropriations by the legislature to the Department of
4 Ed, is it, for specific contracted services? Or can
5 you help us on that?
6 MR. HEADLEY: It was an act. I'll read, an
7 act provided an appropriation from the mineral
8 severance protest accounts within the trust and the
9 agency fund for the remuneration of specified
10 commissions on the Wind River Indian Reservation
11 imposing conditions upon the expenditure of appropriate
12 funds and providing for an effective date. And it was
13 enacted in 1992.
14 MR. PECK: Madam Chairman, I think just by
15 way of elaboration for what Mr. Headley has said
16 geographically St. Stephens sits right outside of
17 Riverton a few miles and has build a nice campus
18 there. And students of all sorts choose to go to St.
19 Stephens because of the particular environment and the
20 welcoming attitude the school has for its students.
21 Over the years former Senator John Vinich sort of
22 championed the cause of St. Stephens and various
23 methods of getting money to St. Stephens had been
24 employed over the years to stay within the constraints
25 of the constitution. Sometimes he worked with the
20
1 Arapaho with mineral severance tax. Contested funds
2 were the latest method. I think that their appearing
3 before us certainly has merit in that they're serving
4 well over 200 students, that if they weren't serving
5 them someone else would be, and instead of getting by
6 for $3700 a piece we would be paying $8,000 a piece, so
7 I guess the challenge for us is what way could we work
8 with the department of St. Stephens and perhaps
9 identify a group of educational services that possibly
10 could be contracted with and help, and be better able
11 to offer a full array of educational services rather
12 than the extremely tight lid they have on their funding
13 at the present time.
14 The tax situation is an ongoing thing. We
15 who serve on the tribal relations committee have been
16 talking informally with the tribal leaders, and of
17 course the state extracts its full levy of severance
18 taxes against reservation-produced minerals, and the
19 reservation imposes severance taxes on top of that, so
20 the companies such as Tom Brown who choose to operate
21 on the reservation are faced with a higher level of
22 taxation than the operators in the rest of the state.
23 And that differential has been an ongoing subject for
24 discussion. So I'm not sure we have a specific
25 solution to the problem, but I think we who are in the
21
1 Fremont County delegation have been meeting with the
2 school board and Mr. Headley to have ongoing
3 discussions to see if there is some way that we can
4 help with the funding and still stay within the bounds
5 of the constitution.
6 MS. DEVIN: I would ask you what types, or I
7 would open it to the department also to ask what types
8 of services you would look to have to contract for,
9 what might you see that is a need that you cannot
10 provide under your current moneys or you could provide
11 in a better manner with this enhancement? What has
12 been contracted for before and what kinds of services
13 might we be looking at, what sorts of arrangements?
14 And I may be asking people who were not there at the
15 time. I don't know.
16 MS. HILL: This is an issue that has arisen
17 within the department even in the time I have been
18 there a couple of different times. And there is a
19 desire at the department to try to help. The problem
20 is when you run into the other limitations. The
21 federal title funds we receive, which are the bulk of
22 our funds, are all very much tied to public education.
23 That would certainly be true with the new funds coming
24 through No Child Left Behind. We would be glad to take
25 another look at that apple and see if there is some
22
1 sort of contracted service. The warning is this, that
2 that would then require the school to do something that
3 it's probably not currently doing. It would be for
4 something new. And that may not be helpful to them.
5 That may be counterproductive. And as I think the
6 focus is to come back to the legislature to see if
7 there is some sort of a legislative package that would
8 have appropriations that would then run through the
9 department or possibly family services group, those
10 programs.
11 MR. SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I can remember
12 these discussions going back as long as I've been in
13 the legislature. This is not an overly new topic. The
14 problem has always been the provisions in our
15 constitution, particularly article 7 section 8, has two
16 portions; one, it forbids assistance to any church or
17 sectarian school, which I gather now St. Stephens no
18 longer is. Is that correct?
19 MR. HEADLEY: Uh-huh.
20 MR. SCOTT: Also that provision got, and a
21 very similar provision in another state constitution
22 got held unconstitutional I believe by the Ninth
23 Circuit at the appeals court level. It's not clear
24 whether that precedent can be binding nationally or
25 not, but there is at least an appeals court decision
23
1 that says that such state constitutional provisions are
2 against the U.S. Constitution. But that same section
3 has a prohibition on using, nor shall any portion of
4 any public school fund ever be used to support or
5 assist any private school. And that's another problem
6 that we get into. Is St. Stephens now a private school
7 or is it a tribal school?
8 MR. HEADLEY: Tribal school.
9 MR. SCOTT: So that prohibition doesn't
10 really apply in this case because tribal schools are
11 not regarded as a private school under our laws. Is
12 it?
13 MR. NELSON: Good question. I don't know.
14 MR. SCOTT: I think that by changing the
15 arrangement there they may have disposed of a couple of
16 the major objections to doing some funding. Let me ask
17 if how is your special education handled? Is that
18 something that St. Stephens does or does the state do
19 that?
20 MR. SWEENEY: Bureau of Indian Affairs,
21 through the BIA.
22 MS. DEVIN: Is that part of your personal
23 funding?
24 MR. SWEENEY: There should be a section on
25 there on that spread sheet designated to special ed.
24
1 MR. SCOTT: If we were to pick up that
2 portion, which I know we have done for some of the
3 services for other schools in the state, would that
4 simply reduce your BIA funding?
5 MR. SWEENEY: That I don't know. That would
6 be something we would have to discuss with the BIA I
7 would imagine.
8 MR. SCOTT: I see no reason to supply federal
9 funds, but I know in our town that a number of special
10 education services are provided by our school district
11 to students in private or parochial schools. And the
12 argument it's going to the students rather than the
13 institution. I'm wondering if that's a way we can be
14 helpful.
15 MS. DEVIN: I would appreciate your looking
16 into that.
17 MS. HILL: Madam Chair, Senator Scott, the
18 issue there because we did look at this under previous
19 occasions that those were funds that would go to
20 special education that would go to the district, that
21 the district provides the services. So that raises the
22 question of a relationship what is St. Stephens School
23 with one of their neighboring districts and that is in
24 the past seems to be something of an issue.
25 MS. DEVIN: So if I understand what you're
25
1 saying we might be able to either legislative, there is
2 a potential of two avenues; one would be if we can
3 legislatively designate those special education funds
4 to be available for St. Stephens School. That would be
5 one route, and we don't know if that is possible. The
6 other route is much as Senator Scott is describing and
7 I know it happens in my community it comes through
8 another school district who then provides those
9 services.
10 MR. NELSON: Madam Chairman, just to clarify
11 the Attorney General in the opinion handed out February
12 21, 2002 opinion does say that for purposes of school
13 funding they consider St. Stephens a private school.
14 And that's just their opinion was issued.
15 MS. DEVIN: Senator Scott.
16 MR. SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I would think
17 that that should be treated as just their opinion. In
18 fact a tribal school is a school of another
19 government. What I'm wondering is if we were to say
20 for other governmental schools in the state that we
21 would be willing to appropriate money to the state
22 Department of Education to contract for services at
23 some percentage of the cost of running those schools as
24 it really then is a grant in aid to not a private
25 school, not a religious school, because it isn't
26
1 either, but a school operated by a tribal government.
2 If we might be able to use that method and that the
3 convoluted methods in the past were because it was at
4 that time both private and religious and gave us
5 constitutional problems.
6 MS. DEVIN: I understand we have a twofold
7 problem; one is how to channel it and the other is the
8 age-old question where does the money come from. But
9 nonetheless, the channeling is what we can look at.
10 MR. MCOMIE: On page two of the Attorney
11 General's second paragraph I think specifically says
12 that you could do what Senator Scott has been
13 suggesting.
14 MR. SCOTT: Madam Chairman, there would be
15 another potential approach as well, and that is to do
16 it through a voucher program to the students so that
17 the grant then goes to the student who then chooses to
18 spend it at St. Stephens. The voucher program on a
19 trial basis in Fremont County may well end up going
20 mostly to St. Stephens because there aren't many other
21 options. There would be another possibility. It looks
22 like there are a couple of ways to skin this cat. And
23 then you have the question of where do we get the
24 money. I presume the same sources as all the other
25 money for public education.
27
1 MS. DEVIN: Senator Scott, that pilot voucher
2 has passed the senate, but has not succeeded in the
3 house. So it would be another route.
4 MR. LOCKHART: Madam Chair, I have a
5 question. I understand charter schools and church
6 schools of choice within the public school system
7 fairly well. Is there an objection to having St.
8 Stephens in part of the school district or are they
9 sort of fit that if that pattern and there has to be a
10 track for St. Stephens in the campus environment and so
11 forth. But couldn't that fit within the school
12 district?
13 MR. HEADLEY: As a charter school, you mean?
14 MR. LOCKHART: Yes.
15 MR. HEADLEY: I would have to check with the
16 BIA to see if that is a possibility. It would have to
17 get another board, so to speak, another board and kind
18 of like the Arapaho school.
19 MS. DEVIN: Do you have a board currently,
20 tribal board?
21 MR. HEADLEY: Yes.
22 MS. DEVIN: And I would suspect they could
23 function as your charter school board.
24 MR. HEADLEY: I would have to read the
25 charter school rules and regulations to determine that.
28
1 MR. LOCKHART: Madam Chair, as a follow-up.
2 The particular niche the St. Stephens fills in your
3 mind, would you describe for me?
4 MR. HEADLEY: I don't understand your
5 question.
6 MR. LOCKHART: That's my fault. St. Stephens
7 has a very special focus apparently, and I would like
8 to hear your description of that. Maybe that would
9 help me better understand.
10 MR. HEADLEY: I believe the parents and
11 grandparents graduated went to the Catholic school have
12 that feeling as if it's a tradition. It's a tradition
13 they send their kids to St. Stephens and their kids
14 will send them to St. Stephens and kind of like that's
15 the way I see it, tradition.
16 MR. MCOMIE: I'm not as familiar with this as
17 Senator Case and Representative Tipton, but there seems
18 to be we have a tremendous dropout problem in the
19 reservation, and St. Stephens serves a real need as far
20 as I've been able to ascertain helping with that
21 problem. A lot of the kids don't seem to be able to
22 function in some of the other schools seem to be able
23 to go to St. Stephens and stay in school. I think
24 that's something that's important. And I think that's
25 one of the big niches as I see it, where you were going
29
1 to. And I don't know, I may be talking off the top of
2 my head, but that's always been my take is to the value
3 of St. Stephens with Arapaho just across the road. You
4 have the high school and the Arapaho doesn't. But
5 those are the, that's one of the things I've observed.
6 MS. DEVIN: Are you indicating that there are
7 also perhaps did I -- the question you raised in my
8 mind are there students that graduate from the Arapaho
9 that will go on to high school if they can do that at
10 St. Stephens, but may not go on to high school if they
11 have to transfer?
12 MR. MCOMIE: That's my understanding.
13 MR. PECK: Not to say anything derogatory
14 about St. Stephens, but in conversations St. Stephens
15 has sometimes been looked at as the school of last
16 resort too. You have to remember that you're allowed
17 to go to any high school in Fremont County; Shoshoni,
18 Lander, Riverton and whatever. And some kids that have
19 had a particular troubled time at some of the other
20 schools land at St. Stephens and succeed there. And
21 all the factors that bring that about may be all
22 because they like Mr. Headley. But they stay in school
23 in St. Stephens. And just by further elaboration while
24 we're on the charter schools I'm sure you're aware
25 Arapaho is in the process of becoming a charter
30
1 school. And whether a charter school attached to a
2 charter school would work, I'm not sure, but St.
3 Stephens enjoys a special reputation and some of it as
4 Superintendent Headley said is grandpa went there and
5 mom and dad did and so the kids will go there. I can
6 remember when I was in grade school they had a national
7 championship basketball team came out of St. Stephens,
8 went back and played in Chicago and showed the world
9 how to play basketball. That tradition is still there
10 to some extent, although Wyoming Indians has
11 appropriated some of that glory.
12 But there is an environment there that keeps
13 kids in school and the dropout rate is atrocious on the
14 reservation. Graduation rate is significantly less
15 than those for high school, those that finish the grade
16 school and junior high. They serve a need, and it's a
17 challenge to us to figure out a way to enrich their
18 program. Maybe something as simple as contract with
19 St. Stephens School for the instruction of science and
20 technology, which would be a special need obviously the
21 students would have, and that would be so simple an
22 avenue to fund money into the school. Possibility.
23 MS. DEVIN: Certainly does raise services to
24 what we have struggled with in that so called for lack
25 of a better term, at risk population.
31
1 MR. SCOTT: I would like to ask a question of
2 the revenue committee chairman. To what extent are
3 Wyoming taxes generally collected on the reservation?
4 You mentioned specifically severance tax was. What
5 about the others, specifically my question runs to the
6 cigarette tax.
7 MR. PECK: I don't know that the cigarette
8 tax is a significant contributor. The reservation
9 gives a tax rebate on part of your motor vehicle
10 taxes. But a number of studies have been made trying
11 to measure how much total taxes are collected on the
12 reservation against what the value of total services
13 offered. And the county commissioners' study showed it
14 was pretty much a push, that the services provided was
15 about equal to the revenue. And I know that the joint
16 business council has commissioned studies which show
17 out of balance the other way. I guess it's sort of
18 like hiring your expert, here's the answer you want, go
19 get me the data.
20 MR. MCOMIE: When I served on the county
21 landfill board 22 percent of the taxes collected for
22 the county landfill came from the reservation, that
23 property tax.
24 MS. DEVIN: Would that be primarily
25 minerals?
32
1 MR. MCOMIE: Minerals and all the free land,
2 all that type of stuff are taxed, which is a large
3 portion.
4 MS. DEVIN: Senator Sessions.
5 MS. SESSIONS: I wondered if the No Child
6 Left Behind is there any, does that fit into that
7 anywhere at all, is there possibility to identify
8 something that we can use to funnel money to that No
9 Child Left Behind?
10 MS. HILL: Those No Child Left Behind funds
11 are really very school specific. And when you talk to
12 Scott tomorrow he can elaborate on that, but the annual
13 progress you need to make, that is a fairly elaborate
14 process, and it's my guess it's something these folks
15 would want to avoid.
