Middle School Faces Further Delays
By Christina Gould
Staff Writer

The three-year delay of building the Fremont County School District 1’s middle school has hit yet another snag and will be delayed even further.
The Wyoming School Facilities Commission sent a letter last week to School District 1 Board of Education Chairman Tom Ryder stating that “funding for continue design work on this school is suspended until we resolve the issues.”
In a chain of corresponding letters between the district and the SFC, the issues debated include what size the facility should be and applying what is interpreted from the January Wyoming Supreme Court decision regarding capital construction and applying that in determining the square footage of the new Lander school.
District 1 superintendent Paige Fenton Hughes said Lander would like to submit a design of a facility that would be 83,280 square feet, which would include 2,280 square feet District 1 says is mandated by the court decision.
“All it (the letter) says is if you don’t build at 78,200 square feet we won’t fund your building,” Fenton Hughes said. “They have completely ignored the Supreme Court decision.”
The court decision, which came from the Campbell County School District v. State case earlier this year, deals with school funding and capital construction. School officials said the additional space for a computer room, a Title I room, and appropriate spaces to accommodate participants in student activities they district is seeking to include in the design is clearly outlined in the court decision.
A letter signed by Ryder to the SFC last month stated that the Supreme Court put the designing of classrooms, laboratories and physical education required for the district’s specific educational programs in the hands of the school district, not the SFC.
“We don’t think this particular requests requires an exception granted by the SFC,” Fenton Hughes said.
According to the letter from the SFC: “You (District 1) also note the district does not intend to ‘go before the SFC to request an exception …’ We need to be very careful on theses points to make certain everyone understand the process and the consequences of not following the process.”
“We never said we would not follow the process,” Fenton Hughes said. “And our letter doesn’t say we refuse to follow the process but that we feel it is not appropriate at this point and not necessary.”
The frustrations for time lost is immense Fenton Hughes said.
“We have had a three year delay while my kids are in a school that’s on the safety priority list,” she said. “And I would think as professionals before you suspend millions of dollars at least you would make a personal contact before you do something this drastic.”
The letter from the SFC debated this thought about District 1 expressing concern about the bureaucratic processes not getting in the way of providing a suitable school in a timely manner. According to the letter: “The SFC couldn’t agree more. It is the overreaching desire of SFC to see that the best possible design is arrived at for this school in the most expeditious manner possible. Our mutual efforts to this end can only result in a better school and a more satisfying process for all.”
The next step Lander should make to see the school built in unclear Fenton Hughes said.
“This doesn’t leave us with a lot of options. We can’t even take a plan to the 10 percent engineer value review,” she said. “That would at least give us a chance to present at 10 percent our rationale for needing this space to meet the educational need of our students.”
The district took their first plan to the 10 percent review last December.
“That was an eight month process and we worked with them and involved SFC personnel every step of the way,” Fenton Hughes said.