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Meet Your Candidates: Wyoming’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction

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Meet Your Candidates: Wyoming’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction


CHEYENNE, Wyo. (Wyoming Information Now) – We reached out to all candidates submitting for Wyoming State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Under are the candidates operating who responded to our request. The knowledge under is written by the candidates and unedited by Wyoming Information Now.

REPUBLICAN PRIMARY CANDIDATES

NAME: Megan Degenfelder

State Superintendent of Public Instruction-Main Candidate- Wyoming Megan Degenfelder(Ben Winckler Pictures | Ben Winckler Pictures)

AGE: 33

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OCCUPATION: Oil & fuel authorities & regulatory affairs supervisor, a earlier government at WY Division of Training

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: N/A

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN CHEYENNE OR WYOMING? I’m a sixth era Wyomingite and lifelong resident. Whereas I grew up in Casper, I lived in Cheyenne for a number of years, and my husband grew up in Cheyenne. We now reside in Laramie.

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING? As a product of Wyoming’s public college system and the College of Wyoming, I used to be in a position to construct a profitable life and profession right here in my residence state. I’m operating for State Superintendent to make sure that our future generations have simply as many, if no more, alternatives to have a profitable future in Wyoming.

WHAT IS CHEYENNE’S/WYOMING’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE?

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Because it pertains to schooling, I consider the most important problem is making certain our schooling system is nimble sufficient to greatest put together college students for a profitable future with high-paying jobs proper right here in Wyoming. So as to take action, we should deal with the instructor scarcity, enhance literacy charges earlier than third grade, accomplice with native industries to arrange college students for the present office, present as many choices and profession pathways to college students and fogeys as attainable, and hold authorities out of the classroom, from radical political agendas to burdensome reporting and necessities, so we are able to deal with what’s most important- educating our youngsters.

ZOOM INTERVIEW: Degenfelder

NAME: Thomas Kelly

Superintendent of Public Instruction- Wyoming- Tom Kelly
Superintendent of Public Instruction- Wyoming- Tom Kelly(Valeria)

AGE: 52

OCCUPATION: College Chair of Political Science

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Appointed boards and commissions.

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*HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN CHEYENNE OR WYOMING? Three years

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING? Recruited by Wyoming State GOP members

WHAT IS CHEYENNE’S/WYOMING’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE? Breaking the dependancy to federal cash, which is undermining state sovereignty

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Ph.D. in American Authorities, MA in Training, professor, former public college instructor, and a number of other youngsters in Wyoming colleges.

ZOOM INTERVIEW: Kelly

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NAME: Brian Schroeder

Superintendent of Public Instruction- Preliminary Candidates- Wyoming- Brian Schroeder
Superintendent of Public Instruction- Preliminary Candidates- Wyoming- Brian Schroeder(Valeria Fugate)

AGE: 57

OCCUPATION: Superintendent of Public Instruction

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Served as Superintendent since January 2022

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN CHEYENNE OR WYOMING? Since 2019

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING? I’m operating as a result of I need to assist Wyoming schooling to return its focus to the true function of schooling: to study to suppose. I need to restore the philosophical integrity of the classroom, put mother and father first, and take away indoctrination from (or forestall it from taking root in) our lecture rooms.

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WHAT IS CHEYENNE’S/WYOMING’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE? Wyoming’s largest problem in schooling is its dependence on federal {dollars}. In current weeks, the federal authorities has proven its hand, and it’s obvious that the strings tied to federal {dollars} will not be well worth the cash. Wyoming doesn’t have a funding drawback, we now have a spending drawback. We should drastically cut back our dependence on federal {dollars}.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Web site: Schroederforwyoming.com

ZOOM INTERVIEW: Schroeder

NAME: Jennifer Zerba

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Superintendent of Public Instruction- Preliminary Candidates -Wyoming- Jennifer Zerba
Superintendent of Public Instruction- Preliminary Candidates -Wyoming- Jennifer Zerba(Valeria Fugate)

AGE: 51

OCCUPATION: Educator and College of Wyoming Doctoral Scholar

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE:

PARTY AFFILIATION: Republican

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN CHEYENNE OR WYOMING? I used to be born in Casper, WY.

