School board votes to place Lab School students across district
Trustees considered three responses to UW’s lab school “eviction notice.” They rejected a proposal to reopen Beitel Elementary, and decided not to wait for state legislation.
The Albany County School Board voted to close the UW Lab School, electing to redistribute its resources and students to other schools throughout the district.
The Wednesday vote came on the heels of what some trustees labeled “an eviction notice” — the University of Wyoming’s decision not to renew the agreement that keeps the K-8 facility operating on campus.
With the current state of affairs no longer an option, the board considered three alternatives: reopening the lab school off-campus, waiting for the legislature to step in, or abandoning the idea of a lab school altogether and placing its current students into other elementaries and Laramie Middle School.
The board voted 7-2 for this third option, although few were excited for the outcome and many lamented having to make the decision at all.
“It’s not a position any of us want to be in and yet we are here,” Chair Beth Bear said before the vote. “While I can wish we were not in this situation, that will not change our present reality. And it’s my duty as a trustee to do what I feel is best for the district, which includes all of our students, educators and staff.”
The lab school is run by the local school district but is located on the University of Wyoming campus. It has long served as a unique educational facility — where aspiring teachers enrolled in UW’s College of Education can hone their craft and where K-8 students enjoy an alternative education characterized by project-based learning, outdoor opportunities and easy access to campus facilities.
Since 1999, when the lab school came under the umbrella of Albany County School District No. 1, its existence on campus has been authorized by a series of agreements between the school district and the university.
This summer, negotiations fell apart and UW and ASCD No. 1 entered into a one-year agreement keeping the lab school open through this academic year. The limited agreement represented the failure of the parties to reach a more substantial agreement.
The situation has attracted the attention of lawmakers, including Albany County’s entire bipartisan delegation, who plan to bring legislation in the 2025 General Session to save the school.
In the meantime, the Albany County School Board has had to figure out what it will do next year if the school is indeed booted from campus. The board hosted a pair of listening sessions to gather feedback from the public and Chair Bear testified before the Joint Education Committee, urging lawmakers to let the local school board make its own decision about how to proceed.
At a work session last week, district staff presented the three options for the lab school situation — moving off-campus, delaying a decision, or redistributing resources.
Meeting again on Wednesday, and following a special hearing to receive more public testimony, all but two of the trustees voted to shutter the lab school and place its students in their home boundary schools across the district.
Many trustees, including Trustee Emily Siegel-Stanton, said moving the lab school off-campus would amount to opening a new school — a move that wouldn’t be fair to those who have sacrificed in the last two years so that the district could sort out its financial situation.
“I want to remember that we laid people off last year, trying to right size the district, trying to correct years — maybe a decade — of misalignment between our number of personnel and our number of students,” Siegel-Stanton said. “So people lost their jobs — and then for us to turn around and say that we’re in an expansion phase and we’re gonna start a new school in the community, feels pretty tricky.”
Rejecting a relocation to Beitel
The district does have an empty school facility, however.
In April, the board voted to close Beitel Elementary, citing declining enrollment across the district, and moved most of its students to Spring Creek Elementary. The shuttered school now sits empty.
The option to move the lab school off-campus would have involved reopening the school of choice in the old Beitel.
This proposal was popular with the public commenters who testified Wednesday — most of whom asked the board to move the lab school to Beitel or else to delay a decision in the hopes lawmakers mandate a compromise with UW.
Misty Brizuela said three of her seven children had been or currently were lab school students. She noted it was the best school any of her children had attended.
“The culture is just phenomenal, and you would be robbing this community if you don’t keep it open in some way,” Brizuela said. “I don’t care if it’s at the Civic Center, at Beitel, at a city park — wherever you can freaking make it work, make it work, please.”
Among the board members, Trustee Cecilia Aragón was a staunch, if lonely, defender of the Beitel option.
“Unfortunately, we were served an eviction notice, and that displaced a lot of students, and that displaced administrators and staff members,” Aragón said. “It is our responsibility to find a home for them — a home that provides a very safe environment, and if we need to entertain using the Beitel facility, then that’s where we are.”
Moving the lab school to Beitel, however, could be costly. The facility is more than 70 years old and as trustees moved to close it, Superintendent John Goldhardt noted the closure would save the district $4.5 million in major maintenance spending across the next half-decade.
But Aragón said the difficulty would be worth it.
“We have a facility and we can give lab school a home,” she said. “And it’s not going to be the most glamorous home — we all know that — but I think in the long game, it’s an investment for the lab school, and it’s an investment for us as a district.”
In addition to the price tag, other trustees were skeptical about the district’s ability to transfer what was unique about the lab school to a new location.
“Moving students is not the same as moving a school,” Trustee Kim Sorenson said. “Physically moving the kids over there doesn’t mean that you’ll have anything that looked like lab school when you left. You’ve lost that … It was right there [on campus]. I think of the media center. I think of the walkthroughs with professors. I think of the access that you have, that I’ve heard so much about, to all the different things that UW has to offer.”
Aragón was joined by Trustee Steve Gosar in casting the only two no votes.
Proposing an alt middle school
The UW Lab School is a K-8 facility, meaning that its older students will be headed to Laramie Middle School. At present, that’s the only other (non-charter) public school option for local students in grades 6-8.
Trustee Carrie Murthy said middle school-aged students who thrived in the unique, alternative setting of the UW Lab School might not do as well in the much larger Laramie Middle School. She said she was worried those students could “slip through the cracks.”
“That’s where I’m having kind of the most heartburn,” Murthy said.
Other members of the board voiced concern about the lack of an alternative middle school. Trustee Nate Martin stipulated his vote for redistribution came with a strong recommendation to address that lack.
“If there’s some way that we can better accommodate students who are just flat not going to thrive at the middle school, it is incumbent upon us to do so,” he said. “I don’t know what the solution is to the middle school problem, but I’m confident that we can figure it out if we go down that road.”
Superintendent Goldhardt, who said he had experience earlier in his career establishing such programs, endorsed the idea.
“I think it’s something that could be pursued,” he said. “It should be pursued.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that, with the closure of the UW Lab School, Laramie Middle School will be the only other public school option for students in grades 6-8.
Please look through this document, titled The UW Lab School Situation Explained, sign our petition, and share! Legislators are open to saving this historic treasure of a school, but they need to know this is what their constituents want!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lq4HGLcvRPvo8HSaJC3rN2JxUp_7R0QZLQDAiOpcOa8/edit?usp=sharing