16 MS. DEVIN: Let me ask I'm sort of looking
17 for how do we get a working group that proceeds on
18 this, but we would, as Senator Scott pointed out, not
19 necessarily want to plunge into an area where we
20 supplant federal funds and then lose the federal funds
21 piece and end up with no more money toward the
22 education of students. How might we explore this?
23 MR. SCOTT: It depends a little on whether
24 this is within the education committee's charge from
25 the management council or not. If you think it is then
33
1 I would suggest we have three legislators who are from
2 Fremont County on this committee, you might appoint
3 them as a subcommittee to work with the people from St.
4 Stephens, the other districts in Fremont County and the
5 other Fremont County legislators to come up with a
6 specific proposal for this committee. If you don't
7 think it's within the charge they can do the same thing
8 with a private bill. We've identified, I can count
9 three options that look viable; the voucher program,
10 the appropriation to the education department to
11 contract either for a percentage of the services or
12 Senator Peck's suggestion, some specific services like
13 science and technology or the richest option of all,
14 making it a charter school. Then they would get the
15 full funding under our foundation program. And the
16 question there would be would we lose the BIA funding
17 in the process. So there are three different options.
18 And if you had a subcommittee of local legislators to
19 work up something that would be I think the way to get
20 a specific proposal. The question is should it be a
21 proposal to this committee or a committee bill or
22 should be a private bill. That depends on the nature
23 of our charge to the management council.
24 MS. DEVIN: And I would assume that there may
25 need to be some involvement with the Department of
34
1 Education to answer these questions and assist. Mary
2 Kay, any recommendations to someone that might be able
3 to work with the group?
4 MS. HILL: We can go back and talk about
5 that. One other recommendation I might make is that
6 there be some contract with the Department of Family
7 Services. There is some of those juvenile justice
8 funds that may also be contract possibilities.
9 MR. PECK: Representative Tipton has been
10 working at some length with this already, and I think
11 Senator Scott's suggestion is fine, we can be given a
12 charge to the Fremont County delegation in general to
13 work up recommendations and see what the possibility.
14 One of the reasons for wanting to come before the
15 education committee today is that sometimes efforts
16 that start sort of outside the fold and fall by the
17 wayside because the affected committee hasn't heard
18 anything about it. That's one of the reasons we wanted
19 to make sure the education committee was fully briefed
20 when it comes along at the pace of the general
21 investigation.
22 MS. DEVIN: Then I think having had this
23 discussion my general inclination would be to ask
24 Fremont County legislators along with the school along
25 with the department and other appropriate individuals
35
1 if you feel other school districts in the immediate
2 area need to be involved in that, that you proceed with
3 those discussions. In answer to the question that
4 Senator Scott raises in terms of whether this is within
5 the charge of this committee I will from the management
6 council I will further investigate that issue as to
7 whether action is a part of what we are charged with. I
8 think that we benefit certainly from being appraised of
9 what the situation is out there, children's education
10 in the state. And I know that I had a lot of questions
11 and I learned a lot in the letters and asking them
12 about the niche that this school serves for a
13 significant number of young people.
14 Committee, is it your general sense that we
15 proceed? I sense the interest we proceed and
16 investigate the potential. Any objections to that
17 working group?
18 MR. NELSON: I want to add you have a tribal
19 relations committee that could be another avenue.
20 MR. PECK: Madam Chairman, it's through that
21 avenue Harry Tipton has been working. He and I are
22 chairs of the tribal relations committee. And he was
23 approached in that role as well as legislator. The
24 tribal relations committee is involved as well.
25 MS. DEVIN: I guess I would give the,
36
1 certainly the education members here the latitude to
2 involve those that you see appropriate in the
3 discussion. You can see here the complexities that we
4 get into once we enter the federal money and the other
5 pieces. And some of the people you involve are well
6 aware of the complexities and some will not, so you
7 need to make a decision how large you make the group.
8 I think moving that discussion along and getting us to
9 firmer recommendations would be the route to go.
10 MR. PECK: I know you have rather an active
11 private fund raising effort ongoing with your
12 publication and that sort of thing. Is that a
13 significant contributor to the school budget or just a
14 small amount of money they raise privately?
15 MR. HEADLEY: It goes directly to the
16 Catholic Church.
17 MR. PECK: Not for the school, for the
18 church.
19 MS. DEVIN: Do they contribute a part of this
20 3730 or contribute some in addition?
21 MR. SWEENEY: No, that's all from the Bureau
22 of Indian Affairs.
23 MS. DEVIN: That's a separate sort of
24 relationship.
25 MR. PECK: Why don't you want to become a
37
1 part of Arapaho or Wyoming Indian or Riverton or don't
2 they want you?
3 MRE. HEADLEY: I think that's a question for
4 the school board and community. I think like I said
5 before I think it's tradition.
6 MR. SHIVLER: How does the Bureau determine
7 the 3730? Is that a national figure or based on
8 population? That's significantly lower than almost
9 every state in the union.
10 MR. HEADLEY: Just what congress proposes,
11 whatever they appropriate the Bureau of Indian Affairs
12 it's kind of divvied out to all the BIA.
13 MR. SHIVLER: Congress is the leader in this
14 No Child Left Behind. They're certainly leaving your
15 tribes behind with this 3730.
16 MR. HEADLEY: Right. The law is supposed to
17 give the Bureau schools equal to the public school,
18 what they get the Bureau is supposed to get, never
19 happened. It's by law.
20 MR. SHIVLER: Perhaps we should be talking to
21 our Congressman.
22 MR. HEADLEY: We've taken that route as well
23 years ago to no avail.
24 MS. DEVIN: Is that a national figure that
25 they're giving?
38
1 MR. HEADLEY: Yes, every BIA school gets that
2 amount, grant school.
3 MS. DEVIN: Do we have any idea what other
4 states are doing with their BIA money, is there any
5 other assistance to the BIA that we know?
6 MR. HEADLEY: I don't know.
7 MS. DEVIN: I'm not even sure, Mr. Nelson,
8 how we find that out.
9 MR. NELSON: We'll try.
10 MS. DEVIN: Might be interesting to know how
11 they dealt or in fact if they have found any methods
12 that federal funds can be also utilized for those.
13 Does that working group sound agreeable to you to
14 proceed?
15 MR. HEADLEY: Yes, ma'am.
16 MS. DEVIN: And if you, as I said I will look
17 at the other aspect of this. And I appreciate you
18 bringing the information and working with this group of
19 students. Thank you.
20 MR. HEADLEY: Thank you.
21 MR. SWEENEY: Thank you.
22
23 Discussion off the record.
24
25 MS. DEVIN: Gentlemen, if you would introduce
39
1 yourself.
2 MR. BALLARD: Members of the committee, my
3 name is Justin Ballard. I'm the senior economist with
4 the Division of Economic Analysis. And I'm the project
5 lead for the Wyoming Cost of Living Index. With me is
6 Professor Robert Godby with the Economics and Finance
7 Department, College of Business, University of
8 Wyoming. My division has contracted with him to study
9 the Wyoming cost of living index and its use in the
10 school finance model. I guess I'll turn it over to
11 Professor Godby, and he will update you on his findings
12 so far.
13 MS. DEVIN: And these are rather complex
14 issues and we've had problems in a number of areas. As
15 you remember with a huge part of the change we saw in
16 the court's decision last go-round. And this part of
17 the state was quite dramatically affected as were some
18 others. So any amount of detail you want to go into,
19 walk us through this. We're trying to get an
20 understanding of all parts of this.
21 MR. GODBY: Madam Chair and members of the
22 committee, Justin's already outlined the study. I'll
23 be a little more specific. With the cost of living
24 index that Wyoming prepares is used in the regional
25 cost adjustment in the model to differentiate required
40
1 moneys to provide equivalent level of education I
2 suppose. In particular it most impacts the personnel
3 costs and how those should be allocated to different
4 school districts. As I understood the grant that was,
5 or the legislation and the study that was proposed or
6 at least asked for, there is two ways to go about
7 this. One is to look and see if the WCLI, the Wyoming
8 Cost of Living Index, can be tweaked, for lack of a
9 better word, to make it work in a capacity that it
10 wasn't intended to be used in. And the second approach
11 would be to try to identify if there is a better way to
12 go about or at least maybe a -- it's difficult to
13 decide what is better because what we're looking for,
14 and I've said this to people in meetings, is we're
15 trying to find this truth with a capital T, and it's
16 not clear we're ever going to be able to be certain
17 that we can identify what that is. But there may be
18 other methods other than the cost of living index that
19 could approach that more accurately.
20 As you know there is a tight deadline. Dave
21 has already outlined when he anticipates at least a
22 tentative report being submitted to you before the
23 November 1st deadline that it has. I'm looking to
24 submit that at your October meeting and hopefully
25 generate more discussion there. Because of the tight
41
1 deadline we're looking at about two months to consider
2 and try to improve upon something that other states
3 have taken up to two years to look at.
4 Going back to your comments at the beginning
5 regarding other studies there are other state studies
6 that we can look at, and we can piggy-back on their
7 findings. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. There
8 are at least 10 or 11 states that use a cost of living,
9 a cost of education adjustment. At least three or four
10 of them use a cost of living adjustment, including
11 Wyoming. And again it's not necessarily true that's
12 the best way to go.
13 What I've been looking at more recently there
14 is a Texas study just finished in January 1st, 2002,
15 and in addition to a cost of living they identified
16 some other methodologies that we could probably
17 appropriate if the data is available in Wyoming. They
18 face some problems that are similar to Wyoming in the
19 sense there could be a big disparity between cost of
20 living in different counties or different school
21 districts in the state. Other states we could look at
22 in that way would be Colorado or Florida. I mean with
23 the short deadline it's not an exhaustive study, so you
24 have to make some decisions ahead of time. I decided
25 not to look at Colorado in particular because the way
42
1 they implement their study or their cost of living
2 adjustment is at a level that probably isn't possible
3 to do in Wyoming. And the details of that are, it's
4 just a matter of data availability the way they do it.
5 It's also very expensive the way they do theirs.
6 Going back to saying maybe we can tweak the
7 WCLI, there are lots of ways that it could be improved
8 on potentially to make it better for education finance
9 and also just in general a better measure of a very
10 important piece of data that the state should be using
11 for regional analysis and development. And it's
12 difficult, some of those, I mean the education tweaks
13 could also be generally applied regardless of whether
14 the WCLI ends up being used.
15 With the short time frame in mind there is a
16 second fuller report that will be submitted in June of
17 next year that hopefully will do a lot more analysis
18 than the one the legislature gets, kind of some of the
19 analysis that won't be possible in the next two
20 months. It might be the case then we can actually
21 revisit it. But for November and late October
22 basically I'll be trying to put together a report that
23 -- quick report to you, hopefully it's not too long
24 otherwise -- that identifies ways that I think the cost
25 of living index in Wyoming could be improved. Some of
43
1 them are very easy and some of them impact areas like
2 Lincoln County school districts in particular. And
3 also hopefully at least describe to you what the
4 alternatives might be to using it.
5 Whether the court would find those acceptable
6 obviously would be something I wouldn't be able to
7 speak on. At least I'm hoping to give you a menu of
8 alternatives, might be a short menu at that point.
9 Questions can be answered in the legislature as to the
10 choices that are made.
11 MR. SHIVLER: That is in October?
12 MR. GODBY: I'm hoping to give you a
13 tentative report in October and the final report is
14 submitted to the legislature November 1st.
15 MR. MCOMIE: I would like to ask a question.
16 Some of the testimony that we've heard is that the
17 WCLI, what we call it, whatever it is, Wyoming cost of
18 living index, doesn't take into consideration that it
19 cost as much to live here but people have to go other
20 places to do their shopping. And is that what you're
21 talking about trying to massage that?
22 MR. GODBY: That's a difficult kind of
23 question, the travel, imputing costs on travel. These
24 costs of living indexes, the one that Wyoming uses is
25 the same, a similar methodology to what the federal
44
1 government uses for the CPI, consumer price index. In
2 a sense you're exactly right, kind of presumes there is
3 no cost of travel, but whatever store you need to go to
4 is right around the corner has a representative price,
5 an equivalent quality to the store down the street.
6 That's definitely one of the areas we would be looking
7 at is just trying to identify a travel cost. And some
8 of the problem that comes into that is that people
9 living in Wyoming don't all shop in Wyoming. It has
10 implications for things like site selection in a cost
11 of living index. If you assume that say people in
12 Torrington go to Nebraska or people in Cheyenne
13 traveling down to Denver or people here go across the
14 border to Idaho. Even tweaking the Wyoming cost of
15 living index will end up having a number of
16 recommendations, not all of them need to be adopted,
17 and obviously some of them could be expensive to adopt.
18 And what I'm getting at is just site
19 selection. Where do you sample your prices and where
20 do you stop? And that's definitely one of the issues.
21 That goes along with trying to impute a cost to
22 people's time for travel to get goods. Or they may
23 choose to say to live in Gillette in which case the
24 cost becomes the imputed cost to work in another area.
25 MR. MCOMIE: I guess a follow-up on this is
45
1 also the people live in the next areas they go buy
2 stuff and don't pay sales taxes even though when they
3 come back they're supposed to pay a use tax. We don't
4 have a use tax cost. What if we were to say you're the
5 guy and I've always contended we should declare this
6 area as an outlier, the Jackson area as an outlier, pay
7 them thousand bucks more, whatever it would be, and let
8 the rest of the state go. That makes a lot more sense
9 to me because there is such a huge difference between
10 the cost of living here and the rest of the state.
11 MR. GODBY: The state already does that for
12 certain employees like the highway patrol, there's a
13 compensation. To be direct that's not actually what
14 I'm looking at is whether we should pay something
15 outside of this since -- although I suppose this could
16 be a bottom line kind of thing. And mechanism is drop
17 Jackson. I wasn't going to use that as a recommended
18 mechanism for a few reasons, one would be I'm not
19 really clear on the equity considerations that would go
20 into that. Again those are areas outside of
21 identifying just the mechanism that can get to what is
22 the cost difference. So I'm just concentrating on
23 trying to identify what that cost difference is in
24 Jackson. If you see the number and you say I think I
25 would rather throw a thousand dollars at them a month
46
1 or whatever, then I guess that would be a choice that
2 the legislature could make and then the reaction to
3 that would show up.
