CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Two Cheyenne parents recently filed a petition against the Wyoming School Facilities Commission for approving a controversial recommendation to close eight historic neighborhood schools. Members of the commission jeered at the lawsuit at a meeting Tuesday, but the state’s chief education official doesn’t think it’s a laughing matter.
On Friday, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder released a statement backing up the lawsuit filed in Laramie County District Court.
“I ran for State Superintendent because I was tired of the rights of parents being stifled,” Degenfelder said in the news release. “Parents have a fundamental and constitutional right to direct their child’s education and we must stop treating the concerns of parents as a laughing matter.”
Degenfelder added that the commissioners’ response to the court filing showed a lack of empathy to the plights of local parents.
“These Cheyenne parents are concerned because their neighborhood schools are being taken from them,” the superintendent said. “They have every right to seek legal redress in court and should be taken seriously by state leaders. I am disappointed in the lack of professionalism and empathy displayed at the School Facilities Commission.”
The lawsuit was filed by Cheyenne parents Katie Dijkstal and Franz Fuchs, who are also members of the Cheyenne Parent Alliance, a community organization that’s opposed the state’s recommendation to close eight Cheyenne schools. This past fall, CPA collected more than 1,000 signatures from residents standing against the LCSD1 most-cost-effective study, or MCER, which proposes closing a third of Cheyenne elementary schools. Members of the organization presented these signatures to the commission at its Nov. 6 meeting.
The Wyoming School Facilities Commission is an independent entity from the Department of Education. Degenfelder has no influence on the SFC.