TUNKHANNOCK — The Wyoming County Prison Board today (June 16) voted to ratify the termination of Heather Schmidt as the warden of the Wyoming County Correctional Facility (WCCF).
Schmidt, a 1996 graduate of Wyalusing Valley High School, had served as the warden since January 2025.
Previous to that, she had served as the facility’s training lieutenant and its deputy warden.
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No reason was given as to why Schmidt was terminated. She has been on administrative leave since May 1.
Members of the prison board noted that the issue was a “personnel matter.”
The county is currently advertising for a new warden at the WCCF.
Further reporting on this matter will appear in this week’s edition of the Rocket-Courier.
There are many uses for old missile silos out in Wyoming. One such site, with several silos, is used to restore old trains, buses, and any other old history on wheels.
Let’s go visit and see what is happening in southeast Wyoming, where work is being done at a place that was once meant for destruction.
Wyoming’s Vintage Rail Restorations
Out in a corner of southeast Wyoming, working from old nuclear missile silos, old trains and train cars are being restored.
Vintage Rail Restorations is a specialized firm dedicated to the restoration and preservation of historic railroad equipment, including passenger cars, cabooses, and vintage locomotives.
Wyoming jumped in nationwide child well-being rankings in a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The 2026 Kids Count Data Book ranked Wyoming 12th based on family and community stability, economic support, health and education. That’s up 11 spots from 23rd in the 2025 report.
Even with the higher 2026 scores in most areas, the state has room for improvement, said Micah Richardson, associate director of policy at the Wyoming Women’s Foundation — the Casey Foundation’s Wyoming partner organization.
For example, despite its high marks in economic well-being, 10% of Wyoming children live in poverty, Richardson said. In the education realm, 70% of eighth graders are not proficient in math. And 9% of the state’s children don’t have health insurance.
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“We know that there are improvements to be made,” Richardson said.
About the report
Kids Count, which is in its 37th year of publication, aims to shine a light on progress and deficiencies related to child well-being, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. That way, state leaders and policy experts can track what strategies are making a difference. Most of the new report compares data between 2019 and 2024.
Along with the cumulative ranking, the report ranks states individually in the four categories. And for the first time this year, the report gave comprehensive scores to each state on a scale from 0 to 1,000. By that measurement, Wyoming scored 654, higher than the national average of 547.
Of the four categories, Wyoming performed best in economic well-being, nabbing the No. 3 spot. The state’s standing in this area improved since the last report, and its comparatively strong numbers put the state behind only Minnesota and New Hampshire.
That ranking is based on indicators that measure how financially secure or insecure children are — including the number of children who live in poverty. This data found that 21,000 Wyoming children, or 17%, have parents who lack secure employment, while 31,000 children, or 25%, live in housing with a high cost burden.
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Ten Sleep School second graders in Nikki Erickson’s class talk with partners in September 2025 during a lesson on how sand is formed. Ten Sleep is a top-performing school. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile)
The state also ranked high in the family and community category, sitting in the No. 7 spot. That category measures indicators including the number of children in single-parent families (28% in Wyoming); children in families where the household head lacks a high school diploma (4% in Wyoming) and children living in high-poverty areas (less than .5%), according to the report.
Though Wyoming ranked relatively high at 17th place in education, its score fell since the last report. Education indicators found that 52% of Wyoming children ages 3-4 are not in school; 64% of the state’s fourth graders are not proficient in reading and 18% of high school students aren’t graduating on time.
Since 2019, there has been a 5% increase in fourth-graders who are not proficient in reading and a 7% increase in eighth-graders who are not proficient in math, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
The state performed worst in the health category, where it ranked 39th. Health indicators found that 10% of Wyoming babies were born with low birth weight, 12,000 children did not have health insurance and 29% of kids ages 10-17 are overweight or obese.
Wyoming’s rate of child and teen deaths has fallen, which is a crucial sign that recent state actions around mental and behavioral health are having benefits, Richardson said. But the state’s rate of 31 deaths per 100,000 is “still too high,” she said.
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Wyoming needs to create policies that support young community members’ mental health needs, she said. ”As a frontier and rural state, solutions are needed that span our geography and ensure children and families can access the care and services they need.”
Takeaways
The report illustrates some areas of weakness that state leaders can focus on for improvements, resources or policy solutions, Richardson said. One of those is early childhood education, which research shows boosts school readiness and long-term academic success.
Craft time for preschool students at the Evanston Child Development Center on Jan. 25, 2023. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile)
“I would love to see more at the state level being focused on child care and early childhood programming,” Richardson said. “I would like to see in the next few years the Legislature really adopting this as a family issue, a community issue and a workforce issue more than they have currently.”
After-school support is another area outside of the realm of traditional school that could give kids a boost in education, she said.
Good data collection is crucial for communities to track and understand issues and how policies affect them, Richardson. With federal cuts and other issues challenging data collection in recent years, she said, it’s important to prioritize the practice.
“I just can’t emphasize enough how important data collection continues to be,” she said.
JACKSON, Wyo. — Wildflowers are emerging across the valley, including Wyoming’s state flower: the Indian paintbrush.
The Indian paintbrush, also known as “Prairie Fire,” is native to the western Americas and became the Wyoming state flower in 1917. Contrary to its name, the flower of the paintbrush isn’t a flower at all. The petal-like bracts are actually modified leaves.
Indian paintbrush has been used by many different Native American Tribes in a number of ways, from condiments to medicine to hair gloss. Paintbrush has a high selenium content, which can also make it toxic if consumed in high amounts.
These plants are hemiparasitic and suck water and nutrients from perennial grasses and other plants through their roots despite their ability to also photosynthesize. They rely on pollinators like hummingbirds for reproduction.
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Multiple North American Tribes share an origin story for the Indian Paintbrush. Legend has it that a young boy was on a quest to paint the sunset but couldn’t find any way to capture the colors until he found a bed of Paintbrush. He left his paintbrushes behind, which is why Indian Paintbrush flowers are found in every color of the sunset: red, orange, yellow, pink and blue.
As summer creeps into the valley, these plants can be found around town and in Grand Teton National Park through July.