4 MS. DEVIN: As a follow-up there are
5 inequities of slightly less magnitude or greater than,
6 much greater than slight. For example, just having
7 been through a young person trying to move back to
8 Wyoming who is a close friend looking at housing in
9 Cheyenne versus housing in Laramie, there is a 10 to 15
10 thousand dollar difference from what you get for a
11 house in Cheyenne versus Laramie. So there are other
12 communities to a much less extent are affected by
13 that. I would like to come to something more equitable
14 if we can.
15 MR. SCOTT: Madam Chairman, what
16 Representative Mcomie was suggesting was essentially
17 the senate proposal last time but clearly violated the
18 court decision and the house didn't choose to go along
19 with it. So you have that problem of the court
20 decision. The problem I think is you get into some of
21 these areas, and take this school district, this is
22 what, second worst funded in the state on a student
23 base. I think Cheyenne is worse than you are, but
24 second only to Cheyenne. And Jackson is the one of the
25 better ones. And a good part of that difference is the
47
1 cost of living.
2 Now, I thought the MAP was fairly persuasive
3 and the court just simply didn't understand the
4 consequences of what they did with the cost of living.
5 Be that as it may, we got that. How expensive would it
6 be to make this, and would it be feasible to make the
7 Star Valley as a 15th point in the cost of living?
8 MR. GODBY: Be 28th point. There is 27 towns
9 in the city sample. That was one of the first things,
10 there were some helpful letters sent to me from county
11 district two. But to be honest it's kind of a no
12 brainer to see Afton is larger and growing faster and
13 has enough facilities here that you could easily sample
14 Afton as a 28th point. Now once you get past that and
15 saying do you want to take a county average, then
16 Afton, I mean if you find that Afton is very expensive
17 in Lincoln and Kemmerer is much less expensive, taking
18 a county average wins for Kemmerer and loses for
19 Afton. So that becomes kind of a problem with do you
20 break Lincoln into two and at some point say school
21 district number two gets the Afton adjustment based on
22 the Afton cost of living and Kemmerer would affect
23 number one and also the other school district in that
24 end of the county. Again that comes down to site
25 selection and what should be included in the general
48
1 issue of where do you sample and where do you stop in
2 order to get a better understanding of what the cost of
3 living is in Wyoming.
4 As far as cost for that I'm not sure. Justin
5 could probably give you a better idea of what it costs
6 to add an additional point in the survey.
7 MR. BALLARD: To add another city on the
8 margin of one, like Afton or something like that, which
9 Rob and I talked about which is probably fair to do.
10 It would not be that much more at all. We would have
11 to hire another enumerator, train them, and then to
12 actually incorporate it within the logistics of the
13 index when I put it together. It shouldn't be that
14 difficult actually. So on both ends it should be
15 feasible definitely.
16 MR. SCOTT: If you did that that might solve
17 some of the inequity here in this school district.
18 MR. BALLARD: Particularly if you were to
19 have a north Lincoln and south Lincoln and then you
20 would have instead of 24 counties listed you would
21 have, or 24 entities which would be the counties, you
22 would have 25, and there would be 28 cities priced
23 because in four counties we price two cities.
24 MR. SCOTT: The way it works now what we're
25 actually using in the model is different for each
49
1 county; is that how it works?
2 MS. BURNS: Right now we take, it's combined,
3 each school district is assigned certain counties or
4 grouping of the price sets that will come out of the
5 economic analysis, division of economic analysis, so
6 essentially each school district has been primarily
7 assigned a county, WCLI index, if it was published that
8 way. They're assigned, it's according to I believe a
9 certain statute, I can't remember it, regarding
10 property taxes in the state. And that links different
11 sites to the county. And we follow that same course
12 with the WCLI regarding school districts. So it's
13 obviously a very complicated answer I just gave. I
14 apologize.
15 MR. SCOTT: I didn't understand the answer.
16 Does each school district in the county, do all Fremont
17 County school districts have the same cost of living
18 index assigned?
19 MS. BURNS: I believe that is true. I can
20 double-check that. You have two sites in Fremont
21 County, Lander and Riverton.
22 MR. BALLARD: Riverton and Lander.
23 MR. SCOTT: Does our school adjustment use a
24 different one for the Lander district, than the
25 Riverton?
50
1 MS. BURNS: I do not believe it does. I
2 believe it uses a combined index based on those two
3 sites for the Fremont County school districts. It is
4 seven school districts in Fremont County receive the
5 same price index, although the prices were collected
6 both from Lander and Riverton.
7 MS. DEVIN: That raises the question when you
8 get into, for example, I wish I had the map in front of
9 me that we had for the school facilities piece, but you
10 get into the Big Horn Basin where you have the very
11 interesting patterns that I guess historically went
12 over to give everybody a piece of certain oil patches.
13 But it makes for some borders that would just defy
14 description otherwise. How are those numbers done?
15 MS. BURNS: Justin is best to answer Big Horn
16 County.
17 MR. BALLARD: Right now although we priced 27
18 cities we produce an index number for 24 counties. In
19 Big Horn County, in Fremont County, in Sweetwater
20 County and Fremont County we price two cities. When I
21 get that data I put them in the same sheets. We
22 population weight each city's price and then come up
23 with one county price for those counties. So although
24 we price two cities we get one county price. And then
25 I think that every school district that is in the
51
1 county it's assigned that county's index number.
2 MR. SCOTT: You several times said 24,
3 there's 23 counties, you have a county --
4 MR. BALLARD: I'm sorry, 23.
5 MS. DEVIN: So then is it your office that
6 assigns the school district, are you the individuals
7 who link the school district with this number?
8 MR. BALLARD: I just produce the Wyoming cost
9 of living index with the comparative inflation index,
10 and we send it off.
11 MS. DEVIN: Then when it goes over, Mary, for
12 your work you have to use their piece to give each
13 district an assignment?
14 MS. BURNS: That is correct. By law it is a
15 published index for each of the counties. So if I can
16 apologize to Senator Scott. The answer is each school
17 district will fall into their county published index
18 based on the six periods of publications. That is by
19 the statute we have in the school finance.
20 MS. DEVIN: I want to give the public an
21 opportunity. But does the committee have further
22 questions?
23 MR. SCOTT: It seems then if dealing just
24 with the inequity with regard to this school district
25 the separating north and south Lincoln is quite a bit
52
1 to solve that problem. It doesn't help the
2 discrimination against all the other districts in the
3 state, which is where the rest of the problem of the
4 WCLI is.
5 MR. GODBY: That's exactly right. Trying to
6 fit a number generated to answer a different question
7 to this question. And that was what I was trying to
8 get at with what do we do, do we average the numbers in
9 Lincoln, that's the simple way. Is that fair to Afton?
10 Kemmerer probably wouldn't object. But that's an
11 issue. How the MAP model uses a regional difference
12 mechanism or how the school funding model uses a
13 regional difference mechanism is outside of this
14 study. What I'm trying to find out is just what are
15 the actual cost of living differences. As far as
16 trying to identify one from every school district that
17 would be probably very difficult. The data probably
18 just isn't there. We're talking about some really
19 small populations some places where there is not even a
20 shopping center possible that could answer, price every
21 item you need to price in the index to get a cost of
22 living. And again who is holding them to shop only in
23 their district. And so that's probably part of the
24 rationalization for at least imposing a county value on
25 the school districts in the county. Again at best it's
53
1 just one way you could set it up.
2 MR. SCOTT: I don't think anybody wants you
3 to do a separate one for each school district. You
4 said several times that the Wyoming cost of living
5 index is being used in the school finance model for a
6 purpose other than it was produced for. Could you
7 elaborate on what its original purpose is and how using
8 it for school finance purposes is troublesome given the
9 way it's --
10 MR. GODBY: -- the way it's set up.
11 MR. SCOTT: Yes.
12 MR. GODBY: I can't answer why it was
13 produced. Justin probably can.
14 MR. BALLARD: It was set up back in the late
15 1970's. It's been around a while. And initially I
16 think it produced a comparative index. That was when
17 Gillette was booming, so they wanted to give them an
18 adjustment back then. And kind of evolved, and now we
19 have the inflation index. So from the perspective of
20 our office it's just kind of a general indicator,
21 economic indicator not only of the regional differences
22 in cost of living, we can pick up certain things like
23 the boom in the northeast of the state. You see
24 increases in the housing prices, kind of an explainer
25 of that. Also for the inflation index, where we do the
54
1 statewide average inflation and also regional
2 inflations. Within that you can pick up different,
3 things interested in consumers, increases in utility
4 costs, translating to increased inflation. That's what
5 it was there for. A lot of people use it to adjust
6 rents, rental items written in the contract. It's just
7 kind of a general economic indicator. It's one of the
8 few original Wyoming produced data where we actually
9 priced, it's Wyoming data. So it's kind of unique in
10 that way and kind of why we kept it going.
11 MR. GODBY: It's important to continue with
12 the second part of the question was why does it exist
13 and what's wrong with it. It was derived in the 1970's
14 using, trying to be based on a model that the consumer
15 price index used, the federal government collects. And
16 because of that the way that the Wyoming cost of living
17 index was defined it was meant to measure cost of
18 living across the state for everybody. This gets into
19 the technical issues, but the Wyoming cost of living
20 index prices 140 items. They get a price every month
21 for 140 items, or every six months, I should say. From
22 that they assign an expenditure rate. The average
23 person how much of their household budget is in each of
24 those. Those weights come from the federal government
25 and the consumer price index survey. Consumer price
55
1 index uses an average that's mostly urban and is over
2 all consumers including part-time workers or
3 unemployed. So an easy tweak is just to look at those
4 weights, are they appropriate in this basket of goods,
5 do they represent what a Wyoming consumer's expenditure
6 looks like. We don't know that answer.
7 One of the obvious things that has to be done
8 if you really want to improve this index would be to a
9 consumer expenditure survey in the State of Wyoming
10 using the same methods that the federal government
11 uses. That would be expensive. I don't know how
12 expensive. I haven't asked anybody that. But that's
13 one way to do it.
14 The other thing is just the subsample you use
15 in the federal index. If you're looking at personnel
16 costs in education, for example, teachers and
17 administrators, these aren't part-time people and they
18 aren't unemployed. An unemployed person probably has
19 things like necessities; food, housing, a much higher
20 proportion of their expenditures than say what is --
21 there is a second set that the federal government
22 creates called the CPIW for wage earners and salaried
23 workers. It turns out that the WCLI is not that
24 sensitive to changing the weights from all the
25 consumers to the subset that are salaried. But that's
56
1 one of the problems with doing this. But there are
2 other issues with using federal numbers the way the
3 WCLI does. And I mean I could bore you on how it
4 changes the numbers in the things so you could see that
5 on paper, but the bottom line is that it's not clear
6 that any federal number samples a consumer set that is
7 representative of Wyoming. And so specific
8 recommendation, probably number one is we need to do a
9 consumer expenditure survey in the State of Wyoming to
10 define what the average consumer in Wyoming purchases
11 to determine whether that is actually different from
12 the average consumer in the United States.
13 MS. SESSIONS: You said something interesting
14 to me, you said that you were given the job with, this
15 part of it, but that you knew how they used it in the
16 MAP model is a whole different issue.
17 MR. GODBY: Right.
18 MS. SESSIONS: They use the regression, I
19 don't know if it's called a model or whatever method or
20 whatever, why would you have to use that? Is that the
21 only way you can use --
22 MR. GODBY: Sorry, are you asking how the MAP
23 model uses the WCPI numbers?
24 MS. SESSIONS: If you have a regression
25 method or regression model why would you have to use
57
1 that? Is there another way you can use the information
2 you have and define a cost of living for the model? Do
3 you have to do it the way they did it?
4 MR. GODBY: I think what you're asking me is
5 do we have to use the MAP model, or at least that part
6 of the MAP model that tries to deal with regional cost
7 adjustments, right?
8 MS. SESSIONS: No. Do you have to use the
9 method they used in the MAP model? Do you have to take
10 the numbers you give them and use it the way they used
11 it in the MAP model?
12 MR. GODBY: Probably not, but I'm not
13 familiar with how they actually use it. What I've done
14 is try to identify regional cost differences, in
15 particular cost of living differences. How that's
16 built into the model is not what I looked at, so to be
17 honest with you I can't say.
18 MS. SESSIONS: Just to follow up. Why, I
19 guess the problem I have with what it did with the MAP
20 model why would you have to use, why would you have to
21 take 20 million dollars away from everybody else to
22 identify your high cost areas?
23 MS. DEVIN: I think maybe I can answer that,
24 but, Mary, would you listen and back me up.
25 The reason that happened is because when we
58
1 went through the MAP model the first go we came up with
2 the figure that looked at the statewide average, and it
3 was decided in just looking at it that that didn't get
4 enough money out to schools. So the first go-round we
5 went with the high. We went in and took Albany and
6 Laramie. And they are two of the highest in the state
7 next to Jackson, and we brought everyone up to that
8 level. And that was arbitrary. And it raised everyone
9 higher than the statewide average would have originally
10 done. But it seemed like a more palatable number.
11 The court struck that down and said you had
12 to use the real number. That then in fact when we came
13 from where we had arbitrarily placed everybody looked
14 regressive and dropped them down in many cases. It
15 didn't drop all of us down. Some of us got up, some
16 got down. It did all kinds of things. But there was a
17 huge group, particularly small districts because of the
18 lower cost of living affected it.
19 Mary, can you add to that?
20 MS. BURNS: Madam Chairman, you described it
21 we used to have the old base as the Cheyenne Laramie
22 school districts because at one point MAP was
23 considering in the older model using the average
24 salaries of the teachers in that model group, Laramie
25 and Cheyenne. In fact the model became the state
59
1 average for salaries. This is what the regional cost
2 of living adjustment actually affects. It's 85 percent
3 of the dollars for ADM is just multiplied by the index
4 value they now are achieving on a statewide average.