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING? What’s the level of schooling? What are we doing if we aren’t making ready college students for all times? It’s time we now have somebody because the superintendent of public instruction who is aware of what it’s wish to be within the trenches. I presently work for Natrona County College District as a board-certified substitute instructor and Wyoming Skilled Teacher that may train enterprise, enterprise administration, enterprise administration, and human service whereas I full my schooling doctorate in Studying, Design, and Know-how. I perceive first-hand the results of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in funds cuts during the last a number of years. I had watched the TV present Undercover Boss and similar to within the present, selections are being made by individuals who do not know the way it impacts the folks they’re making the selections for. I’ve skilled simply that. Folks in Cheyenne are making insurance policies, initiatives, and procedures with out understanding how these have an effect on educators and college students. Educators are burnt out and quitting the occupation or leaving the state to coach college students in these states. I’m dedicated to monetary duty, supporting educators, upholding the Wyoming Structure, and a talented workforce.

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WHAT IS CHEYENNE’S/WYOMING’S’ BIGGEST CHALLENGE? Wyoming’s largest problem in schooling is intertwined: standing up for our educators and upholding the Wyoming Structure whereas making certain our college students graduate with expertise that allow them to make good decisions with the huge alternatives offered to them. Retention and getting extra educators needs to be on the highest of the record. 65% of educators would give up if they may. In Natrona County, we had over 130 job openings for 2022- 2023.

www.zerba4WYSOPI.com

ZOOM INTERVIEW: Zerba

NAME: Robert White: Didn’t reply by deadline.

DEMOCRAT PRIMARY CANDIDATE

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NAME: Sergio Maldonado Sr.

Sergio Maldonado Sr. - Primary Candidate- State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Sergio Maldonado Sr. – Main Candidate- State Superintendent of Public Instruction(Valeria Fugate)

AGE: 68

OCCUPATION: 23 years as knowledgeable public educator

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Sergio has served two phrases on his native college board; He was a candidate for SD 25 in 2018.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN WYOMING? Sergio was born and spent most of his youth on the Wind River Reservation, leaving to pursue his schooling. He returned residence to Wind River 16 years in the past.

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING? It has been disappointing to see successive Superintendents politicizing the schooling of our kids. Our college students deserve a lot extra. Below my management, schooling is not going to be politicized to the detriment of our college students. Each pupil will obtain a top quality schooling in collaboration with Wyoming academics, the administration, and neighborhood enter.

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WHAT IS CHEYENNE/WYOMING’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE? Each youngster, it doesn’t matter what their zip code, deserves a high-quality schooling distributed with love no matter age, gender, race, class, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. That’s what schooling is about and that’s what I’ll ship.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: As Wyoming’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Sergio will deal with these points:

  • Equitably fund our colleges
  • College security first
  • Assist our academics
  • Native management, native enter
  • Each pupil succeeds
  • Public funds for public colleges solely
  • Early childhood schooling for all youngsters

Copyright 2022 Wyoming Information Now. All rights reserved.



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Wyoming

U.S. and Wyoming Flags returning to full staff tomorrow

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U.S. and Wyoming Flags returning to full staff tomorrow


U.S. and State of Wyoming flags being flown at half-staff. (Gregory Hirst, Oil City File)

CASPER, Wyo. — Governor Mark Gordon’s office is reminding the public that on January 28, both the U.S. and the Wyoming flags will be returned to full staff, as of sunset.

That’s according to a release from the governor’s office.

“Flags have been flying at half-staff for 30 days in accordance with U.S. flag code following the death of President Jimmy Carter,” the release stated.

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President Carter passed away on December 29, 2024. He was 100 years old.

The Wyoming and the U.S. flag were flown at half staff since Dec. 29, save for last Monday, which was Inauguration Day.

Governor Gordon, at the behest of newly-appointed President Trump, ordered the flag to fly at full staff on Jan. 20, to recognize the Inauguration of Trump.

