'We should all be mindful': LCSD1 considers fiscal impacts of legislative session

Yahoo

21-03-2025

CHEYENNE – Laramie County School District 1 officials are keeping a close watch on revenue streams after significant property tax relief and expansion of a school voucher program were signed into law earlier this month.
Property taxes directly fund local school districts, with a portion of these taxes flowing into the state's School Foundation Program account. The state pulls money from this account to fund inflationary costs of public school funding through the K-12 public school block grant.
With four major property tax relief programs passed last year, and a historical property tax cut signed into law earlier this month, revenue streams into the SFP are expected to take a direct hit.
Gov. Mark Gordon recently signed Senate File 69, which provides a 25% property tax exemption on the first $1 million of a single-family home's fair market value. The bill does not have an end date, nor does it include any backfill from the state.
Laramie County School District 1 Finance Director Jed Cicarelli said SF 69 will hurt the school district's ability to collect local taxes for funding operations. Decreased local revenue means a heavier reliance on the state for school funding, he said.
'As the local tax collections decrease, the pressure on (the SFP) will increase, because the state will have to make up those entitlement payments,' Cicarelli told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. 'But it also means there's less revenue coming into that account. … So you're kind of hitting it on both sides of the equation.'
House Bill 199, "Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act," is another indirect factor to the equation. HB 199 expands eligibility for Wyoming's Education Savings Account (ESA) program by removing the income-based requirement for grades K-12 and increasing the per-child, per-year amount from $6,000 to $7,000.
This program will cost the state an estimated $44.3 million per year out of the SFP starting in 2026, according to the Legislative Service Office.
'Both pieces of legislation have kind of the same effect on … that increased demand on the School Foundation Account,' Cicarelli said. 'We should all be mindful of how that does impact our local governments.'
On a positive note, however, Cicarelli said Wyoming schools still have a state entitlement that ensures adequate funding. And a recent decision from a state district court judge in Laramie County upped the ante on that entitlement, after he found Wyoming has unconstitutionally underfunded its public schools.
The decision was released toward the end of the legislative session, and Wyoming lawmakers wasted no time in restoring the full $66.3 million external cost adjustment through a school recalibration House bill.
Declining student enrollment
Wyoming's largest school district has lost around 1,000 students since the pandemic, and Cicarelli said lower student enrollment reduces state funding to the school district.
LCSD1 was originally estimated to receive an extra $9.3 million in funding from the state this year. However, Cicarelli said the decline in student enrollment is not reflected in the $9.3 million cost adjustment, and district enrollment numbers fell by another 129 students last fall.
He estimated the lower enrollment would cost the district $3.3 million in state funds.
Revenue projections for LCSD1 are also down by $1.4 million, or half a percentage point, Cicarelli told school board members Monday night. He later told the WTE this decline is not a significant concern, and better estimations will be available in the final quarter of the year.
The passage of Senate File 73 also dips into school district funding, since it now requires the district's central office to allocate a portion of its revenue to district-approved and state-approved charter schools.
'That money will come out of our funding and go to those (three charter) schools,' Cicarelli said.
However, it has not yet been determined what these fiscal impacts will be. Multiple other bills passed by the Legislature were also discussed Monday night, with many of them expected to have some fiscal impact to the school district.
Among those was HB 172, a bill that repeals a majority of gun-free zones throughout the state, including in public schools. Cicarelli said the bill could affect costs for insurance, staff training and lock boxes, but the significance of those costs has yet to be determined.