Legislature keeps funding intact for Ten Sleep School design

TEN SLEEP - “Design for new Ten Sleep School is in the budget,” Superintendent Jimmy Phelps said during his legislative update to the Washakie County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees Monday.

In addition to the funding for the design of the new building remaining in the statewide budget, Phelps said that the Wyoming School Facilities Commission approved the vocational building as an enhancement, which means that the district will not have to pay for up to 5,000 feet of the new building.

Phelps also noted that no changes would occur to the K-12 funding model this upcoming year.

“When we do our budget workshop later this month we will be working with basically the same numbers we worked with last year,” Phelps said.

Districts were expected to go into a difficult budget year, but the two chambers of the Wyoming Legislature were unable to agree on cuts to the school model or additional ways to fund the school model during the session that ended last Wednesday, April 7.

EIGHT-PERIOD DAY

Principal Levi Collins introduced the idea of changing the schedule from a seven-period day to an eight-period day for classes. English teacher Kate Decker led the discussion by suggesting different ways that the schedule can be altered to accommodate an eight-period schedule and how that would affect both students and teachers.

Ten Sleep School currently uses a seven-period schedule with classes being around 50 minutes each, with a change likely leading to 45-minute periods. The school currently alternates between a red and blue day schedule on Friday which includes students going to half of their courses every other Friday.

Decker said the change would allow for students to become more involved in elective courses, but noted that more discussion was needed regarding how each day would need to be planned out.

This was initial discussion with the board, both Collins and Decker said they would be doing more research into the subject and are anticipating a plan to be presented next month.

OTHER BUSINESS

The board held discussion on whether or not to consolidate classrooms and make it a 1:1 ratio where it is one teacher per elementary grade level. The board discussed the financial impacts of federal funding, how it would affect staffing as well as an overall educational target for the district in the future that they would need to look into before making a decision.

The board approved on second reading a change to policy 3.10 regarding the hours of employment for teachers. This change would allow teachers to head home on Fridays at 1:10 p.m. unless the day is scheduled as a teacher workday which will have teachers stay in the building until 3:45 p.m.

This change was implemented to add clarity to the policy; students are already released on a half-day schedule for Friday and this change would allow for teachers to leave earlier unless required to stay until 3:45 p.m.