5 It was actually a help legislatively when you came in
6 and said we use the statewide average. That was also
7 the MAP recommendation I believe the committee
8 adopted. As opposed to using the average of the index
9 based upon Cheyenne and Laramie. So instead of the 20
10 million dollars we originally showed from staff records
11 and 23 million dollars, it became more like half of
12 that because we used the true statewide average. So
13 the variation between the lowest and the highest might
14 have been a little bit tempered by using the statewide
15 average. It helped the lower index districts or
16 counties by doing the statewide average.
17 So it did change things greatly when we added
18 the housing and medical components into the model.
19 That sends it all over, the housing. That really
20 skewed things and then when the court required -- that
21 didn't skew it, it brought it back to what some people
22 saw as very real, but it definitely altered the figures
23 when we brought housing and medical in.
24 MS. SESSIONS: Just one more thing. When you
25 look at the figures you're working, are you considering
60
1 the medical costs of people that travel as well as just
2 you referred to purchasing or going to shopping? I
3 think a bigger issue is the medical costs they have
4 too.
5 MR. GODBY: The Wyoming cost of living index,
6 and Justin could be more precise, how they price
7 medical services is they price particular procedures,
8 and they identify a specific procedure and they find
9 out the actual cost that the hospital charges for that
10 under a certain code. And that's how it's added in.
11 So it's not exactly like you go shopping and you buy
12 medical services as well. That and housing are done
13 differently than say normal goods like a TV and
14 T-shirts.
15 MS. SESSIONS: Do you use just hospitals
16 within Wyoming or take into account in your rural areas
17 where you have to go distances and going other places
18 often times out of state because there is nothing in
19 state?
20 MR. BALLARD: All the items we price are in
21 Wyoming; that would include the hospitals.
22 MR. GODBY: Something else, and this is again
23 getting back to what the cost of living is for the
24 average person in Wyoming, what we want to do is use
25 the WCLI to identify cost differences in personnel
61
1 costs what you're going to have to compensate somebody
2 to come work for you in a particular area. Since the
3 school districts offer benefits it's not really clear
4 that costing procedures is a proper way to go about
5 trying to figure out what the medical cost is for a
6 school teacher versus an average person in Wyoming, so
7 that's another issue. How should you define a cost of
8 living index that's going to be used for a school
9 teacher versus the average person, somebody that maybe
10 doesn't have a medical plan? And again that's another
11 set of recommendations. Should we change the basket of
12 goods different from the average person in Wyoming?
13 MR. PECK: You gentlemen are number
14 crunchers, I take it. And I wonder if we're really
15 looking at the full picture here. You say you have 140
16 items you price every time you take the cost of living
17 index. Do you have an amenities adjustment for the
18 community? Do you have an aura index? Do you have
19 vista factor? Do you have a magnet mitigator?
20 Obviously if all the factors were the same then people
21 would be just as anxious to settle in the Midwest as in
22 Jackson Hole.
23 MR. GODBY: As long as they were compensated
24 for any differences in those areas, right.
25 MS. DEVIN: Before you answer that question
62
1 it leads to one that a teacher brought to me. And I
2 don't think there is any way we -- certainly they
3 observed a factor out there. And that what they saw as
4 inequity, came from Goshen County, raised the issue and
5 said you know if I invest in a home in Goshen County in
6 a small town I will be very lucky to retrieve the price
7 out of there that I actually paid for the house. If
8 you go to Saratoga right now and for many years with
9 the logging industry devastated you're lucky to be able
10 to sell your house. What they saw as an inequity, you
11 go to a growing area you get compensated in an area
12 like Jackson or an area where it's growing and they
13 said this is a whole new retirement plan with the
14 growth in value of that piece of profit that I am not
15 experiencing that this other teacher is experiencing.
16 And they said, you know, you can talk about salary
17 forever, but the magnitude of that inequity and the
18 growth in value of that housing investment if you're
19 going to pay for the state is tremendous. They had a
20 point. How do we address that?
21 MR. GODBY: It's a tough one. What Senator
22 Peck was describing is when I teach my principles of
23 economics classes we talk about how you generate the
24 cost of the consumer price index or the cost of living
25 as the two most important indicators in the area would
63
1 be incomes or output in an area and the prices they are
2 facing in an area. With respect to the amenities and
3 things like that if we're talking about a house in
4 Jackson versus a house in Rawlins and imagine they're
5 each a thousand square feet, single level, I've already
6 put two caveats on there; I've tried to make it so that
7 we're comparing apples to apples. Trouble is we have a
8 Granny Smith versus a McIntosh. What you're talking
9 about is assuring that the quality of the good we're
10 looking at, whether it's a house that may be impacted
11 by amenities or a T-shirt is identical, I'm looking at
12 the same thing in each place. That's a big issue with
13 the federal numbers and with the Wyoming numbers. And
14 it could be improved on in the Wyoming numbers.
15 And there are some ideas we might be able to
16 get. For example, when you look at the numbers in the
17 Wyoming cost of living index that come from a
18 two-bedroom house, for example, those numbers come from
19 either newspaper, classifieds, advertising or rent
20 because what we're looking at, we're not looking at
21 acquiring a house. We're looking at how much it cost
22 you to get the service of living in the house. So both
23 the federal and the state numbers look at the services
24 you get from the house.
25 When you look at the numbers in the
64
1 classifieds and you look at Rawlins and Jackson, in
2 addition to the fact one might look at the Tetons and
3 the other doesn't, you have the fact the house in
4 Rawlins was probably built in 1920 or 1930 and the
5 house in Jackson was built in 1980, one might be bigger
6 than the other. You have none of those controls to
7 make sure you're comparing apples to apples. Part of
8 getting around the difference in cost is that the
9 houses are probably a lot different. They are a lot
10 different in Jackson than other parts of the state.
11 They're newer, in a lot of cases. That even happens in
12 Lincoln County. I mean Wade Hershey provided me some
13 data trying to back up, didn't have to work as hard to
14 try to sell the idea that Afton shouldn't be compared
15 to Kemmerer. It's easy to see. Afton houses are much
16 newer than those in Kemmerer.
17 As far as the amenity when you start to talk
18 about the aura and things like that, that's a lot
19 tougher to catch. So there are two issues you're
20 bringing up. One is the quality change and what you're
21 actually getting when you live in a certain place.
22 With respect to buying into a retirement
23 savings plan, for example, it's basically what you're
24 getting, you're indicating that is the issue, the
25 double compensation. We give them more money so they
65
1 can afford a house, but we've given them an investment
2 property as well.
3 Looking at the WCLI if rents prices properly
4 capture housing prices, which in itself is an
5 unresolved issue because the WCLI looks at rents. In
6 addition to that -- well, the WCLI just creates a
7 number. And you're exactly right, if we're trying to
8 get them to live in Jackson that's how much it will
9 take, but then that person is faced with a -- well,
10 what that means if you applied the WCLI alone you might
11 be over-compensating them. So your question is how can
12 we tease that out. That comes back to yours, how can
13 we tease out the amenities. I know that MAP struggled
14 with this and tried a couple of different suggestions
15 and they've been shot down. It's not clear we can
16 because in the end the house in Jackson is in Jackson
17 and the house in Rawlins or wherever is where it is.
18 And that's where alternative methods of
19 trying to get at what the cost of personnel is, which
20 is really what we're going to use the WCLI for, how
21 that would differ from place to place. There are a
22 couple of different ways to go about that.
23 One of them might be to take an approach of,
24 this is an again going back to number crunching, taking
25 the approach that salaries differ in different places
66
1 because people are willing to take a certain salary to
2 work in a certain place. They're asking to be
3 compensated. You can collect data on what the
4 characteristics are in that place and how they differ
5 from another place and how the salaries also differ,
6 and then we're going to use one of your regression
7 analyses, which I know look ugly, but statistically are
8 more than acceptable if they're done right. We can use
9 that method to come up with a way that might be able to
10 say then now we can control, at least statistically,
11 using assessment data for different things like houses,
12 how big they are, how new they are, which would be
13 better than WCLI's.
14 We can also impose on WCLI a cost adjustment
15 for housing that uses some of those conditions, for
16 example, there was pricing for this on method that was
17 known that you can try to price the value of something
18 based on its characteristics. These are all technical
19 and I know it's a longer answer than you want, but it's
20 unfortunately in order to even, it's not clear we'll
21 ever be able to untie the amenity value of something
22 from the consumption value. And all we can do is do
23 our best to make our best guess where the split lies.
24 And I think there's some room to improve,
25 either how you sample housing costs, especially for the
67
1 purpose of education finance or just in general because
2 this is going to be a bias whether we're looking at
3 teachers or everybody in Wyoming in trying to figure
4 out the cost of living. It might mean -- housing is
5 the elephant in the china shop. That's the thing
6 that's blowing this out of the water, and also the
7 biggest component and the one that is most questionable
8 at least certain whether that is the true number.
9 So there are two ways to go about it, one is
10 to just avoid sampling like that where we don't know
11 whether that is a true number. The other way is to do
12 our best to get the true number through better
13 sampling. So when the report is presented both of
14 those options will be made available, and it's up to
15 people in the senate and here to decide which of the
16 options they like the best and they can look at the
17 cost benefits and hopefully provide some costs for this
18 so you have some idea what you're choosing and how much
19 it will cost you when you choose something.
20 MS. DEVIN: Representative Shivler, last
21 question before break.
22 MR. SHIVLER: There is another issue here,
23 especially in Teton County. Our newer teachers, which
24 most of them are now, the older teachers are selling
25 their homes, and not a windfall, they worked for their
68
1 homes and they sold them for a good price, but the
2 newer teachers can't afford to buy a home. The issue
3 is more rental. The fact that capturing the gain is
4 not there. If you buy a house for 450 thousand there
5 is no guarantee you'll sell it for a million. In fact
6 with the economy the way is now, it could stabilize or
7 even go down. So the issue is really rentals. What
8 we're finding I suspect probably in Lincoln County your
9 newer residents are buying homes because they're a
10 little less expensive. And I'll also suggest a good
11 portion of them in Teton County. Just notice the
12 traffic in the canyon you see what I mean. So I think
13 you're looking again this is apples to oranges. Folks
14 moving, the newer folks aren't buying houses because
15 they can't afford it. The cost of living is excessive
16 because the rents are so high.
17 MR. GODBY: So the idea behind this
18 adjustment was to compensate teachers so they would be
19 willing to work in Jackson or other places.
20 MR. SHIVLER: View doesn't chew like bread.
21
22 Short break.
23
24 MS. DEVIN: I do want the public to be able
25 to also comment on this issue because it is statewide
69
1 and local. But, committee, any further questions
2 before we go to the public?
3 MR. MCOMIE: Madam Chairman, I would like to
4 see a spread sheet on the cost of living index how with
5 Jackson an outlier in our next meeting. Throw this out
6 and see how that would affect this because I think you
7 could do that. It's such an obvious outlier. The
8 court didn't recognize it as an outlier, but when you
9 put something like that into it.
10 MS. DEVIN: Mary?
11 MS. BURNS: If there is a committee request I
12 need to understand. To just remove Jackson or --
13 everybody get a hundred and Jackson get their
14 adjustment and everybody else won't take a cut? If
15 Jackson is an outlier, they're not considered in the
16 statewide average?
17 MR. MCOMIE: Take them out of the statewide
18 average.
19 MS. DEVIN: So you take them out and you
20 treat them separately. What do you do with the rest of
21 the state?
22 MR. MCOMIE: I would like to see a factor,
23 new adjusted factors. And then the professor would be
24 able to use that information too as to whatever he
25 comes up with and try to make it better. But with
70
1 Jackson in here I think we need to deal with it.
2 Representative Shivler tried really hard to get us, get
3 Jackson extra money and we all kind of fu-fued it, and
4 I think I voted for you in the last amendment because I
5 felt sorry for him, he tried so hard.
6 MR. SHIVLER: You should have voted for me in
7 the last election.
8 MR. MCOMIE: I should have moved, huh.
9 MS. DEVIN: Mary, you need to continue to ask
10 questions because when you get ready to compute, it's
11 more complex than this.
12 MS. BURNS: May I just work with
13 Representative McOmie on this run? I think it will be
14 a good example of what the committee has been talking
15 about. I need to work with him to see what factors he
16 wants to use.
17 MR. MCOMIE: I think Senator Scott -- did you
18 have a similar question request at the legislature?
19 MR. SCOTT: Madam Chairman, I have a little
20 trouble understanding this. And related to
21 Representative McOmie's question I want to ask, the way
22 this works in the finance formula does what the rest of
23 the state, does it make any difference what happens in
24 Jackson how much the rest of the state gets? In other
25 words, is somehow is there a statewide average that if
71
1 you take Jackson out you get a different average?
2 MS. BURNS: I believe that is the case.
3 Justin could explain.
4 MR. BALLARD: Madam Chairman, if you were to
5 take Jackson out, pretend it's not there and re-run the
6 remaining counties less Jackson and then redo the index
7 that way is what you're talking about.
8 MR. MCOMIE: Yes.
9 MS. DEVIN: Does that answer you?
10 MS. BURNS: What would you do for Jackson as
11 their adjustment?
12 MR. MCOMIE: I believe the legislature is
13 going to be held hostage by the Supreme Court and Teton
14 County to deal with Jackson fairly.
15 MS. BURNS: Okay.
16 MR. MCOMIE: Whatever they determine to be
17 fair.
18 MS. DEVIN: Mary, are we asking a doable
19 request here?
20 MS. BURNS: If I'm able to get new index from
21 Justin's office I certainly can put something together
22 that we can explain and show the differences.
23 MS. DEVIN: At least take a look at.
24 MS. BURNS: Exactly.
25 MR. LOCKHART: I have a question. We sat
72
1 through numerous criticism using this particular cost
2 of living index here from all fronts. Is there any
3 other indexes out that that could be used to meet the
4 Supreme Court's directive of cost of living adjustment
5 that you know of?
6 MR. GODBY: I'm sorry to answer probably not.
7 MS. DEVIN: Other questions before we open to
8 the public? Then I would like to take in public
9 comment, public questions. We're really here to hammer
10 this out, at least at the working phase. There are
11 going to be other opportunities to comment, but as
12 pieces need to go into this work the committee and our
13 people working on it need to hear your comments.