“It is correct for our country to celebrate the inauguration of a new president and honor it with our flags flying high, just as we should continue to honor the life and legacy of President Carter by returning them to half-staff on January 21. Both actions mark our respect and reverence for the importance of these times,” Governor Gordon said. 

Flags were again lowered to half-staff on Jan. 21.

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Electricity sales tax cut advances, to delight of industry and chagrin of Wyoming towns and counties – WyoFile

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Electricity sales tax cut advances, to delight of industry and chagrin of Wyoming towns and counties – WyoFile


A legislative committee narrowly advanced a measure on Friday to repeal sales tax on electricity in the midst of rising electrical rates — a $43.4 million annual savings for ratepayers, according to the bill’s fiscal note.

But there’s a huge downside to Senate File 128, “Repeal of sales tax on electricity,” according to critics and even some supporters of the concept.

By far, Wyoming’s largest electrical consumers are industrial users: mines, oil and natural gas producers and refiners, and especially a booming data center industry in Laramie County. Many towns and counties rely on sales taxes from those industries — including from electricity — to support public services, including services those very industries necessitate.

For example, Evansville Police Chief Mike Thompson described the revenue base of his 2,700 person community as more industrial than residential. The Casper-adjacent town, home to an oil refinery and a multitude of other large industrial operations, is almost completely reliant on various sales taxes to support public services.

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“It’s going to cripple our community,” Thompson said.

An electric power meter stands outside a residential home in Casper. (Dustin Bleizeffer/WyoFile)

Likewise, Cheyenne has seen wild success in courting manufacturing and data facilities — enterprises whose primary net contribution to the city and county are taxes, Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins testified before the Senate Revenue Committee.

“I see data centers as our Jonah field,” Collins said, referencing Sublette County’s famed oil and gas development. “I see them as our Campbell County coal mines. We don’t have great mineral wealth here in Laramie County to fuel our economy, as many parts of our state do.”

Demand for electricity in and around Cheyenne is projected to increase from about 350 megawatts today to 1,200 megawatts by 2030, based on anticipated growth in manufacturing and data centers, according to Collins. “So in today’s dollars, that would cost Cheyenne about $4.4 million if we take the sales tax off electricity,” he said.

Those concerns were echoed by the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and Wyoming County Commissioners Association. They noted that proposed tax reductions for homeowners, as well as a wide range of pending tax reductions for extractive industries, will likely starve small governments of the revenue they need.

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All of those anxieties might be assuaged, however, according to the bill’s proponents, including lead sponsor Republican Sen. Troy McKeown from Gillette. Lawmakers are working to partially negate the revenue loss from property tax relief for towns and counties McKeown said. Plus, according to Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, there are plans in the works to offset local governments’ losses from SF 128 with a new tax that taps electric utilities and their customers outside Wyoming.

“It’s going to cripple our community.”

Mike Thompson, Evansville Police Chief

“We would export a very large amount of tax burden and we would collect more than the sales tax we’re giving up,” Case said.

Lawmakers discussed such a strategy in April, noting Wyoming is particularly suited to shift the tax burden because it exports more electricity than it uses — although the volume of that export of electrons has been declining in recent years, according to Power Company of Wyoming Director of Communications and Government Relations Kara Choquette, who testified before the committee and participated in interim deliberations on the topic.

Nonetheless, a bill to implement a new tax to offset the revenue loss of SF 128 had yet to materialize by Friday afternoon.

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“There’s a bill to be filed in the House that accomplishes — kind of looks at these things so they have to all fit together,” Case said. “It’s complicated.”

Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, pictured during the 2025 legislative session. (Mike Vanata/WyoFile)

Underpinning that potential bill is a report by a legislative “electric tax subcommittee,” which was appropriated $50,000 to hire a law firm to analyse the legality of imposing taxes that extend beyond Wyoming’s borders. The Senate Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee, chaired by Case, met behind closed doors with the hired lawyers at the Capitol on Thursday to hear their analysis.

“The purpose of the briefing yesterday was to hear from our lawyers that we hired,” Case told the Revenue Committee on Friday. “So it was privileged lawyer communications.”

