School board zeroes in on final lab school decision
Trustees will vote on a course of action next week. During a work session Wednesday, they considered a move to Beitel, a “wait and see” approach, and a dispersal of lab school resources.
The Albany County School Board is set to vote on the future of the UW Lab School in the coming week.
The lab school is a school of choice located on the University of Wyoming campus which doubles as a training ground for future teachers currently enrolled in UW’s College of Education. It’s run by Albany County School District No. 1 and authorized by a memorandum of understanding signed by the district and the university.
But the memorandum now in place expires after the current academic year and UW has made plain it has no intention of signing another. The lack of an MOU will require the school to close its doors, or at least vacate campus, when the K-8 school lets out this summer.
State lawmakers — including Albany County’s entire bipartisan delegation — have proposed legislation that would force UW and ACSD No. 1 to find a compromise and keep the school in business. But whatever happens in Cheyenne this winter, the school district has to start preparing for the 2025-2026 academic year — and the possibility that the lab school’s 162 students will need to attend a new school next fall.
During a work session Wednesday, the school board trustees considered three proposed courses of action:
Option 1: Moving the lab school to the recently emptied Beitel Elementary, keeping some version of it alive off-campus.
Option 2: Taking no action and waiting to see what the State Legislature decides in the 2025 General Session that begins next month.
Option 3: Abandoning the idea of a lab school altogether and placing all of its current students in other schools across the district.
School Board Chair Beth Bear said carrying on under the current arrangement is no longer possible.
“The university has been crystal clear, in many avenues, in many fashions, that they do not support the lab school on campus,” she said Wednesday. “We can’t have what we currently have. It just doesn't exist anymore.”
For more than two hours, district administrators presented the three options, outlining how each course of action would impact the district’s overall programs, staffing, financials and facility maintenance.
Most trustees who voiced a preference for one of the options said they were leaning toward Option 3 — but each proposal had its defenders.
The UW Lab School has been celebrated for its commitment to outdoor education and project-based learning as well as its ability to serve neurodivergent students.
Trustee Cecilia Aragón, who is a UW associate professor, said students benefit from having access to campus resources while the state benefits from having a school on campus where teachers in training can hone their craft. She said this unique set-up could live on in a new location if the district took Option 1 and moved the lab school to old Beitel.
“If we have a facility that is available to the lab school, we have this opportunity to be proactive and to see growth,” Aragón said. “Right now, we’re not seeing what the growth of lab school could be like, and I’m willing to take that high risk.”
The trustees voted to close Beitel and move its students to Spring Creek Elementary in April. Reinvigorating the facility could be costly. When it was closed, the district realized immediate savings of more than a half a million dollars that it was able to put toward salary raises for employees across the district. Beitel’s closure, more than 70 years after the school first opened its doors to students, was projected to save the district roughly $4.5 million in maintenance across the next half-decade.
But Trustee Nate Martin said there is another problem with Option 1.
“We can’t really move the lab school,” he said. “The lab school is an individual, particular thing that exists in an individual context. And so we can move the lab school students, we can move the staff to Beitel, but it just wouldn't be the lab school anymore.”
Other trustees added there are several factors drawing families to the lab school that a relocation would likely eliminate. For example, while students across the district can and do visit the UW campus, these visits are logistically easier for those at the lab school. Additionally, the lab school has often been viewed as a “neighborhood school” for families with parents who work at UW.
For these reasons, Chair Bear said it would be irresponsible to open a new school when there is no guarantee that a reconfigured lab school would draw the same or as many families.
“I don’t know if we have desire in our community for a choice school in Beitel,” Bear said. “I don’t think we can assume all these people at Lab would go to a school that looks different.”
When it came to Option 2 — which would see the district “hold any decisions until after the legislative session” — district staff noted in their presentation that committing to this course of action “would make planning for transitions and programmatic changes very difficult.”
Accordingly, the presentation slides were light on details about what this option would entail. If the legislature preempts the issue by forcing UW and the school district to reach an agreement, the district’s own plans will have to change in the wake of the upcoming session.
“Frankly, I hope the legislature just forces the university to keep the lab school on campus,” Trustee Martin said. “And we can all call this a really aggravating chapter in our lives as a district, and go back the way things were.”
Martin is married to Rep. Karlee Provenza (HD-45), one of the local state lawmakers planning to introduce lab school-related legislation. That proposed legislation — which is not yet publicly available — would reject the university’s decision to close the lab school.
“This decision goes beyond a simple agreement between the district and the university; it impacts the entire state’s educational system,” the lawmakers write in a letter detailing their frustrations. “The UW Lab School is not just a local or university concern — it is a critical part of Wyoming’s public school fleet and plays a vital role in our state’s educator training program.”
While Martin is hoping for a legislative solution, Bear has pushed back on the very suggestion of it, both during a recent legislative hearing and again during the school board work session Wednesday.
“I think that’s a poor precedent,” she said. “I don’t want legislation telling our district what we should do with a district school.”
Most of the board appeared to be leaning toward Option 3, which would have the district place current lab school students in their respective neighborhood elementaries and in Laramie Middle School.
Trustee Alex Krassin said this would be a wise use of resources given the district’s projected enrollment decline.
“We have schools that are not full currently, according to what we have received in data, and that’s going to continue to go down,” she said.
Trustee Emily Siegel-Stanton said pursuing Option 3 would also allow the district to redistribute resources across all of its schools, for the benefit of all.
“Not just from a financial perspective, but from a personnel perspective, from a special education perspective,” she said. “Deepening the teams that all of our teachers are working on.”
While Siegel-Stanton said she was leaning toward Option 3, the trustee said she’ll continue to think it over before next week’s meeting.
“I want to move as quickly as we can so that people get answers about where they’re going to be working and where they’re going to be sending their students,” Siegel-Stanton said. “But I do want to hear more from the community after they’ve heard this discussion and continue to mull it over really carefully.”
The board is scheduled to meet Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 6 p.m. for a public hearing regarding its plans for the UW Lab School. A regular meeting, during which the board will likely vote on a course of action, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
Members of the public can attend in person at 1948 Grand Avenue or watch the meeting live via the district’s YouTube channel.
If the lab school moved it would make the new place its own.