14 Anyone like to speak?
15 MR. TOLMAN: Ron Tolman, Superintendent
16 Lincoln County School District. I would say regardless
17 of whether you take Jackson out or not you have a
18 situation with districts like ours next to Jackson and
19 you have to account for that somehow. We have to
20 compete for the same teachers. They come in our
21 interview room and go to the Jackson interview room.
22 They're able to offer 10, 12 thousand dollars more, 4
23 or 5 thousand dollars more. They will live in Alpine
24 and work in Jackson. You have to help us there
25 somehow. You can't take the idea of Jackson completely
73
1 out.
2 MR. SHIVLER: Tom is right. That is also a
3 two-edged sword, not only will the teacher work in
4 Jackson, but the husband and wife also. They're
5 providing housing and services and Jackson gets the
6 benefit of the teachers.
7 MR. GODBY: Colorado, part of Colorado does
8 it, for example, somebody were to live outside of Afton
9 because they couldn't afford to live there, Colorado
10 actually does a cost of living index at the zip code
11 level. They consult to do that. It's really
12 expensive. Statistically speaking it's probably really
13 noisy too. In fact because the sample problems would
14 be so severe probably aren't getting a reasonable
15 estimate, at least one that you normally accept with
16 certain confidence of error. In Wyoming that would be
17 impossible to do.
18 And it works both ways. What about the
19 teacher who decides to give up a bigger proportion of
20 their income and lives in Jackson. The way Colorado
21 does it they try to come up with an average person,
22 where do they live, so they actually take teachers'
23 residences into account in the adjustment. It is not
24 clean. This won't -- you can't solve every problem
25 with this. And you're always going to have this
74
1 problem if people are willing to put up with the travel
2 time. And it has to do with different people with
3 different preferences. If they were all the same it
4 would make it a lot easier.
5 MS. DEVIN: Mr. Larson.
6 MR. LARSON: Number one, there is a lot of
7 misconception about what the regional cost of living is
8 and does. I've heard them here today. But having
9 spent a lot of time on this for obvious reasons and
10 also on the external cost adjustment, which is not this
11 adjustment, but the external cost adjustment, which we
12 try to use as an inflation tool on appropriations, let
13 me assure all of you none of what's going to come out
14 of this study, none of what comes out of the
15 government, federal government is precise. It is
16 probably about as imprecise as anything we can come up
17 with. When we do the external cost adjustment we found
18 out if you take one, if you use Rocky Mountain you get
19 Denver and a couple of big cities in and it skews
20 things clear off the charts over what we really feel is
21 adequate for Wyoming. So we have gone to something
22 like a north central region, urban areas excluded,
23 etc., etc.
24 So to begin with don't expect what they come
25 up with or what you come up with or anything else to be
75
1 very precise because it isn't going to be. I also
2 don't think that the court expects it to be precise.
3 But the court I think made it very clear and in all
4 deference to Representative McOmie that picking a hunk
5 of money and saying that's it isn't what they said. I
6 think Senator Scott was absolutely right, that's not
7 what the court intended. They want to know they cost,
8 not a figure that we say we're going to do Jackson.
9 Solving Jackson's problem won't handle this district.
10 Probably isn't going to help Sublette County, although
11 they'll have expanding in a year, so I'm not sure it
12 matters.
13 Nevertheless, those kind of problems are not
14 going to necessarily clearly be solved by pulling
15 Jackson out, nor do I think the court will allow.
16 The other thing is adding Jackson housing
17 costs did not cause the other districts to lose money.
18 Original one was put in and, Mary, correct me if I'm
19 wrong, but I think it was put in at 104 percent going
20 to everybody, even those that may have been only at 96
21 percent. So what caused the other to lose money was
22 taking it back to l00 percent and some were even going
23 to go below that. It really didn't have anything to do
24 with adding Jackson into the mix. It takes the full
25 cost when we've previously been funding them 104
76
1 percent even those that may have been at 96 percent,
2 but that meant a decrease in previous funding. So
3 putting Jackson in there gave us more money, but it
4 wasn't because of other districts losing their money.
5 I mentioned this CPI, how imprecise that is.
6 That's the federal government tweaking that sucker for
7 what, 40, 50 years? They don't know how to do it.
8 Another thing to remember, and this is not used to
9 dictate the amounts, the amounts come out of the
10 formula. This is used for having relative values.
11 When they come out, it comes out a dollar number, but
12 it's still an amount that comes out for relative
13 value.
14 It was mentioned that school teacher in
15 Jackson that invested in a house and she or he will be
16 able to sell it for a lot more money, and that's
17 something a person in Goshen County didn't have. I
18 think all of you have heard, if you've been here long
19 enough, my spiel on property taxes. Tell the lady from
20 Goshen County if she's willing to pay two to three
21 thousand dollars more per year for the same size house
22 on the same income for 20 years there goes your equity
23 built up. That's what happens because the appraisal
24 value, the way we do the property taxes means that the
25 identical house, and many of you have heard it, the
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1 identical house on two square lots in town, Goshen
2 County versus Teton with our taxes going to schools,
3 that lady in that house in Teton County will pay about
4 24 to 28 hundred dollars a year in taxes to schools.
5 The same person in Goshen County will pay four
6 hundred. Now that eats up a lot of your equity growth
7 paid over the years. And so when you look at the value
8 of houses and say, that's a windfall; not so. They
9 will have been supporting Wyoming schools perhaps six
10 times larger than the person with identical means and
11 living in an identical house in another county. So
12 that just doesn't wash.
13 All the other stuff in there, taxes and so
14 on, eat up any equity you may have. And I may submit
15 as Representative Shivler said last year those values
16 may even have gone down. So it isn't a guarantee.
17 It's a guarantee in an up market, but all those years
18 you paid property taxes on that are eat up an awful lot
19 of what your gain was.
20 I would suggest that trying to come up with
21 something that is more reasonable without the
22 expenditures that we're talking about I would hope
23 would be the course this committee of the legislature
24 would take. We're not going to get a perfect system.
25 I think doing some things that are doable in Wyoming
78
1 should be where we should be headed. As an example, as
2 you heard testimony it isn't going to be a big deal if
3 you have an enumerator for north Lincoln County and
4 south Lincoln County. I think these gentlemen would be
5 capable of deciphering where these large differences
6 exist and adding a few more enumerators, coming up with
7 a more comprehensive Wyoming cost of living adjustment
8 really is the answer. Number one is it isn't going to
9 be re-inventing the wheel or cost more, as you
10 mentioned the zip code thing, than more than ought to
11 be going to schools rather than gathering figures and
12 doing that kind of thing. I think you can come up with
13 one that is actually pretty representative of what is
14 going to happen.
15 I would hope that is the action that you
16 would take. The problem in Wyoming, and I think these
17 gentlemen will agree, we sure found out with everything
18 else, the problem in Wyoming is not lack of a system.
19 It isn't lack of being able to come up with a system.
20 It's lack of data. We have a small population. We
21 have 500 miles between towns. We have totally
22 different economic situations. And the cost is going
23 to come in the collection of debts. And if we start
24 getting into something we'll say is the end all, it's
25 going to there; number one, the federal government has
79
1 found it doesn't work. They keep tweaking it, fixing
2 it, changing it every year for 40, 50 years, as I
3 indicated. It will cost us a tremendous amount of
4 money to try to fix the problem. So I would hope the
5 committee would pursue something that we know isn't
6 going to answer every problem, but answer most of
7 them. Correct the inequities out there in areas beside
8 Teton County. And make it something that number one is
9 court defensible because I don't think just saying
10 Teton County is going to get more dollars, it might
11 solve our problem, I don't think the court will buy it
12 and I don't think it meets the other areas you talked
13 about, the differences between Laramie and Cheyenne,
14 some of the other areas in the northwest and so on.
15 But I think there is a way to do it by
16 amplifying the Wyoming cost of living. You might have
17 to tweak some of the things within that base, as you've
18 indicated, but that isn't going to eat our lunch in
19 trying to create data, isn't going to build a whole new
20 infrastructure just to collect the data to try to do an
21 interpretation.
22 Madam Chairman, thanks for the ability on the
23 committee, but let me re-emphasize adding Teton County
24 didn't take money away from the other districts. That
25 was caused because we over-funded them in the first
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1 place over and above that. So taking Teton County out
2 isn't going to fix that problem.
3 Secondly, it is a data problem primarily, and
4 by doing a little more for data and working on some of
5 the other things within the formula to get more balance
6 to what some of the costs are I think is the cheapest
7 way for the state to go. I think it's cost defensible.
8 I think the court would buy it. I think we would
9 have a solution that most everybody would try to agree
10 to live with. Will it solve every single what if? No.
11 You talk about the Alpine problem. It's sorry to say
12 you're providing the goods and services for them down
13 here, but I suggest most of them still do the grocery
14 shopping up there. You may have cheaper houses down
15 here, but try driving 40 miles a day and see what that
16 does to your cost that isn't included in the housing.
17 So it's not going to solve every problem, but I think
18 if we can get in the ballpark by tweaking what we have
19 be a far more satisfactory result. Thank you.
20 MR. SHIVLER: Senator Larson, for my
21 edification the 104 percent is when we brought up the
22 other counties up to Laramie and Cheyenne?
23 MR. LARSON: My understanding is in order to,
24 when we decided to use the cost of living we pulled
25 housing and medical out, we did that quite frankly
81
1 because it appeared to the legislature, and those of
2 you on the senate side recall that we did have that
3 included in the senate one time and it was taken out in
4 the house, but it was included in there because the
5 differential appeared to be too great. And so we
6 consciously funded at a higher level and put all
7 counties at that level, even though some of them were
8 maybe well below the level.
9 MR. SCOTT: I think it's a little more
10 complicated than that because as I remember the
11 testimony of the MAP people that when you took the
12 housing part into consideration you got yourself in
13 trouble because housing costs are both a cost of living
14 that people have and an indication where you have low
15 housing costs that correlates pretty well with areas
16 that people generally judge to be less desirable to
17 live in, so you have to pay them more to get them to
18 come to those communities. And that was another
19 powerful argument for keeping the housing costs out.
20 And frankly, I think the court didn't understand that
21 idea. Talk about amenities and all that, and the court
22 didn't buy that part of it. But I think when you look
23 at it in terms of how the economists proceed, they made
24 a good deal of sense. The court didn't buy it.
25 MS. DEVIN: Are there further comments that
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1 anyone has, particularly the public at this point in
2 time you want to comment on any of these issues? I
3 think it is a point well made. We'll do our best, but
4 there are some things as we've all learned you can't
5 legislate perfection and you cannot legislate every dot
6 and cross of an I or T. It's just there is going to be
7 imprecision, and we need to do our best to be fair.
8 MR. MCOMIE: I had a question for
9 Superintendent Tolman. You referenced the different
10 salaries for teachers that are experienced. Do you
11 have vacancies within Lincoln County Number 2 that are
12 unfilled because of that.
13 MR. TOLMAN: I would say we've had some that
14 filled rather late and the pool was not as wide as we
15 would have liked for the hiring. We had one we filled
16 after school started because of that.
17 MS. DEVIN: I have difficulty right now
18 balancing what our problem is in education because I
19 hear this from every employer in every walk of life. I
20 just talked the other night to people in our area that
21 have anything to do with you go to any area there is a
22 help wanted out sign out, part of our demographics. So
23 I'm having a hard time getting a feeling for in
24 education where we are versus the rest of the economy
25 because it's there and the rest. And we heard the
83
1 scenario when we used to have 20 applicants for a job
2 and now we have four. If you have four good ones,
3 that's great, didn't need 20, but on the other hand
4 sometimes I hear employers say we don't have anybody.
5 We have three open spots and nobody to fill them.
6 We're all over the map; it's a tough part because our
7 demographics are doing funny things. We have the baby
8 boomer generation, the new generation coming on. The
9 diversity, the opportunity is a challenge.
10 MR. TOLMAN: The only comparison I can give
11 you is when we hired a business manager this year we
12 had that opening in our district, well over 80
13 applicants for one job. It doesn't happen on any other
14 education, we have over 80 applicants for one position,
15 business.
16 MS. DEVIN: Any other public comment?
17 MS. SESSIONS: I was going to make an ornery
18 comment. Laramie 1 had a policy that your teachers
19 were to live within the district. And I think we came
20 out with real problems to enforce. And it used to be
21 because it was much nicer to live in Ft. Collins than
22 in Laramie. You made more money in Laramie County and
23 you lived in Ft. Collins because it was a wonderful
24 place to live. Now what's happened is you make more
25 money in Colorado and it's much less expensive to live
84
1 in Wyoming. So it's kind of flip-flopped. I know it's
2 been a nightmare to enforce, but that was a policy that
3 you live within the district. It still is.
4 MS. DEVIN: Any other comments? I guess I
5 would ask Justin and Dr. Godby, any other issues you
6 have or other questions you have, any pieces of
7 information you need in addition to continue your
8 work?
9 MR. GODBY: Not in the next month. But
10 probably as the study goes on and we may need some
11 data, school district data at the general level
12 possibly. If that would be made available we might be
13 able to incorporate that quicker.
14 MS. DEVIN: I'm assuming, Mary, you are the
15 contact person?
16 MS. BURNS: That would be fine.
17 MS. DEVIN: If Mary is not the holder of that
18 data she will know who has it.
19 You mentioned one thing before we leave this
20 subject that you have a more complex, a report due to
21 us, a first description of alternatives in October, a
22 final report in November. Then you have a much more
23 complete report in June?
24 MR. GODBY: When we wrote the grant proposal
25 the grant proposal indicated that two months was
85
1 probably too short a time to answer these questions and
2 that formally -- what the November report will give you
3 is a menu of choices. Senator Larson indicated there
4 will be some choice here and you will make some. And
5 hopefully the later report we'll have time to actually
6 crunch some of those numbers and show you what these
7 different mechanisms or alternatives do in terms of
8 regional adjustment outcomes. But there is no possible
9 way that can be done by November 1st.
10 MS. DEVIN: So we're looking at an ongoing
11 piece of work to get anything done. We will know what
12 the repercussions are.
