State Demographics
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Total Enrollment 94,258
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Schools 369
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Economically Disadvantaged Students 37.1%
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Students with Disabilities 16.5%
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English Language Learners 3%
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Students Attending Urban Schools 25%
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Students Attending Rural Schools 28.9%
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Graduation Rate 86.2%
Data source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Common Core of Data (CCD). Graduation Rate data are from 2016/17; all other data are from 2017/18.
State Story : March 2020 – April 2021
March 2020
School Closures
Jillian Balow was serving in her second term as Wyoming’s elected State Superintendent when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her and Governor Gordon to announce a sudden closure of all schools in March 2020.
Initial Decisions and Approach
Summary
- Balanced urgency to act with the need to be thoughtful and strategic
- Placed decisions in the hands of local leaders.
- Focused on student well-being and serving the most at-risk kids as a “guiding north star.”
SEA and LEA Role Delineation
Summary
- Understood that decentralized approaches may take more time but can produce better local results.
- Opened the pathway for local leaders to make decisions by setting up structures for LEAs to act.
- LEA autonomy worked well for Balow as “an elected official who serves people not schools.”
Supportive Partners or Resources
Summary
- The Governor created five task forces that provided key support to K-12 Education.
- CCSSO and the Hunt-Kean Leadership Fellows provided timely and practical resources and support.
July 2020
School Re-Opening
The Wyoming Department of Education released their "Smart Start Guidance" in July 2020, developed by a group of Wyoming education and health experts.
Re-opening Approach
Summary
- Created a blue ribbon panel of health, education, and business professionals to develop the “Smart Start Guidance” re-opening plan.
- Included four critical areas of guidance: communications; safety and wellness; school operations; and instruction and technology.
- Focused on three re-opening models: open, hybrid, or closed (remote learning).
What Comes Next
Next Steps
Summary
- Focus on staying the course.
- Prepare to address eminent budget shortfalls.
- Build a “New Normal.”
August 2020 – December 2020
Re-Opening Plan Implementation
According to Superintendent Balow, most Wyoming schools provided in-person instruction since the start of the 2020-2021 school year. The choice was made by LEAs who followed health metrics and applied virus mitigation practices as needed.
Status of School Models
Summary
- LEAs chose their models based on local health metrics, with most holding school in-person.
- The SEA helped schools mitigate COVID-19 spread by providing them guidance, local decision-making authority, and policies that would support their needs.
- Schools took on new roles, like contact tracing.
- Parents were offered options for school model choices.
January 2021
Recover and Rebuild
Superintendent Balow believes that local decisionmaking is important as needs across the state can vary by context. When it comes to the pandemic, Balow asserts that priorities in Wyoming schools are similar to other schools across the country; teachers need resources to provide academic, social-emotional, and trauma-based supports to students, students need academic support and acceleration, and the SEA’s role is to provide support and resources to LEAs as needed.
Recover and Rebuild Section Two
Priorities (January 2021)
Summary
- Focusing on slow, steady, progress brought about by consistent LEA systems and practices.
- Empowering schools to make decisions based on local data, needs, and capacities.
- Addressing student learning loss and trauma.
Rethinking Professional Development
Summary
- Moved to online professional development.
- Refocused professional development to enhance teacher’s abilities to use instructional technology.
Recover and Rebuild Section Three
Rethinking Assessment
Summary
- Committed to measuring the impact of the pandemic on learning.
- Uncertain what assessment will look like.
- Interested in how ESSA may provide opportunities for states to rethink assessment for the future.
Recover and Rebuild Section Four
Vaccination Planning
Summary
- Partnered closely with the Department of Health.
- Prioritized by local health metrics.
- Focused on bringing salient stakeholders to the table to contribute to decisions.
April 2021
Planning for Summer and Next Year
Reflecting on In-Person Learning
Summary
- Schools have been almost 100 percent open since the start of the year.
