• Gillette library books, anti-trans at UW, mental health task force.
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Lawmakers recommend $68 million in school inflation adjustment for 2024-2025
CASPER — Lawmakers have begun their first talks on an inflation adjustment for the upcoming 2024-2025 school year, recommending the state set aside an additional $68 million to help Wyoming’s schools keep pace with rising costs.
The Joint Education and Appropriations committees met together Wednesday in Casper to hear updates about school funding from finance and economic experts and the Wyoming Department of Education. It was the first step in the Legislature’s annual “external cost adjustment” process when lawmakers supplement the money schools receive under Wyoming’s school funding model to account for inflation.
Lawmakers on the Education committee voted to recommend a full cost adjustment for the 2024-2025 school year which would distribute roughly $30.3 million extra to schools for staff, $30.3 million for “educational materials” and $7.4 million for energy.
‘Standing up to the BLM’ – Open house on BLM plan lacked answers for citizens
ROCK SPRINGS — Over the last few weeks, the Alternative B plan, which is one of four proposals in the BLM’s Rock Springs resource management plan (RMP), has stirred up emotions among members of the Wyoming Legislature, county commission, local government and citizens.
Campbell County Public Library board tinkers with collection development policy
GILLETTE — The Campbell County Public Library Board will have to wait a bit longer before books with graphic sexual content in the teen and children’s sections are moved to the adult section through the library’s weeding process.
The board spent another meeting going over potential changes to the collection development policy.
At the meeting last week, board member Chelsie Collier suggested adding language to the policy to specifically outline what types of books would not be allowed in the children’s or teen areas.
Task Force recommends bill to offer mental health services to K12 schools
SHERIDAN — As Wyoming and its schools aim to support students’ mental health, the Mental Health and Vulnerable Adult Task Force recommended a draft bill to help fund mental health services in the state’s schools.
The task force includes legislators and representation from the Department of Health, the Department of Family Services, the Department of Corrections and the state Superintendent of Public Instruction. The body is tasked with, among other things, coordinating mental health services for Wyoming’s schools.
During its Sept. 28 meeting, the body received a great deal of information about mental health services in the state’s K-12 schools and considered a draft bill to appropriate funds for K-12 public schools to hire counselors, school nurses and student support staff.
FROM WYOFILE: Out-of-state anti-trans group stages protest at UW sorority
Three out-of-state activists placed flyers and rocks with discriminatory statements Thursday evening near a University of Wyoming sorority that made history last year by becoming the first to admit a transgender woman, police and LGBTQ advocates said.
University police responded near the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house after the three activists began placing flyers on vehicles parked along King Avenue, school spokesman Chad Baldwin told WyoFile. The three also placed rocks painted with messages on the ground and wrote in chalk on the sidewalk.
Many of the messages, Baldwin said, related to the sorority’s admission of the transgender sister. Wyoming Equality, an LGTBQ advocacy group, described the messages as derogatory, hateful and intimidating.
A new owl species has bred in Wyoming. Not everyone’s thrilled.
Jackson photojournalist and birder Tom Stanton was cross-country skiing in Grand Teton National Park in late April, looking for owls, when he heard an unfamiliar song. He froze.
“In my head, I was like, ‘I’ve never heard a great horned owl make that kind of noise,” he said. “But it was coming from an area where there had been a nesting pair of great horned owls a couple of years prior.”
Intrigued, he waited. “About a half hour later, they did what I call the monkey call,” hooting back and forth. “I was like, ‘I’ve never heard great horns do that.’”
He skied over to the old nest site. An owl flashed by in the corner of his vision, too fast to identify. But then he saw a cottonwood tree with the type of cavity owls use for nests. A stray feather lay near the opening.
Stanton did what any good birder would do: He returned the following day.
“I was kind of sitting watching the cavity from a distance,” he said. “And all of a sudden, up pops the barred [owl].”
There was a moment of cognitive dissonance, he said, because Wyoming isn’t barred owl habitat. There have been sightings, but they are rare. He could see the pairs’ distinctive black eyes, however, and used his birding app to confirm their songs.
These were barred owls.