13 MR. GODBY: Right.
14 MS. DEVIN: Thank you. That was helpful.
15 All right. Then we'll move on to our next agenda item,
16 which is the preliminary report on our special
17 education study. Thank you, gentlemen, for your
18 answers.
19 MS. HILL: Madam Chair, this will be very
20 short. As you can tell I'm not Dr. Parish. To recap
21 for the committee what you just decided to do during
22 the last session was look at special education
23 expenditures recognizing that the l00 percent
24 reimbursement was intended to be a possibly a temporary
25 approach to how you fund special education. Wyoming
86
1 was able to participate in a national study that was
2 being conducted by the American Institute of Research.
3 That is who Dr. Parish works for. If you recall the
4 department had 250 thousand dollars in its special
5 education funds. That was matched by a 250 thousand
6 dollar legislative appropriation. With the goal of
7 collecting extensive data on the cost of delivering
8 special education, analyzing that data and then
9 providing that information with an eye towards the
10 development of a cost-based model or a component that
11 could be plugged in the formula.
12 AIR has spent the last several, not several,
13 few months of -- actually we began that study, let me
14 back up even further. We began October 1 of last year.
15 So they have spent almost a year working on this. They
16 have used existing data that has come into the
17 Department of Education. As an aside that data you
18 will find in the recommendations you get from AIR could
19 use some improvement. What a surprise.
20 They also surveyed districts and institutions
21 on special education expenditures, and they also have
22 used external data and research that AIR has used in
23 connection with their national work. A task force of
24 stakeholders was established, special education
25 directors in the school districts as well as other
87
1 national experts. I believe Senator Sessions also has
2 participated in that process. The stakeholders group
3 has been very instructive to Dr. Parish, and when you
4 talk to him he will advise you that the community
5 involvement here has been terrific and he's felt good
6 about that.
7 They have met four times, and just to preview
8 some of the things that they are finding which will be
9 fleshed out in far greater detail when he visits with
10 you next month. The first finding to preview that is
11 the l00 percent expenditures do not appear to be
12 increasing special education costs in the state
13 significantly. They are finding some variations within
14 districts, and Dr. Parish will want to discuss with you
15 some things that the state may want to do as far as
16 assuring the delivery of services, both level of
17 service as well as assuring that extraordinary services
18 are provided.
19 He will talk to you about guidelines for
20 setting standards for adequate service. There are, for
21 example, similarly diagnosed students that are
22 receiving one set of services in one school district
23 and another similarly diagnosed child in another
24 district receiving a different set of services without
25 apparent explanations for that. So part of what he
88
1 will discuss with you next month are setting standards
2 for adequate services and checks and balances in the
3 system to decrease that variability that I just
4 discussed.
5 They are working on issues involving remote
6 locations and the delivery of services in some of our
7 rural, remote schools. They're looking at
8 recommendations which be will require some time to
9 develop, and that would be the more efficient use of
10 our BOCES around the state in delivery of services.
11 And as I say that is a not a new concept, but would
12 require some expensive work on the part of the
13 legislature to formulize what's been going on.
14 They're looking at an increased role for
15 monitoring and sanctioning districts, increasing
16 trained special education staff at the state level to
17 provide more technical assistance to districts, and
18 they're looking at an emergency fund for unexecuted
19 high-need students. And that is something that you
20 have discussed in the legislature frequently.
21 All of this is being finalized by AIR, and
22 they'll talk to you about it next week. So any
23 questions as long as they're not too technical.
24 MR. LOCKHART: You mentioned sanctions and
25 monitoring. What do you think that goes to?
89
1 MS. HILL: That is something that AIR will
2 talk to you, but it deals with discrepancy in services
3 in terms of one district not providing certain services
4 that another district does with children that would
5 appear to need the same services. One of the things we
6 are also working on is that, and someone will give you
7 a short thumbnail on the role that IDEA, which is the
8 federal law, plays in this whole process. It is a
9 heavy hand in terms of what is required of our schools.
10 MR. SCOTT: One thing on the discrepancy in
11 the services I suspect you're picking things beyond
12 this, but you will see some discrepancies of services
13 based on parental desires. As I understand the special
14 education system what the parent wants has a good deal
15 to do with what the child actually gets. I do hope
16 that when we're getting excited about that kind of
17 thing they are looking to see is difference in parental
18 desires causing something.
19 MS. HILL: That would be dictated by those
20 IEP's. They are aware of how that occurs. But so this
21 would be beyond that.
22 MS. DEVIN: Other questions?
23 MR. WOOD: I'm Rick Wood, Director of Special
24 Education in Lincoln County Number 2. And I have a
25 real problem with somebody coming up with standards or
90
1 adequate services for special education. The whole
2 concept of special education is we develop
3 individualized education programs for kids. The IEP
4 team by federal statute is given the, I guess the call
5 or the duty to determine what is adequate for each
6 individual kid. Now obviously school districts, if
7 there is a discrepancy in how we're servicing kids,
8 there are other ways to look at that, and maybe it's
9 the monitoring standpoint. There is a due process
10 built in the law that allows for a parent if they feel
11 like their kid is not being serviced adequately to file
12 a complaint with the state. So there are some
13 protections there.
14 But I'll tell you right now as a district
15 we're out to 100 percent reimbursement for two years
16 because we're on the hold harmless. We've had two
17 individual students this fall move into our district
18 who were already placed out of district. And for the
19 state to come in and say you cannot provide that type
20 of service for this particular kid, that's going to set
21 us up for all kinds of litigation. That will skyrocket
22 the overall costs for us as districts. I'm worried
23 about that.
24 MR. SCOTT: Responding to that, you do have a
25 need for some degree of monitoring and policing of
91
1 things because with the way the reimbursement is set up
2 you do have an incentive, some controls on it, for some
3 district to start calling some of the say, extra
4 reading programs, special education, when in fact
5 they're not, they're part of the regular ongoing
6 program and you have -- it looks like it hasn't been
7 abused, which is I think what everybody was afraid of
8 and the studies are showing the thing isn't broke, its
9 expenditures are not out of line. But if you don't
10 have some way of policing you may get an overwhelming
11 temptation for a school district to start improving its
12 overall funding by calling things special education
13 that the rest of the state doesn't call special ed.
14 MR. WOOD: That's in place. We have time and
15 effort systems and all kinds of monitoring from the
16 state level that right now prevents a special education
17 teacher from spending time with regular ed students.
18 There are things in place. I guess my point is they
19 seem to be working pretty well right now. But this
20 standards for adequate services really, that's what
21 concerns me. I'm curious to see what AIR is going to
22 come up with there. We need to be careful and take
23 that with a grain of salt.
24 MR. SCOTT: He raises a problem on the other
25 side, with a lot of special education kids the current
92
1 model is inclusion where you include the kid in the
2 ordinary classroom and then to give effective services,
3 I know our district has seen the problem because the
4 speech therapist comes in to the ordinary classroom.
5 They can't just give the exercises to the kid with the
6 special education; you have to give them to everybody
7 for the inclusion model to work. How do you account
8 for that?
9 MR. WOOD: Some of these issues will be
10 addressed in the re-authorization of IDEA because right
11 now we're kind of at a failure model. The kid has to
12 fail before they get into special ed, and there are a
13 lot of us in special ed that believe that will change
14 to more of a proactive model where we can serve certain
15 kids that are showing signs of telling, basically if
16 they say we need help, they'll get some services. So
17 things will change in the next year from the federal
18 standpoint in terms of legislation. I don't know how
19 that will affect us as a state. But right now the
20 whole meaning of special education is it is
21 individualized to meet the unique, individual needs of
22 kids.
23 I can show you ten different kids classified
24 as learning disability. Every one will have completely
25 different needs. And it's hard to compare what one
93
1 district is doing with theirs to other districts. I
2 think we all have our ways of servicing those kids.
3 And I'm not saying we shouldn't have checks,
4 but to say that they will give us a list of standards
5 and this is how you service an LD kid, that completely
6 goes against the concept of special education.
7 MS. DEVIN: I think that maybe, we'll all
8 wait to see the report, but that may be taking the more
9 radical view of what we're looking at. We're also
10 coping with the issue Senator Scott brought up, but
11 we're coping with not only the federal pieces of law,
12 but the equitable delivery in the state that you should
13 be able to get a speech problem treated somewhat
14 similar in my district and in your district and in
15 Senator Scott's district. In other words, it doesn't
16 have to be identical, but it needs to be similar
17 services available for another problem. We are seeing
18 some dramatic differences, and in those cases we either
19 need to understand them or we need to ask those
20 districts to bring their services up.
21 We're also seeing IEP's, and I've had this
22 complaint and the examples brought to me, IEP's that
23 called for certain special therapists to work with
24 children, and they're coming from the teachers and
25 coming from the parents in some cases, but what I've
94
1 heard from teachers they are literally not getting the
2 services. And their IEP calls for it and I know
3 they're supposed to, but without a standard or
4 enforcement they're not being seen, sometime for six
5 weeks at a time. That is not right either.
6 We've got a situation in my own district
7 where parents didn't want the small bus to go 30 miles
8 to pick up the kids, they wanted the big one to come.
9 And that's a huge expense difference. My district said
10 we have no incentive to deny that. We're out there
11 legally on the line fighting, but it doesn't make good
12 sense of expenditure money. So I'm not sure where we
13 need to come down. I hope at a minimal level. But I
14 guess at the level we need to assure that students are
15 getting the services they're entitled to without an
16 abuse of the funds and a balance I'm hoping not an
17 intrusion that's unnecessary.
18 MR. WOOD: I came from Utah two years ago.
19 Special educator there for seven years. Their funding
20 for special education is nothing similar to what
21 Wyoming's is. School districts bear a large burden
22 without reimbursement. And you talk about kids aren't
23 getting services, I can show you 50 to 80 percent of
24 their kids not getting the services they need or the
25 services that are on the IEP. I look at the district
95
1 I'm in here I can honestly say a vast majority of our
2 kids are getting the services they need and nearly all
3 are getting the services in the IEP's. And to me
4 that's a wonderful thing to be able to do that. So 100
5 percent reimbursement kids will get, at least funding
6 is not a roadblock to give the services they need.
7 I understand your concern on the other end of
8 it. There are certain kids maybe getting Cadillac
9 services when in reality ought to be getting Chevrolet
10 services. I understand that part of it. But once
11 again their monitoring, I think the state has done a
12 pretty good job, maybe not good enough. Maybe there's
13 something that needs to be added there. But I just
14 want to avoid having anybody tell us how we should
15 service a kid that has Down's Syndrome. That's what,
16 I'm the expert in special education, I should have help
17 lead a team determining what that student needs. And
18 you're right, the incentive needs to be probably on the
19 monitoring end. But the financial benefit of the l00
20 percent reimbursement, it's wonderful for kids in
21 Wyoming. And I've seen the other side. I don't want
22 to go there. That's why I'm here. I wouldn't be in
23 Wyoming if it wasn't for the funding; I would be back
24 in Utah.
25 MS. DEVIN: May I ask, I would assume that
96
1 the stakeholder group will have, has had input and they
2 would be in similar positions?
3 MS. HILL: Yes, we will provide a list for
4 you of the stakeholders. The stakeholders are special
5 educators, special education directors from the
6 districts, parents of special education students and
7 Senator Sessions, the poster legislator, has also
8 participated in that. And the plan for next month is,
9 and I should emphasize that Dr. Parish himself is a
10 special educator with a good deal of expertise in
11 special education and familiarity with federal laws.
12 The plan is he will come as well as Becca Walk, our
13 state director of special education, and
14 representatives of that stakeholder group. You will
15 see the full cross-section of people who have worked
16 hard on analyzing this data. And then we'll make those
17 recommendations to you.
18 MR. SCOTT: Just a question. Am I right in
19 understanding that the eligibility for special
20 education mostly is that the student is, a particular
21 aspect is quantitatively measured, is two standard
22 deviations or more below the norm; is that a right
23 understanding?
24 MR. WOOD: It depends on the classification.
25 There is a discrepancy formula for learning disability.
97
1 All the others there isn't really. Depends on maybe
2 the student's IQ for mental disability. And for other
3 health impairment it's basically a doctor's evaluation
4 and the determination of need of services.
5 MR. SCOTT: Some is two standard deviations
6 and some that's not relevant?
7 MR. WOOD: Correct.
8 MS. DEVIN: I do think it is correct in every
9 presentation I have heard on the re-certification of
10 IDEA they are looking at some dramatic changes. One of
11 them is this piece that you -- I mean we're seeing
12 states where you can look at the second semester of
13 kindergarten and get very accurate testing on whether
14 that child is going to have difficulty in school or
15 not, which is much earlier than we thought some years
16 ago and that we can begin to use services in a more
17 liberal fashion to address that now. That may require
18 some adaptation and how do we move into that.
19 The results for reasons that may have been
20 enumerated in this room, the results of our special
21 education money in this country are not smashingly
22 wonderful. I mean we just have not done a great job.
23 We're not seeing great learning among that group of
24 kids, not seeing what we should be seeing. And both
25 the most liberal size of the aisle of federal
98
1 government and the most conservative side that I heard
2 presentations are in agreement, it has to change
3 because in the big picture across the nation we're not
4 doing a good job of serving these kids. I think we
5 probably do a much better job in Wyoming than happens
6 nationally, but we could almost be poster children
7 given the professional personnel for what happens to
8 those kids here versus nationally. But we are still
9 constricted.
10 MS. SESSIONS: It's your Title 1 funding kids
11 are two grade levels below. That is another federal
12 program sometimes it's coordinated with special ed.
13 It's a different funding and different kind of thing.
14 They are, Title 1 are not special education kids. They
15 are two grade levels below grade level is what Title 1
16 is. That's maybe where you get Title 1.
17 MR. SCOTT: Also I think you shouldn't wait
18 to kindergarten to identify these kids and get
19 something done because experience in our district is
20 that the preschool programs, especially the preschool
21 can do a lot with the special education kids to bring
22 them along before they get to the school district. And
23 it works well where the preschool and the school
24 districts work together on transitioning kids in so
25 they start kindergarten with an IEP already developed.
99
1 And that I think has shown quite a bit of success. We
2 have a problem funding because funding streams are
3 different. But it's a good argument we're not funding
4 the preschool to do what's needed.