- Makes WY focus and needs different than states not open most of the year.
- Reduced health and safety concerns allowed for focus on assessment and addressing learning loss/acceleration.
- Took about 6 weeks for the safety routines to feel "normal."
Planning for Summer and Next Year Two
ARP Challenges
Summary
- Navigating ARP along with legislative session.
- Funding decisions were in the hands of the legislators.
- State budget deficits made budgeting large funds like ARP difficult.
Planning for Summer and Next Year Three
Investing for Transformation and Equity
Summary
- ARP investment should focus on transforming not only schools but also communities.
- Community transformation means forming and investing in community partners.
District Stories : March 2020 – July 2021
In Wyoming, we spoke with educators in three districts, including two assistant district superintendents and a district superintendent. Interviewees were asked to speak candidly about their own experiences and views, which are not necessarily shared by or representative of the schools and districts in which they serve.
March 2020
Schools Close Suddenly
When schools suddenly closed in March, State Superintendent Jilian Balow was worried about the long-term effects on at-risk students being “pulled from the safest place that many of them know in their lives.” At the district-level, the educators we spoke with shared that they experienced a range of thoughts and feelings, including uncertainty and anxiety relating to the sudden closure of all schools in March 2020.
Priorities
To ensure diverse community needs could be met, State Superintendent Balow felt it was the state’s role to provide districts with supports and resources and leave decisions on how to move forward in the hands of each community. The educators we spoke with shared that in the wake of the first school closures, their key priorities centered on making sure that all students had access to the things they’d need to learn remotely. This didn’t just include laptops and internet access though—they were also concerned about how to meet students’ social and emotional needs.
Teaching and Learning
Each of the educators we spoke with shared concerns about how kids would continue to have access to high-quality instruction when traditional school was no longer an option. In response to the challenges they faced, they focused instruction on the most important academic standards at each grade level, and even went so far as to get state approval to allow small groups of students to return to school.
July 2020
Looking Ahead to a New School Year
In July 2020, the Wyoming Department of Education released “Smart Start Guidance” to support local education agencies in thinking about how they would begin the 2020-21 school year, whether in-person, remote, or hybrid. The state asked districts to consider the implications of reopening in four “focus areas” of communication, safety and wellness, school operations, and instruction and technology.
As they looked forward to summer and the beginning of the next school year in the fall of 2020, the educators we spoke with reflected on what they’ve learned and the challenges that still lie ahead of them in each of these areas of focus. They noted how the shift to remote learning had fundamentally altered the modes in which they communicated with students, perhaps permanently, and discussed the different scenarios that a return to in-person instruction might present.
August 2020
Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic
Like other chief state education officers across the country, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow was charged with helping Wyoming’s school districts on their path to reopening in the 2020-21 school year. But Wyoming’s decentralized education governance allowed local education agencies a greater degree of autonomy in making reopening decisions.
Given Wyoming’s comparatively low case rates in August 2020, many districts prioritized in-person learning in some form, including hybrid schedules. They continued to offer remote learning options for students who did not yet feel comfortable returning to in-person learning.
Priorities
As the school year began in districts across Wyoming, the state focused on addressing student trauma and getting students back up to speed after a long summer away. At the district level, the educators we spoke with were focused on student needs, both in terms of social-emotional learning (SEL) and wraparound support.
Teaching and Learning
Each of the Wyoming education leaders we spoke with talked about the school schedules they leveraged under the Wyoming Department of Education’s Smart Start guidelines to provide a safe option for families who wanted their students to return to school in person. Each of the districts we learned about offered a 2 day per week schedule for middle and high school students, while younger students had the option to attend school every day. Particularly in middle and high school, the hybrid model offered benefits for some students, like positive relationships and higher attendance, but had unintended consequences for others.
Successes
Though internet access had presented challenges for families across the state, in some places, access to fiber internet or wireless hotspots improved just in time for the 2020-21 school year. The educators we spoke with also shared that their districts had leveraged the summertime for professional development designed to build teachers’ skills and confidence related to virtual instruction.
