School board receives update on CWC-BOCHES partnership

At the June Hot Springs County School Board Trustees meeting, Matt Johnson, director of the high school dual credit program for Central Wyoming College (CWC) presented the Board of Cooperative Higher Education Services (CWC-BOCHES) budget and items for discussion.

BOCHES is a partnership with CWC and Hot Springs County School District #1 to offer dual and concurrent enrollment in the high school. It is based on the Wyoming constitution that states they have to provide the opportunity for high school students to earn at least 12 college credits by the time they graduate high school. CWC provides such services to Fremont, Hot Springs and Teton Counties. Its sole purpose is to provide those post-secondary opportunities for high school students, John said that seven of the nine boards he presented had to approve the budget as presented.

Johnson said that this Fremont County budget doesn’t impact students in Hot Springs County and they are anticipating it decreased about 70% for the mill levy. He added, “We anticipate being short, for fiscal year 25 of roughly $827,000.”

Johnson also said, “Our biggest expense is the dual enrollment tuition fees. And that’s the one that varies. So more students take classes from the college. The BOCHES budget pays tuition and fees to CWC. If we have more concurrent enrollment courses in the high school, students tend to take fewer classes directly from CWC.”

The anticipated total expenses for the Hot Springs budget is about $65,683 for this year.

Johnson said, ”My recommendation to the board would be to keep the mill and a quarter mill, even though the revenues would be down. But with that, we would use about $10,000 in reserve funding. So getting that down. Being more responsible to your taxpayers so that we’re not just accumulating a big surplus of funds that are not or aren’t being used.

Superintendent Dustin Hunt said, “There have been some discussions about a couple of different options. You know that in compensation, some of our dual credit folks that teach the dual credit courses talked about the possibility of one of two options there. Either increasing what we pay those dual credit instructors per student for the additional workload that they have, or using some of those funds to offset or defer some of the FTE full time equivalency pieces in the general fund budget. And then we’ve also been approached by our county commissioners with the possibility of having a rental building for adult learning through CWC as well as GED and some community courses over at the Common Ground building. Those are possibilities.”

Johnson explained there are two points of additional discussion. One is about potentially increasing the mill levy to increase payment to teachers for each additional student. The other discussion is about using BOCHES funds to help support the potential BOCHES outreach facility in Thermopolis.

Johnson added, “That’s something that CWC hasn’t had for quite a number of years. Part of that space, the rental space, would be the GED program, and they would provide their own funding for their portion of this space. And then if there’s funding through the BOCHES mill levy available, possibly using those funds to help CWC offset the cost of that rental space and providing services.” He added, “The recommendation would be to increase to the half mil, which is the most that the board can levy without having to go to a vote of the public.”

Trustee Clay VanAntwerp said, “I’m in favor of having basically a balanced budget, like what we need. That’s what we should be levying for. And I like the idea of paying the teachers more. I mean that’s a retention thing. It’s something that we’ve heard from our community that paying our teachers is important. And I think that supporting the GED program and stuff like that, we’ve heard about that too. So I think that’s important. But I’m not so sure about the outreach. I mean, I haven’t heard anything from the community on that one. So I would like more input from the community before we start levying for that.”

The board held a discussion about rent at the Common Grounds building. At the end of that, Johnson said, “The proposal that the commissioners and CWC have to have kind of agreed to would be to rent the space $3,000 a month and up that, $12,000 would come from the G.E.D. program and then $24,000 if the levy is supported. That comes from BOCHES to help that outreach facility in Thermopolis…The commissioners have purchased the building and they will form an MOU between the commissioners and CWC to settle on an agreement.”

Trustee Joe Martinez asked, “What would CWC’s skin in the game be? Because kind of from what I’m hearing at this point, I mean, there’s no cost to CWC at this point.”

Over Zoom Kathy Wells, Vice President of Academics at CWC replied, “There’s actually a pretty significant skin in the game. One of your board members mentioned that he hadn’t heard anything from the community that there was an interest, a desire or a need for CWC to have a presence in Hot Springs County. We’ve heard the opposite for about two years now. Hot Springs County residents have been coming to CWC after meeting with them. And I’ve been meeting with them in Thermopolis, various members of the community from all different areas of industry. indicating they want more on site presences from CWC. So those conversations did reach the commissioners. And they reached out to CWC to see if there was an opportunity in partnering to provide some of these services.”

Wells continued and said, “What we would do as far as skin in the game. We have had our physical plant look at it. Structurally, the building is very sound and doesn’t have much need for it as far as remodeling or reconstruction or upgrading anything. The inside of the building needs to work. So CWC would have to put some significant funding into remodeling so that the spaces inside are conducive to higher education. There’s a big open space right now. It’s hard to teach multiple classes or have someone working with the student tutoring….it’s hard to do that when you have a big open space. So we are going to have to remodel the space. And it is very likely that the staffing in the building will come from CWC funds.”

Wells also said that CWC will set some goals and they are looking into the immediate needs of the Hot Springs County community to make their plan on what services to provide.

Superintendent Hunt told the board the only action they need to take in this meeting is to decide on the approval of the BOCHES budget. However, the board and Hunt discussed that they will need more time to make the decision on the mill levy and whether to keep it the same or increase. Trustee VanAntwerp also said that the commissioners have not communicated with him. Trustee Martinez also said it will take some time to work out the details on the proposals.

After further discussion, the school board voted and passed the approval of the BOCHES budget for $97,169. The other items they discussed will be decided upon later after the trustees reach out to members of the community and do more research. They will decide in the next month whether to keep the quarter mill the same or raise it either .3 or .5 mills.

In the superintendent report, Mr. Hunt discussed how the students responded to their STEM camp and how much of an impact it had on their learning experiences. The annual board retreat will be July 19-20 in Landrer. Hunt also discussed they are preparing to learn about AI and the acceptable use and good citizenship with AI.

Additionally, the district has hired two full time music teachers to join teacher Nathan Gertler. They will serve both the middle and high schools.

The district is working on a summer opportunity for students and parents to meet their new band and choir teacher before school starts. Hunt added, “We’re looking forward to them collaborating as a team and figuring out all the different things they can share. They have a lot of various talents and we’re excited for them to build a team.”

Hunt also discussed they are working with staff members to obtain the training necessary to provide a CDL course for juniors and seniors in high school.