5 MS. DEVIN: Other questions?
6 MR. HOFFMAN: Lorne Hoffman, Superintendent
7 of Schools, also special ed director, also a parent of
8 a special ed child. I'm not necessarily disagreeing
9 with the gentleman's comments about the standards being
10 set within that, but you have a good group of
11 stakeholders and I commend the state department for the
12 process they're using. They're very, very good. And I
13 would just ask the JEC to take careful consideration if
14 you see a difference between the experts and the
15 professionals with AIR and the stakeholder groups, if
16 there is some difference between the professional
17 organization and the stakeholders for you to take those
18 considerations into account. That's the only comment I
19 have. Thank you.
20 MS. DEVIN: Okay. Senator Sessions.
21 MS. SESSIONS: I will have to say about Dr.
22 Parish the reason I sort of volunteered to be on this
23 is because I had visions of what we've gone through
24 another scenario what we did and our school went
25 through funding from experts. And so I thought, well,
100
1 I'm going to sit in on it and listen. I will say I
2 have been astounded by the professionalism of Dr.
3 Parish and the stakeholders who are meeting. And it's
4 been a very good thing, good discussion. And I think
5 actually things will come out of it. It's a totally
6 different atmosphere I might add. It's been a good
7 thing to watch and to listen to. So it's a different
8 kind of thing. As you may have referred to sanctions
9 and things, but the whole atmosphere of the thing is
10 not a punishment. It's not an -- unless I'm wrong, I
11 have the preliminary report, but the final one is not
12 saying that you will do this and this and this. It's
13 not that at all.
14 MS. DEVIN: We have had the fortune of Scott
15 Marion being available to this afternoon, which was not
16 scheduled until tomorrow morning. And I know that
17 several of you have indicated you have some problems
18 with tomorrow and would like to see as much adjustment
19 to the agenda as we can make. So we have asked if he
20 will begin. I know that's always difficult when you
21 have a report that's partly one day and partly the next
22 day, but I'll ask you to since we have been meeting
23 half a day I hope our attention is still acute enough
24 and tomorrow morning will be a continuation, so maybe
25 you'll have the opportunity to ask questions and think
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1 of questions over the evening. We'll begin this
2 discussion today to better utilize your time and more
3 of you can participate. And that will leave us some
4 time.
5 While Mary is handing this out I will tell
6 you that the vocational ed piece several of you are
7 interested in we are trying to move that piece along
8 now, but they do have some problems to get staff in
9 here and they have like nine of them. And it's your
10 opportunity to really be able to talk to them, and
11 we're hoping that can happen by around 10 or 10:30.
12 We're pushing them somewhat to do that because we have
13 told them afternoon, but we'll do the best we can
14 starting with this today.
15 MR. MARION: Madam Chair, Scott Marion,
16 Wyoming Department of Education. Some people are
17 questioning my name and the word fortunate in the same
18 sentence, but we'll plow ahead. I believe everybody
19 has a copy of the presentation. We won't have the test
20 right away. We'll be calculator enabling. I would
21 like to break this up as you see on the bottom of the
22 first page I talk about the Update and the standards,
23 assessment system and accountability. And tomorrow as
24 I've been in conversation and the leadership of the
25 department with LSO about the kinds of legislative
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1 actions we'll need to see this coming session. That
2 will the crux of the discussion tomorrow. And so we'll
3 get through the update, have a little preview to policy
4 discussion and the forecasting the legislative issues.
5 And tomorrow discuss those in more depth.
6 MS. DEVIN: This is the piece I'm hoping we
7 can move to drafting on this time frame, so it could be
8 ready to look at more firmly in November.
9 MR. MARION: Madam Chair, as many of you know
10 the No Child Left Behind Act comes with many pieces,
11 and the pieces I'm going to be focusing on today are
12 standards, assessment and accountability. The first
13 part of the law talks about challenging academic
14 standards. And I've already had our standards approved
15 under the 1994 reauthorization of the secondary
16 education act. But we have to add grade level
17 expectations for grades 3 through 8 because you can't
18 have a standards-based test if you don't have
19 standards. So we can't have a 3rd grade test or a 5th
20 grade test as the law requires without knowing what the
21 targets are.
22 In July we met for over two weeks with
23 educators, over 250 educators, parents, some business
24 representatives to help revise and review the Wyoming
25 standards. The first week we had all nine content
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1 areas present, and that was really to examine all sets
2 of standards and write what we call these overarching
3 descriptors, what does it mean to be proficient in
4 science. The second week was focused on drafting the
5 specific grade level expectations K through 8 in
6 language arts and mathematics. That was a pretty
7 tedious process to, right now the standards are 4th
8 grade, 8th grade, llth grade, so we say by 8th grade
9 the student should know how to do X, Y and Z. Now we
10 had to say at the end of 5th grade a student should
11 know how to do this, end of 6th grade should know how
12 to do this other thing and 7th grade and so on. That
13 took a lot of work.
14 Another issue that we'll talk about a little
15 bit later, but Representative Lockhart said to me in
16 June when we talked the difficulty of having schools
17 meet the accountability standards Representative
18 Lockhart said I think if we do this right we can do it,
19 it won't be a problem. And at the time I didn't
20 agree. And I think there is still going to be
21 challenges, but we've been working since early June
22 with a group, it's a group that is sponsored by several
23 education organizations. And Dr. James Poppam who gave
24 the keynote address at our school improvement
25 conference last week was the key author on this. The
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1 called themselves the Commission on Structure Support
2 Assessment.
3 We've been working very closely with them on
4 ways to develop standards and assessments systems that
5 will actually give teachers a chance to figure out what
6 is the right thing to teach, not vague targets, but
7 clear important targets, with the goal if they know
8 what to teach and it's clear to them then kids will
9 have a chance to learn those things that will show up
10 on assessments. We've been invited to participate in
11 ongoing discussions with the commission. I have been
12 invited to a meeting, just one more meeting, in
13 November to meet with about 10 or so other states
14 interested in putting this in place, so we'll see if,
15 we're going to try and work toward Representative
16 Lockhart's goal.
17 The standards will be reviewed throughout
18 this fall, and it's a fairly informal review right
19 now. They're out for comment. They're posted on the
20 department's website. You can see the address there.
21 When you talk to your constituents we urge you to ask
22 them to review these because it's one of those things
23 if you don't make a comment and your voice will not be
24 heard. We think that even though we had good
25 representation in July we know we had 250 teachers
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1 there, there's about 6500 teachers who we didn't hear
2 from, as well as a whole lot of other business. So we
3 need people to comment. And one of the things that
4 we're really focused on is the notion of clarity of the
5 learning goals. The previous drafts the standards
6 there are lot of teaching sort of things. Students
7 will use the writing process to produce an expository
8 essay. The writing process is the teaching vehicle.
9 We want the kid to be able to produce a good expository
10 essay. How they get there is for the teacher to figure
11 out the right way, whether through a particular type of
12 writing process. So we really got people to focus. So
13 when every one of you had teachers and other
14 representatives from your districts at this session I
15 urge you to pat them on the back. They worked hard.
16 There was a lot of interesting and emotional
17 discussion, to put it mildly. I felt like I should
18 have had a striped shirt and a referee hat. But it was
19 good; they were fighting over important things and
20 fighting over clearly prioritizing what we want Wyoming
21 kids to know. And we really did a good job of getting
22 rid of a lot of the fluff and vagueness, and it really
23 will enable people to focus in. So when you see those
24 folks give them a pat on the back.
25 The assessment design process, we went into
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1 assessment now. The meeting started last week, and
2 this was the discussion we had in June in Sheridan when
3 you directed me to go out and collect multiple sources
4 of information and data about the kinds of assessment
5 systems that people in Wyoming would like to see. As
6 you could see following this page there are two pages,
7 three pages after that there is a public meeting
8 schedule. The complete handout is there. This mailing
9 went to districts and there is a modified version being
10 used as a press release. But you can see the public
11 meeting schedule. I'll be busy as are the folks in my
12 unit will be busy for the next couple of months holding
13 these meetings. And our goal is to have these meetings
14 largely through October we will be presenting to the
15 LWSBA in November to have technical advisory committee
16 meetings to take all these findings and hammer out
17 draft assessment system designs and present them to you
18 at your November meeting.
19 Following that page you see a data
20 collection, two-page data collection form, actually
21 front and back for you. And this is to help collect
22 the data in a more systematic way so we're not just
23 relying on my interpretations of the meeting. People
24 fill out these forms, submit the forms. We're
25 compiling this data. As we speak I have someone doing
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1 data entry from last week's meetings already.
2 The next handout is the executive summary of
3 this Commission on Instructionally Supportive
4 Assessment, Building Tests to Support Instruction and
5 Accountability. If you flip to the fourth page of
6 that, Executive Summary, you see at the bottom it says
7 the nine requirements are and says requirement one and
8 then continues on the next page, nine requirements. We
9 are trying to take as many of these as seriously as we
10 can and try to incorporate as many as possible into
11 assessment system design. The list of authors, the
12 list of commission members is on the preceding page.
13 These are some of the top people in the county on
14 building assessment systems and building systems that
15 could support both instruction and accountability.
16 I've said this to several of the groups; I
17 believe that the No Child Left Behind Act has very
18 admirable intents. The intents are much more focused
19 on making sure that all kids, no matter what group of
20 the population they belong to, have a fair chance to
21 learn important subject matter to be successful in the
22 world. No other authorization or reauthorization of
23 the NSEA has done that. There is we get into the
24 accountability system there is some pretty strict
25 accountability components that I believe will end up
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1 being changed in subsequent legislation, federal
2 legislation. But if we build a system to comply with
3 the law and the law changes, then we're left with a
4 system based on outdated law. If we build a system we
5 believe and truly support and improve teaching and
6 learning in our classrooms, if the law changes we're
7 still left with a system of improved teaching and
8 learning in the classrooms. There are lots of ways to
9 do that. We're working with another group funded by
10 the National Research Council of the National Academy
11 of Sciences in Washington who is trying to put into
12 practice this very well respected National Research
13 Council report. We're working with a group trying to
14 take those recommendations, and these two groups
15 started to come together, take those recommendations
16 and put them in practice in a way that can foster the
17 improved learning for our kids.
18 An interesting note is that these two groups
19 while working side by side and have members on each
20 group, Wyoming is one of only fewer than a dozen states
21 invited to both these meetings. Actually probably half
22 dozen states been invited to both. People see what
23 we're doing here. Our body of evidence system for
24 graduation, the kind of support we have for local
25 assessment and approved classroom assessment is being
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1 recognized nationally. And this committee as well as
2 the state board needs to take credit for that. It's an
3 important notification. We're a small state in
4 population, but we're getting a lot of notoriety in
5 terms of our assessment system.
6 Now we're back on the slides, the slide on
7 assessment and accountability. There is some confusion
8 throughout the state, throughout the nation, I read
9 lots of newspaper reports and other reports on No Child
10 Left Behind. These two terms get thrown around
11 together, assessment and accountability. With the
12 design and assessment system, an assessment system is
13 designed to collect data in a systematic way about what
14 kids know and are able to do. An accountability system
15 is what you do with those data. You have these kinds
16 of sanctions as a result of this, how you compute
17 school scores, things like that, how you determine who
18 is good enough or who is not quite good enough and then
19 what you do as a result of those determinations, that's
20 the accountability piece.
21 We have to design two systems. We have to
22 redesign our WyCAS because it's only at certain grades.
23 We have to certainly change 21-2-304 because that only
24 permits testing with grades 4, 8 and 11. We have to
25 expand to test 3 through 8. The accountability system
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1 is something we haven't had to deal with before.
2 That's an important distinction. You'll hear confusion
3 when you talk to constituents about that that WyCAS is
4 the accountability system. No, WyCAS is the assessment
5 system. It's what we do with those results is the
6 accountability system. So this is where we'll run into
7 I believe the greatest shock and opposition in
8 Wyoming. We are required to have a single statewide
9 accountability system in Wyoming based on academic
10 achievement for all schools. Now the 143 Title 1
11 schools have been living with this. We have, depending
12 on how you count, anywhere between 385 and 400 schools,
13 those other schools will now have to be part of a
14 statewide accountability system that looks the same in
15 terms of how we say if you've made it or not made it,
16 Title 1 schools and non-Title 1 schools. That's going
17 to be a big change for Wyoming.
18 I'm on page five of the power point. The
19 accountability system must be based on academic
20 standards and assessments. Our district accreditation
21 system now has been largely based on processes. We've
22 been moving people towards results and certainly in the
23 last iteration of the accreditation system there's a
24 larger focus on results in terms of results of risk,
25 results of school improvement. But this system caries
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1 a lot less about process, this new accountability
2 system, No Child Left Behind, and cares almost entirely
3 about results. And it's the results of the academic
4 assessments that the accountability system will be
5 based.
6 The accountability system must include
7 sanctions and rewards to hold all public schools and
8 public school districts and the state accountable for
9 student achievement, every layer is accountable. Maybe
10 this is a little break point here if you want to ask
11 questions.
12 MS. SESSIONS: I have a question. I heard
13 someone say that you could never reach proficiency, so
14 that as the year goes by let's say you get all your
15 kids whatever you mention, how can you keep improving
16 if you get to a certain level? I mean it's
17 self-defeating. So what happens then?
18 MR. MARION: That is actually the next thing
19 we'll talk about. And I don't think that's true.
20 After a while when we get eight, nine years down the
21 line approaching 90 percent proficiency a lot of people
22 say that after that it becomes almost impossible, but
23 that's not for a while.
24 MR. SCOTT: Way back on the standard setting
25 you talked about and doing it specifically by grade,
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1 how do you take into account differences in the timing
2 of when certain things are taught that you find
3 different curriculums? Let me give you an example to
4 bring that home specifically. In mathematics my son
5 had a unit in 8th grade that was on probability. Very
6 well done, relevant stuff for a kid to learn. But I
7 could see that could be taught in 7th grade or 8th
8 grade or 9th grade. And it would be just a matter of
9 local preference in the long run. It wouldn't make
10 much difference. That particular subject could be semi
11 independent of some of the other things in mathematics.
