This story is part of WyoFile’s collaborative legislative initiative — a coordinated effort by partner newsrooms to deliver comprehensive coverage of Wyoming’s 2025 general session.
CHEYENNE—It’s now up to Gov. Mark Gordon to decide whether Wyoming homeschool parents will continue to be required to submit their curriculum to the local school district after the state Legislature passed a bill to end this requirement Monday.
House Bill 46, “Homeschool Freedom Act,” passed the state Senate with bipartisan support on a 28-2 vote, with one member excused. Without any amendments added in the upper chamber, the bill will head straight to the governor’s desk for either his signature, his veto or to become law without his signature.
The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Tomi Strock, R-Douglas, has told both House and Senate Education Committee members that parents should have the right to homeschool their children without government interference. Several Laramie County homeschool parents have testified in support of the bill, saying the process of submitting their curriculum to the local school district is “confusing.”
Wyoming Association of School Administrators Executive Director Boyd Brown said during a recent Senate Education Committee meeting that public school superintendents also stood in support of the bill.
“We do nothing with evaluating (homeschool curriculum),” Brown said.
When the bill was heard in the Senate Education Committee, Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, asked whether school districts will still at least be notified of a child being homeschooled. Experts confirmed a parent would still have to tell the school of their intent when they pull the child out for homeschooling. Parents who never sent their child to public school would not be responsible for notifying the school district of their intent to homeschool, however.
Wyoming Department of Family Services Director Korin Schmidt previously testified this bill would make it difficult to investigate cases of educational neglect. The submitted curriculum to the school district is a way for investigators to confirm the child is being educated at home, she said.
“It’s a tool that will no longer be there,” Schmidt said. “But we will continue to work around it and do our investigations regardless.”
“Harder to investigate cases of educational neglect.” Not the Government’s job. That is the parents’ job. And friends, family, and church should be ready to assist, if the parents wish to be helped.
The nanny government needs to back off. Compulsory education is like trying to force a horse to drink. It creates hydrophobia. Compulsory education creates “I H@TE SCHOOL” syndrome.
More dumbing down of the population. I’m okay with this passing if it would require the students to pass the same standardized testing required by public education students.
Then why do the vast bulk of homeschoolers test so much higher than public school students? Idaho dropped its testing requirements for one reason–the test results made public schools look bad, and promoted home schooling. The testing was bad for the Government’s case.
If those people don’t like public education or want to include a religious curriculum what’s wrong with doing it the way my parents did, send your kid to a parochial school and pay for it out of your own pocket. That being said, public education is one of the greatest inventions of mankind why you would want to mess it up is beyond me.
I would highly recommend that you read The Underground History of Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Prison of Modern Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto, who was teacher of the year for NYC and NY State, the same year. He also wrote Weapons of Mass Instruction, and Dumbing Us Down. We need an end to the mass formation psychosis. Bread and circuses will keep the people happy until the Emperor runs out of bread because everyone was watching the circuses.
Another way to justify the two greatest exports of Wyoming,that being our minerals and our children.
What an incredible disservice this would be for our children.
Investor Ray Dalio has been commenting about the opportunities in the foreign markets recently, and one of his key indicators is the cost of an intelligent person – how much the country invests to bring about an intelligent member of their workforce. Dalio sees India as one of the key growth regions globally because of their highly educated workforce. Ray Dalio isn’t investing in WY. WY is guarding toilets from trans-ghosts. WY is fighting a non-existent southern border invasion with lies and fear-based rhetoric. WY is giving taxpayer money to religious zealots to skirt out of educating their children and teach history as a 6000-year span that started with a cunning snake and apple. WY’s only 4-year university is focused on getting guns on campus and boycotting Div I volleyball games. WY is not a serious state, and WY voters supporting team orange are not serious people.
Tomi Strock’s bio is that of a welfare rancher who graduated high school and attended community college. Attended. Not exactly the intellectual giant we need making critical decisions about how WY digs out of the moral abyss we find ourselves.
flat earthers and the freedumb caucus are all happy now.
can’t wait to welcome the christian nationalist homeschool failures into the work force.
The homeschoolers just don’t want to have to teach their kids science, because science destroys their gods. This will just make their kids even less prepared for the real world.
If this is not vetoed, parents will be PAID BY THE GOVERNMENT to keep their kids ignorant and religiously indoctrinate them. It would literally be taxpayer funded child abuse. Gordon must not let this happen.
I’m curious if these are the same people who don’t want government interference in how they educate their kids, but also always tax payer money to do it? I realize these are two different bills but they impact the same population.
“Several Laramie County homeschool parents have testified in support of the bill, saying the process of submitting their curriculum to the local school district is “confusing.””
Has it occurred to anyone that if the parents can’t figure out how to do this with submitting a curriculum, maybe they are ill equipped to be homeschooling in the first place.
I’ll say this, if it’s too “confusing” for the parents to submit a curriculum to the
There will be educational neglect. I never would have guessed that Wyoming would slide into the sewer so fast.
Gordon, there has been “educational neglect” in this entire nation for over 40 years. And that is in the PUBLIC system.
Wyoming consistently ranks high in education.
It’s almost like Wyoming wants our children to be poorly educated. Thanks freedumb caucus.