The Wyoming Department of Education’s budget request for 2025-2026 does not include any reinstated funding for St. Stephens Indian School.
The Wyoming Legislature decided to pull funding from St. Stephens last year, citing a lack of communication from the Bureau of Indian Education, which had assumed operations at the school in the wake of the administrative upheaval that took place there in 2022.
During a Joint Appropriations Committee budget meeting last month, Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander, said the federal agency still has “not been responsive” to attempts by the state to “re-enter into a conversation (about) additional funding.”
“I believe that (the state) reached out multiple times,” Larsen said. “There’s been no effort by that agency to participate in further conversation.”
WDE chief operations officer Trent Carroll said his agency has made “multiple attempts” to collect data from the BIE in order to “calculate a funding amount for St. Stephens” that legislators could consider for the next biennium, but the information was not forthcoming from the federal agency, so the WDE funding request for St. Stephens was set at $0.
The legislature’s 2024 budget session is scheduled to convene Feb. 12.