12 How do you handle that kind of thing where you could
13 have that sort of difference?
14 MR. MANION: That is exactly the reason why
15 we as a state had to say this is the expectation maybe
16 this type of probability is expected now in 7th grade
17 because it would be unfair to say teach this sometime
18 between 5th and 8th grade, but the 6th grade test is
19 going to have this on it. As a teacher you don't know
20 what target you're aiming for. This way it's very
21 clear. And actually you said it perfectly; it doesn't
22 make much difference educationally perhaps in this case
23 if you teach it in 7th grade or 6th grade, and so if we
24 bring together enough people and they say we think it
25 really belongs in 6th grade and then it belongs on the
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1 assessment, everybody is starting from the same spot as
2 opposed to remember the days sometimes your teacher
3 give you a test and say it's on these five chapters.
4 You knew the test couldn't possibly cover everything
5 and you hoped you studied the right chapter because if
6 you didn't answer this way we're saying no, it's on
7 these five things and study all five of them.
8 MS. DEVIN: Is that what your group of 250
9 educators, is that the decisions they made was by 6th
10 grade we'll say this is the piece you should have
11 learned?
12 MR. MANION: Yes, that's one of the
13 directives that I kept reinforcing to the group because
14 as many of you know when you get a bunch of math
15 teachers in the room math is very important to them,
16 they think that everybody should know all this math,
17 and that's good. You don't want people teaching math
18 who don't like their subject matter, but the thing we
19 kept hammering is if you put it in the standards by law
20 I'm required to put it on the assessment. So makes
21 people clearly focus on what's really important. So
22 that was the work of that group.
23 MS. DEVIN: Then the public meetings you have
24 scheduled with educators in communities, there can be
25 further input to that piece who radically disagree?
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1 MR. MANION: I guarantee people will
2 radically disagree with 250 great minds. That's why
3 we're putting this out what we're calling informal, not
4 through rule process yet. That won't happen until next
5 spring. We want as much comment as possible, and every
6 place we go we hammer that message home. The groups
7 that will have to reconvene the summer and take these
8 comments seriously as opposed to just Annette and I
9 doing this in the confines of the department, we feel
10 the group should have to work through this process and
11 that way have to take it seriously. And if they chose
12 to ignore perhaps Senator Scott's contention
13 probability should wait to 7th grade instead of 6th
14 grade then they would have to say why they believe that
15 is different and provide rational.
16 MR. SCOTT: I see a real dilemma here. I
17 think what we're starting to do is dictate a statewide
18 curriculum. And I don't think there is any question
19 that's what we're doing. And I see that to do the
20 assessments in a meaningful way and do them across the
21 state you need to do that. At the same time I'm afraid
22 when you do do that you are constraining the ability of
23 the local school districts to innovate, to play to the
24 strengths they have in their particular local school
25 district. And you are at risk of getting something
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1 that is going to become bureaucratically ossified so it
2 doesn't accommodate new innovations. The probability
3 thing would be an example of that. I was going through
4 that, I was taught, I got that in graduate school, not
5 graduate school in college, but I had to haul out my
6 college textbook to help a kid with 8th grade homework.
7 That's an innovation that came in the curriculum.
8 And the trouble is by doing a statewide curriculum you
9 make it much more difficult to bring in innovations.
10 I'm not sure that I see where we can set the balance
11 and avoid those problems.
12 MR. MANION: It's interesting you happen to
13 mention probability because you're right, I didn't get
14 that until I took stat and probability in college. And
15 that is what the standards help bring into the
16 elementary, middle school and high school curriculum.
17 Nobody taught stat and probability prior to college
18 before, when in reality the people who wrote the
19 National Council of Mathematics, teaching the
20 mathematic standards said we believe stat and
21 probability is some of the most important things kids
22 take away from math, it does belong. Some textbook
23 publishers are starting to put it in the curriculum.
24 You are exactly right. There is no question
25 that some local choice is going to go away. Now when I
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1 talk with curriculum directors, teachers, principals
2 about that, I get this more often than not what is
3 wrong with the state curriculum. I know that's not the
4 interest of this committee or the legislature, but in
5 reality probability or algebra is not that different in
6 Cheyenne from Cody, it's not. And so by having the
7 standards at each grade level we're talking about big
8 ideas. There is so much stuff that goes into this to
9 build the curriculum that there is still a wide variety
10 of local choice. Is it as much choice in your
11 district? You said we want to withhold probability
12 until 10th grade; we wanted to do it in 4th. You're
13 losing some of that kind of flexibility. But if you
14 want to teach probability in a fairly traditional way
15 with the class with algorithms or you want to teach in
16 a different way that's based on real world problems,
17 however you like is fine. And there are as many
18 textbooks as you could imagine to find a way to teach
19 probability. And many of them not very good.
20 MR. MCOMIE: I would like to ask Senator
21 Scott what he meant take away the local --
22 MR. SCOTT: Innovation?
23 MR. MCOMIE: No, it wasn't that.
24 MR. SCOTT: What I was concerned about is the
25 ability of the local people to design their own
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1 curriculum to take advantage of partly the local
2 strengths. And I think that sometimes makes quite a
3 bit of difference. If you have a set of teachers with
4 particular skills that happen to be in the junior high
5 school, they may well want to do things a particular
6 way and teach subjects in a particular order, than
7 another district that teachers don't have that set may
8 say, well, that ought to wait until high school. There
9 really is some reason to have the local people with
10 ability to design their own curriculum because if the
11 people who have to teach it are the ones who designed
12 it they'll make it work.
13 MR. MCOMIE: Follow-up. If for instance, the
14 group says it's an 8th grade subject and this school
15 district decides they'll do it in 7th grade, it doesn't
16 make any difference as long as it's taught by the 8th
17 grade. Is that correct?
18 MR. MANION: That's exactly correct. What
19 districts will probably wind up doing, and there are
20 districts here that could either correct, contradict or
21 corroborate, if you teach something in 7th grade and
22 tell them it doesn't show up until the spring of the
23 8th grade test we know that kids' retention will be
24 less than if they learned two months before the exam. A
25 district I would suspect would move it to where it's
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1 more proximal to the exam is my gut.
2 MR. SCOTT: That gets you in trouble in two
3 ways. You'll have some districts he puts it on the 7th
4 grade test than a district that wanted to wait to the
5 8th grade to teach it is cut out, they're in trouble.
6 The other problem you get a district such as one of my
7 junior highs that doesn't teach all 7th and 8th graders
8 and 9th graders the same thing, it moves the kids ahead
9 depending on their ability. You can get into trouble
10 he's talking about because you don't have the unified
11 curriculum because you're doing a better job of
12 matching the kids' skills and ability with your
13 instruction, and that causes a different concern.
14 MS. BOWLING: Annette Bowling, Wyoming
15 Department of Education. I think it's important for
16 the committee to understand the distinction between
17 standards and curriculum. We are obligated by state
18 statute to develop uniform student performance
19 standards for the children of Wyoming. Standards are
20 as Scott referred to expectations of student
21 performance. So they are statements of what children
22 should be able to do and what they should know. It is
23 not a curriculum. The curriculum is decided upon by
24 the district which involves methodology, materials that
25 you use to get there, a variety of programs, but they
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1 are not -- and in the secondary schools the names of
2 your courses, whether they're year-long courses or
3 six-month courses, that is your curriculum. But these
4 grade level expectations are not curriculum. I think
5 that's very important to understand that distinction.
6 Secondly, we are, we must by state statute
7 have uniform student performance standards because we
8 don't care how you get there, but the bottom line is I
9 don't care and the Supreme Court said I don't care if
10 you are in Sundance or Laramie, that you must have
11 uniform standards across the state. Having uniform
12 standards once again is not the curriculum. And
13 teachers can all come together and say I like this
14 particular unit of study because I'll use my background
15 which is foreign language. If we say students need to
16 be able to communicate in a language other than English
17 and be understood, it doesn't really matter if I give
18 them a unit on how to order in a restaurant or how to
19 buy stamps in a post office. That is your curriculum.
20 And it doesn't really matter how I present it in my
21 unit of study as long as they have that skill and they
22 have that knowledge.
23 And so I think you must understand that we
24 are not writing curriculum. And as Scott said they are
25 the big broad strokes. When you read the standards,
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1 even at the grade level, we do not tell the kids what
2 they have to read, but we do have expectations that
3 what they can do with what they read does need to be
4 uniform. So I would like the committee to make sure
5 that you do understand we're not trying to hold the
6 local districts to some statewide curriculum. That's
7 not what we're doing here.
8 MS. DEVIN: At one point in the process I
9 recall a sheet of paper that defined in simple terms
10 those differences. If the two of you might have time
11 to get us that before the session, I think that might
12 be helpful to the committee, something that defined
13 what is standard versus what curriculum is, maybe even
14 an example, because this is not terminology that we all
15 use every day, nor do our colleagues. So it's helpful
16 to us as we're trying to work with these pieces of
17 federal legislation and what our teacher groups are
18 doing who do use this terminology every day in their
19 working lives, it helps us get on the same page and be
20 clear in how we're using them and what we're thinking.
21 MS. BOHLING: I think that the districts are
22 very pleased that instead of 51 graduation standards we
23 have been able to integrate those at this time into
24 41. So we are streamlining. Even though we are
25 writing K through 8 for language arts and math overall
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1 we are able to find ways to convince and integrate
2 without taking away the richness of those knowledge and
3 skills. I think it's important to see now that we're
4 able to look back on what we've done and make it better
5 and improve it. All the educators and parents and
6 business people that came together had the benefit of
7 what we've done before, and they really have worked
8 hard to improve it without infringing upon the local
9 curriculum.
10 MS. DEVIN: I would say I've just had small
11 samples of what these groups have done, and they really
12 have worked hard. It's amazing the time and effort put
13 into it. And they're very sincere and dedicated to do
14 this. It's amazing the enthusiasm they have kept with
15 the difficulty of this work.
16 MS. SESSIONS: I guess a short course of what
17 happened in the real world I started in this business
18 and I showed up in Kelly, Wyoming, to teach. What do I
19 teach in 3rd grade in Kelly, Wyoming? Nobody knew. I
20 mean I had taught 2nd grade and reform school. I had
21 to teach a school that is in Kelly, Wyoming, in 3rd
22 grade. What do I do? What you do is you go to your
23 3rd grade textbook and struggle along until you relearn
24 what was going on. My contention is textbook makers
25 should not design what our kids should learn. Then as
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1 we went along in our little school we got where we
2 designed standards in math and readings and so forth at
3 each grade level. What you do is decide, it's simple,
4 you decide that in 3rd grade you build on math, you do
5 carry, division, multiplication tables, you do
6 division, you do all of that and you end up at the end
7 of 3rd grade. But how you do this and teach all those
8 things is entirely your choice, that's the curriculum.
9 I could use tapes, rote memorization, which I still
10 believe is great, no matter what everyone else tells
11 you. Anyway, you do all of that. You can theme teach
12 so you can have a huge area of geology and you teach
13 times tables and reading and writing and poetry and
14 health and everything else around a theme. And that's
15 how lots of elementary teachers teach. That's the
16 design of your curriculum. But at the end of 3rd grade
17 I would look at each of my students and say you know
18 this and this and this, you know adding, subtracting,
19 carrying, dividing, borrowing, dah, dah, and you know
20 your times tables because we said them and you stayed
21 in at recess and did many another things until you
22 learned them.
23 I gave the WyCAS for three years, and I have
24 to tell you the frustration surrounding that is
25 tremendous because you couldn't track kids on what they
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1 knew. And I'm thinking that a one shot thing like
2 that, I'm thinking those grade level tests that's what
3 all good educators do anyway, you'll have a record of
4 each child, how they improve from year to year to
5 year. That's what you need to do. And if you don't
6 have that improvement then you start to look on the
7 individual records and say something is wrong here.
8 And it won't matter you publish, hopefully we won't
9 publish on the Internet or those kinds of things. But
10 that tracking of each child will be the benefit. And
11 then you can really look at what the teachers and your
12 schools are doing when you have that record of each
13 child's achievement.
14 And so I don't see -- I mean it's just a long
15 established practice in US education about what you
16 should know in 1st grade, 2nd grade, so forth and on
17 up. And there is all kinds of creative ways to teach
18 kids so they end up knowing that at the end. As that's
19 your curriculum. Thank you for listening.
20 MR. MARION: That's an excellent point, and
21 that's something I've been saying for years because
22 textbooks are published by people in California, and
23 they don't really care what we want in Wyoming,
24 especially since we don't have statewide textbook
25 adoption. We get virtually no say.
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1 The most fascinating thing that came out of
2 the second week of the standards review which really
3 speaks to this notion of getting together and saying
4 what people should know in 4th and 5th grade, doing
5 this with K through 8, K-1 and 2, those teachers knew
6 exactly and the consensus was formed like that, what
7 kindergarten is doing, what is the first grade, whether
8 it's math or reading. Getting to the 4th grade, 5th
9 grade it was a struggle, you didn't really know. And
10 without offending anyone I think this is something
11 we've all been struggling with, the lack of improvement
12 at the 8th grade to middle school level. I have a
13 middle school child now and one about to be a middle
14 school child. I think middle school education in this
15 country is really suffering because we just say they're
16 just hormones, we can't teach them. They teach them in
17 every other country. By getting this down this is
18 expected now. A lot of times in math what we see
19 unless you use a good math program, keep teaching these
20 kids arithmetic over and over without saying okay,
21 arithmetic is fine for 4th grade, times tables I agree
22 with you still comes in handy for problem solving, and
23 but then 5th grade what do we need to know, in the 6th
24 grade what we need to know. I think that will only
25 help further efforts to improve middle school education
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1 in the state.
2 MR. MCOMIE: An observation. There are a lot
3 of educators out there that don't understand what Ms.
4 Bowling just said because I have big chunks of rear end
5 missing just trying to get in discussions about this
6 and being really whaled on for the very things that
7 we're talked about here. I just want to reinforce what
8 you said.
9 MR. MARION: It's something we work on daily,
10 and I think big chunks of my rear end are in the same
11 place as yours. It's an ongoing battle.
12
13 Discussion off the record.
14
15 Whereupon the hearing was adjourned for the
16 day.
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