Wyoming teachers warn that the proposed budget in the legislature could be detrimental to the quality of education.
The 2014-2015 budget proposes reducing by half the money available to school districts for increasing public school teachers’ salaries. This has come after several senate bills discussing the issue of state allocated funding.
Teachers will see a pay hike in the first year of the biennium, a specified period of two years, but not in the second.
Kyler Gallinger, a first grade teacher in Casper, Wyo., said salaries must incrementally increase in order to keep and recruit effective teachers and highly trained professionals.
“We have to be able to compete globally,” said Gallinger. “[That] starts with teachers educating our youth. Raising their salaries will rank us as highly qualified professionals.”
Gallinger said to compete in a global intellectual area, Wyoming must have high quality teachers educating youth.
With Wyoming teachers being some of the highest paid in the region, however, Republicans such as Senate Appropriations Chairman Eli Bebout have shown little opposition.
Democrats such as Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, have expressed concern in relation to the proposal. In an interview with Wyoming Public Media, Rothfuss explained his thoughts about working teachers’ perceptions of the state’s purchasing power.
Purchasing power is the amount of goods or services that one unit of money can buy. This bill allows for the inflation of purchasing power, meaning that the amount of money that Wyoming has been allocated to teachers’ salary is less than it used to be.
The K-12 funding structure will be reevaluated next year and the current payment issue will be further addressed at that time.
