Education

From Sustaining Jackson Hole Wiki

Teton County’s residents are well educated. In 2000, Teton ranked 26th among the nation’s 3,100 counties in its percentage of adults with four-year college degrees. More than 45 percent of adults in Teton County hold four year degrees, compared to about 20 percent in the state and roughly 25 percent nationally. (See graph 6-1.) Because adults in the community are highly educated, they have high expectations for the school system and other education options in the valley.

On top of high expectations, the Teton County School District has faced financial and enrollment pressures in the last decade. Teton County was one of only two counties in the state that saw an increase in enrollment during the 1990s. (See graph 6-2.) In recent years, the school district has built several new schools and expanded others, ago, in part to address increasing enrollments. The largest class moving through the district during the past 10 years is the students who are currently in the twelfth grade.

Birth rates in Teton County have dropped in recent years, but its effects on enrollments have been more than offset by the recent growth of Teton County’s Latino population. (See graph 6-3). Although the school district doesn't track ethnic enrollment, they do acknowledge that Latino students are increasing in number, bringing with them increasing demands for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers. An estimated ten percent of the district’s students are involved in the ESL program; ten years ago, one percent was.

Perhaps the most difficult challenge facing the Teton County School District is financing. Because of the way Wyoming funds its schools, the district must meet a variety of state mandates despite having no control over its income. This problem has been exacerbated in recent years by state funding formulas that didn’t fully take into account Teton County’s high cost of living. For a number of years, the district was spending down its cash reserves to balance its budget. As various lawsuits have worked their way through the legal system in recent years, the district has received some additional compensation from the state. Finally, the district has also faced problems with staff and administrator turnover, one result of which is an increasingly less experienced teaching staff. (See graph 6-5).

Despite those problems, the percent of Teton County School District students who scored proficient or higher on the standardized WYCAS Educational Achievement Test exceeded the state average for each year the test has been given. In addition, average Jackson Hole High School ACT scores were higher than both state and national averages for the last five years.(See graph 6-4). The school district estimates that 75 to 80 percent of graduating seniors go on to college.

The school district’s budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year is $25.9 million, roughly $1.5 million greater than the previous year. Roughly 3/4 of the current budget goes to salaries and benefits. Revenues are generated almost entirely from local property taxes and, to a smaller degree, from county car registration fees. Teton County property taxes raise far more than the local school district’s state-allocated allowance, which allows the district to “recapture” some of the education-specific property tax dollars it sends to Cheyenne.

Teton County has several local alternatives to the public school system, among them several religious-based elementary schools and an increasing number of home-schooled children. In the past four years, the Journeys School and the Jackson Hole Community School have both opened their doors, enrolling a combined total of nearly 175 students in 2005 (roughly 7 percent of all students attending school in Teton County). Some number of local students attend private schools outside Teton County, but there is no reliable way to estimate this figure.

More information about the Teton County School District is available by calling 307-733-2704 or on line at www.tcsd.org.

Source: Teton County School District, U.S. Census

Graph 6-1 Compared to residents of Wyoming and the United States, roughly twice as many Teton County residents hold four-year college degrees. In addition, Teton County’s education level jumped noticeably between 1990 and 2000 compared to education levels in the state and the nation. Source: U.S. Census

Graph 6-2 Enrollment in the Teton County School District has been fairly steady during the last 5 years. During the 1990s, Teton County was one of only two counties in the state with increasing enrollments. Source: Teton County School District

Graph 6-3 Enrollment at Jackson Hole High School and Jackson Hole Middle School ebbed and flowed in recent years as a population bubble passed through the system. A second bubble is now affecting elementary enrollments. Source: Teton County School District

Graph 6-4 Since the inception of the WYCAS test, in a typical year somewhat more than half of Teton County’s students achieve “proficient” or “advanced” scores on the test, a consistently higher percentage than the state average. The WYCAS test will soon be replaced by a new test called PAWS (Proficiency Assessment for Wyoming Students). Source: Teton County School District

Image:Example.jpg Graph 6-5 In 1996, Teton County’s teachers averaged about the same number of years’ experience as those in the rest of the state. Since then, however, in contrast to the state as a whole, Teton County’s teaching staff has become increasingly less experienced. This is believed to be a result of the gap between Teton County’s cost of living and what the district can afford to pay its teachers. Source: Wyoming Department of Education

Image:Example.jpg Graph 6-6 Each year, between 80 and 90 percent of Teton County’s high school seniors graduate, a noticeably higher proportion than the state average since the mid-1990s. The percentage of Jackson Hole students graduating from high school has been increasing in recent years. Source: Wyoming Department of Education

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Graph 6-7 In recent years, anywhere between 2 and 6 percent of Jackson Hole’s high school students have dropped out of school. This has tended to be a lower percentage than the statewide average. Source: Wyoming Department of Education