Based on that briefing, “It’s clear that we can do that,” Case added. “We absolutely can do that.”

Whether or not such a bill materializes in time to offset revenue losses from SF 128, a bevy of lobbyists, who regularly comment on legislation, said they emphatically support the bill, including those representing Wyoming rural electric co-ops, Wyoming agricultural industries, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming and Wyoming Mining Association. Monthly electricity bills are one of the top expenses for doing business, they testified.

“We have a far larger industrial load in Wyoming than you do residential — that’s not true for most states,” Jody Levin told lawmakers on behalf of the trona industry and the Wyoming Mining Association. “So the increases that we have seen in electricity have been borne largely by your industrial consumers.”

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McKeown tested Evansville Police Chief Thompson’s claims regarding the potential impact to his community, and bristled at his pleas for more careful scrutiny of the measure. “It’s actually pretty simple. It just takes the sales [tax] off electricity,” McKeown murmured to a fellow committee member before asking for a vote.

The measure advanced with a 3-2 vote.





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Rod Miller: The Separation Of Church And School In Wyoming

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Rod Miller: The Separation Of Church And School In Wyoming


I want you to read something, and see if you find any ambiguity or waffle-language in what it says. Here it is.

Constitution of the State of Wyoming, Article 1, Section 19, Appropriations for sectarian or religious societies or institutions prohibited. No money of the state shall ever be given or appropriated to any sectarian or religious society or institution.

It appears to me that Wyoming’s Founders minced no words in saying that our tax dollars should never find their way into the collection plates of church-run schools. Never.

If you’d like a clear definition of the constitutional separation of church and state, read Article 1, Section 19 of our foundational document alongside the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment prevents government from establishing any religion, and also from monkeying around with a citizen’s right to practice any religion.

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The Wyoming Constitution says that religious organizations will never get one thin dime of taxpayer money. Things don’t get much more separate than that. Things are rendered to either Caesar or to God, not to both.

And yet, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is hell-bent on violating that constitutional separation. They are pushing through legislation that would provide taxpayer dollars through public vouchers to private schools, including religious institutions, to compete with public schools in Wyoming.

That sounds a lot to me like the Freedom Caucus zealots want to establish publicly-funded madrassahs where the “Four R’s” – readin’, ritin’, rithmetic and religious dogma – will be taught to Wyoming students. One need only look toward theocratic states like Pakistan or Iran to see how that turns out.

I really don’t give a rat’s ass who teaches our kids, as long as our students are taught critical-thinking skills along with subjects that will make them good citizens of the Big Empty. But, for the life of me, I don’t see how immersing our students in Levitical Law, or the mysteries of endtime prophecy will help them one damn bit

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus as much as anyone does. I’m saved, baptized in the Holy Ghost, and have several gifts of the Spirit. One of those God-given gifts is the gift of discernment, and I can spot bullshit from a mile away. And the Freedom Caucus wanting to use public money to pay preachers strikes me as bullshit.

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Nevertheless, they mount their pulpits and sermonize that their religious doctrine trumps our Wyoming Constitution. The zeal of their house hath eaten them up, (Psalm 69:9), and they want religious zeal to gobble up the rest of Wyoming. All on the taxpayers wallet, I might add.

If the Freedom Caucus can ram its school voucher program, including for religious schools, through the legislature, then it will be up to the Wyoming Supreme Court to maintain the crucial separation between the church and the Cowboy State.

If that happens, expect to see an army of out-of-state Pharisees…. er, ah, I mean Freedom Caucus lawyers…. argue for a religious state in Wyoming like they are arguing for the salvation of Christianity at the Council of Nicea.

They’ll thump on their Bibles, and quote the prophet Daniel to try to prove that there is no difference between religion and the state, and that taxpayer money should fund religious instruction.. They’ll try to convince our black-robed Supreme Court justices that Oklahoma, Kentucky and Pakistan agree with Freedom Caucus dogma, therefore Wyoming should, too.

But, I’ll bet a dollar to a donut that the Wyoming Supreme Court knows exactly what our Constitution has to say about that.

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And now, you know too.

Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com



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