GREEN RIVER — The Sweetwater County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees voted unanimously Monday to adopt a $67.8 million budget for fiscal year 2027, closing out months of work to address more than $1.2 million in lost state funding tied to declining enrollment and a legislative overhaul of Wyoming’s school finance formula.

Katie Harder, business manager for SCSD No. 2, walked the board through the budget in detail before the vote, with much of the discussion centered on pressure facing the district’s general fund, in addition to the discontinuation of indoor track, spring tennis and spring golf.

General fund pressures

The district’s general fund, which covers most day-to-day operating costs including salaries, is being squeezed from multiple directions this year. District enrollment declined by 97 students, and under a new state-mandated two-year rolling average for calculating funding, the district’s funding-eligible enrollment dropped by 94 students rather than the 65 it would have lost under the old three-year average.

“If we were still at the three-year average, there would have been 29 more students counted,” Superintendent Dr. Scott Cooper said. “Times that by $20,000, that’s a lot of funding. So we lost that chunk, too.”

Property tax revenue feeding the general fund also declined, as the districts assessed valuation dropped 1.54% this year and the countywide valuation fell 2.09%.

That decline, combined with the new funding formula, pushed the district from a recapture district, which historically generated more local revenue than the state formula required and returned the surplus, into an entitlement district that must now request roughly $818,000 from the state to meet its funding guarantee, a figure Harder cautioned remains a projection subject to revision through May 2027.

“We used to bring in so much property tax from the mines and all our industry partners out there that the state said, ‘that’s more than you need to operate’,” Cooper said. “Now we’re coming up 800,000 below where we should be from the revenues from our local taxes. So now we have to ask the state, please give us 800,000.”

The district’s total state funding for the year comes to about $48.7 million, an increase of roughly $4.5 million over last year driven largely by new money directed to the classroom under the state’s instructional silo. Harder said that increase does not translate to flexibility elsewhere in the general fund, since it is earmarked for instructional costs.

Several trustees framed the budget as evidence of years of careful financial management by the district, management they said is now being penalized under the new funding model. The district had historically relied on interest earned on reserves to backfill shortfalls in areas like activities. Under the new formula, the state now recaptures 50% of that interest.

“Traditionally, we’ve been able to absorb some of that through the interest we’ve earned because we’ve been frugal,” trustee Tom Wilson said. “But now, based on the model, that requires us to give back 50% of the interest that we earn. We have to send 260,000 some odd dollars back to the state because we were frugal with our money.”

Wilson said the change struck him as a penalty for the district’s own fiscal discipline.

“We’re elected to this board to be custodians of the public’s money, and to provide a budget that is sustainable and responsible,” Wilson said.

Trustee Tate Davis echoed the sentiment, framing the current budget as the result of the board doing what it was elected to do.

“We could roll the dice and come up short, or we can do what’s fiscally responsible right now, and ensure that programs in the future don’t get cut,” Davis said. “We were appointed, elected to this position, to be fiscally responsible.”

Salaries and other funds

The board and the Green River Education Association agreed to raise the certified staff salary schedule base by $5,500, with the experience step increased to $1,000, and to raise the support staff schedule by $1.48 an hour. The district’s contribution to the Wyoming Retirement System also increased.

Of the $50.7 million in general fund appropriations, salaries and benefits take up $41.27 million, or 81%.

Harder said the district’s nutrition services fund is projected to run another deficit, requiring roughly a $500,000 subsidy from the general fund, similar to last year. 

The district’s debt margin stands at about $109.6 million but the district currently carries no outstanding debt.

Activity cuts part of broader reductions

The budget also includes the discontinuation of indoor track, spring tennis and spring golf for the 2026-27 school year, part of roughly $245,000 in savings through activity reductions and stipend changes. 

“[Indoor track] is also the most expensive out of the three. That was like $36,000 every winter. Spring tennis, spring golf were in the $15,000 range each spring,” Cooper said. “Part of it’s about funding, but a bigger part of it is about the decisions this board has to make around budgeting moving forward.”

Those cuts sit alongside about $1.2 million in non-instructional reductions districtwide, including the elimination of several custodial, maintenance and food service roles, and a reduction of administrative staff from 28 positions to 23 over the past year.

“We saved $1.2 million from October to May just absorbing through attrition,” Cooper said. “Someone leaves, retires, resigns, whatever, we’re like, let’s suck it up here in this building, over in maintenance, custodians, nutrition, just about everywhere. Let’s not go out and hire a new person.”

Cooper told the board he intends to establish a community budget workshop committee beginning in January to gather earlier input from staff, parents and community stakeholders before the district’s preliminary budget presentation each May.