Challenges
The educators we spoke with shared a range of concerns, from their ability to measure the impact of interrupted instruction on student learning to the stress of returning to school in person.
As the winter months began, rising numbers of cases of COVID-19 also concerned them, as high rates of infection forced them to develop contingency plans for potentially reclosing schools.
December 2020
What Comes Next for Districts?
As educators looked ahead to the second half of the 2020-21 school year, they spoke about COVID-19 fatigue, stress, and the need to continue offering individualized support for students and their families.
January 2021
The Path to Recovery
Under Superintendent Jillian Balow, Wyoming schools were able to preserve in-person instruction—with masks, physical distancing, and improved ventilation in school buildings—for the entire 2020-21 school year. The state issued guidance to school districts around transportation, class schedules, and COVID testing that would make in-person instruction feasible.
Though students were able to attend classes in-person throughout, the school year was still highly unusual. District superintendents that we interviewed commented that their educator workforce was unusually fatigued by the end of the school year. With summer programming usually scheduled to start immediately following the end of the traditional school year, one school district contracted with a local university to bring in tutors and coordinate literacy programming in early summer 2021, allowing its full-time educators to get some rest.
Reopening and Reemerging
Superintendents we interviewed in summer 2021 observed that in-school mask mandates and other health and safety precautions significantly lowered the incidence not only of COVID-19 but other common illnesses as well. They anticipated that some academic interventions would continue into the 2021-22 school year as part of an extended recovery process. They noted that while many school buildings were open, some students—especially high school students—remained fully remote or in hybrid learning.
By summer, educators had just begun to dig into student-level data to assess if there were any gaps that had opened up; early returns were mixed, but they anticipated there would be a greater need for supports in math compared to ELA, as well as credit recovery opportunities across subjects at the high school level.
The American Rescue Plan
Superintendent Balow and district superintendents we interviewed said that the Wyoming Legislature had taken a more active role in weighing in on how to best spend ARP funding controlled by the state than previous rounds of education relief funding, in alignment with spending needs and priorities in other parts of the state budget. But a July special legislative session to discuss how to align the use of those relief funds was cancelled, postponing further legislative deliberation until the end of 2021 at the earliest.
In Wyoming, ARP funds arrived in the midst of a $300 million statewide K-12 revenue shortfall related to the disruption caused by COVID-19 and a years-long downturn in Wyoming’s coal and gas extraction industry, historically a major source of revenue for the state. In April, the Wyoming Legislature adjourned its session without agreement on how to resolve the deficit.
Wyoming district leaders detailed a need to use relief funds to cover significantly increased utility and operating costs associated with running air filtration systems and keeping windows open in winter. They described a need to use relief funds to continue to invest in personal protective equipment for teachers and students within the school building.
July 2021
Lessons for the Future
In Wyoming, our interviewees anticipated that a few major changes would carry forward from the 2020-21 school year, including the flexibility that remote learning could be provided where needed. They described a desire to hold onto scheduling changes and other modifications to the school day that teachers and students enjoyed.
Lessons for the Future Two
Above all, the superintendents we spoke with said that it was crucially important to continue to invest in interpersonal relationships as a foundation for a full recovery. They said they did not want to lose sight of the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating impact and the life-altering effect it had on some families.
Missouri
Read more to find out how an appointed Commissioner of Education supports LEAs during the pandemic in a local-control state.
Read MoreNew Mexico
Read more to find out how a relatively newly appointed Secretary of Education approached serving New Mexico schools in a centralized state context.
Read MorePennsylvania
Read more to find out how two Secretaries of Education—one outgoing and the other stepping in to the role—supported schools during the pandemic in a decentralized state.
Read MoreWyoming
Read more to find out how an elected State Superintendent led within a highly decentralized state to support education during a global pandemic.
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