Who Leads Whom? School Closures, Community Voice, and the Duty of Elected Trustees
By Coebie Taylor-Logan, Retired Principal & Educator — 31 Years of Service, Natrona County School District #1 November 2025
In November 2025, the Natrona County School District (NCSD) Board of Trustees voted to close Woods Learning Center and Bar Nunn Elementary beginning in the 2026–27 school year.
The district cited declining enrollment, budget pressures, and roughly 1,400 open elementary seats as justification.
But a deeper question remains: Who leads whom?
In Wyoming, the superintendent is the board’s sole employee. The one hired to carry out the vision and policy of the elected board, not to dictate it. For example, Crook County School District Policy CEA clearly states that the Board “employs and evaluates one person — the Superintendent.” Trustees are chosen by voters to act as the voice of the public, to set direction, demand transparency, and hold leadership accountable.
Process Problems the Public Experienced
Limited Engagement
Families and staff expressed that they were not given meaningful opportunities to understand the rationale, ask questions, or explore alternatives before recommendations advanced.
Committee Confusion
Multiple groups and processes were referenced — including the Infrastructure & Planning Committee (Schmidt, Stedillie, Christopherson, Alvey), grade-configuration studies, and internal work sessions. The shifting names and lack of clarity felt like a smokescreen rather than transparency.
Compressed Timeline
The public timeline itself tells the story:
Oct. 24: The Infrastructure & Planning Committee voted to forward the closure recommendation.
Oct. 27: First and only public comment period — lasting 2.5 hours.
Nov. 10: Final vote — 6–3 to close Bar Nunn, 6–3 to close Woods.
Three days from committee recommendation to public comment.
Fourteen days from public comment to final vote.
This is not genuine community engagement.
Personal Statements From Trustees
Multiple trustees disclosed emotional or personal connections:
Kyla Alvey acknowledged her ties to Bar Nunn but said,
“Schools have to close… We have 1,400 open seats.”John Bolender, who taught at Woods for 22 years, said closure
“hurts my heart.”Kevin Christopherson, board chair, said trustees look at “every angle” and described these votes as “the hardest decisions.”
The point remains:
Trustees are elected to represent the community’s needs and voices — not their own proximity, comfort, or history.
Nowhere in the record did any trustee reference survey data or community feedback. Principals are required to collect climate surveys every year. Why are elected trustees exempt from that same expectation of feedback loops?
And while we’re on accountability, why aren’t principals, district leaders, and the community asked to fill out an annual survey on the performance of the superintendent and their strategic plan? Those who work most closely with central-office leadership are often the first to recognize systemic issues in communication, transparency, or support.
If the superintendent is the board’s only employee, then direct feedback from those who experience that leadership daily should be a key factor in whether that individual is rehired, coached, or replaced. Data-driven evaluation shouldn’t stop at the classroom door; it should extend all the way up to the district office.
Hidden Waitlists, Withheld Enrollment, and FTE Manipulation
Another growing community concern involves waitlists, enrollment caps, and staffing changes that happened before the closures were publicly introduced.
Reports from leaders and families include:
Families were placed on waitlists even when seats were open.
Some principals were told their school did not have room — despite clear capacity.
Leaders informed in Spring 2025 that their FTE was dropping due to “low enrollment,” forcing them to release staff —
only to have a new last-minute FTE added weeks before school began.Multiple leaders reported quiet enrollment caps that restricted who could enter their schools.
The uncomfortable question must be asked:
Were enrollments being constrained to create the appearance of under-utilization?
When the public’s only window to speak is a 2.5-hour session, and families later uncover possible enrollment manipulation, trust erodes and so does the integrity of the entire process.
Building principals cannot maintain strong staff or culture when decisions affecting their staffing are being made behind the scenes.
Eroding the “School of Choice” Promise
Natrona County has long prided itself on being a School of Choice district. A system meant to empower families to select the best educational environment for their children based on learning style, program design, and community values.
During public comment on Oct. 27, several speakers said:
Bar Nunn’s size, relationships, and culture attracted families about 85% of those by choice, one educator stated.
Some families had previously been turned away due to district-set caps or waitlists.
Woods provides a unique teacher-parent collaborative model that cannot be recreated elsewhere.
These are community voices not district statistics but they matter.
Each school closure chips away at that promise. With every building shuttered, choice narrows, and the options for diverse learning environments fade. The district continues to promote “choice” publicly, yet the reality is that schools are being standardized; built around test data, metrics, and uniform curriculum expectations.
If every “choice” leads to the same standardized system with the same testing pressures, scripted curricula, and compliance measures, then what kind of choice is that, really? It’s not School of Choice; it’s Standardization of Choice.
The district has focused on producing uniform results on standardized tests rather than supporting problem-based learning, entrepreneurial innovation, or trade pathways that meet students where they are and prepare them for a rapidly changing world.
True choice should mean voice, creativity, and variety. It should mean options for students who thrive in hands-on learning, mentorship, or applied skill development, not just another set of test scores.
Right now, NCSD’s version of “School of Choice” is like telling parents, “You can choose your fruit: Granny Smith, Fuji, or Golden Delicious.”
At the end of the day, it’s still an apple; just dressed in different colors.
A Troubling Contrast: Savings vs. Salaries
The Infrastructure & Planning Committee document stated that closing the two schools would save roughly $1.7 million per year.
Yet the Superintendent earns approximately $220,000, and the Associate Superintendent around $190,000 together totaling more than $410,000 annually.
That’s nearly a quarter of the total “savings” these closures are projected to produce, just in two administrative salaries.
At Woods Learning Center, there are currently 27 staff members, including itinerant and district-laundry positions, serving 166 students.
At Bar Nunn Elementary, there are 47 staff members serving 152 students, a sharp decline from the 430 students enrolled in 2020–2021, the very year the district invested almost $5 million to build a new addition.
So the question becomes: What happened? How does a school drop by nearly two-thirds in enrollment within just a few years; especially after such a substantial public investment? Why wasn’t a transparent, data-driven explanation brought forward before the decision to close was made?
Meanwhile, taxpayers are still funding the maintenance of “mothballed” properties such as Westwood Elementary, Mountain View Elementary, and several others.
These buildings sit deteriorating year after year at the tune of what cost?
What does it take annually to heat, secure, and maintain empty facilities that could instead serve as vibrant community spaces, adult-learning centers, or early-childhood hubs?
When leadership remains untouched while neighborhood schools are shuttered, it sends a clear message about priorities: that leadership’s comfort matters more than community stability.
Money Secrets & What’s Really Driving the Closures
If the official narrative is “declining enrollment,” then let’s follow the money trail and ask:
Where are the dollars really going?
If the district is truly struggling financially, the public deserves to see every expenditure, every consultant fee, and every central-office raise that quietly continues behind the curtain of so-called “budget efficiency.”
In the 2022–2023 funding year, while classrooms faced cuts and school budgets tightened, the current Superintendent received a $34,455 raise, increasing her salary from $143,895 in 2022 to $178,350 in 2023 under the same job title. That’s a 23.94% pay increase. For context, CEOs and S&P 500 executives typically see annual raises between 3.8% and 5.9%, and only when their organizations are performing well.
Now, as a promoted Executive Director turned Superintendent, she earns $220,000 a year; another $41,650 increase, or 23.35% more. Combined, this represents a 47% salary jump in just two years, despite the fact that the “business” she is running; public education in Natrona County is shrinking, not growing.
If the Natrona County School District truly wants to model itself after corporate America, then it should brace for the same outcome many top-heavy corporations face: bankruptcy within a decade.
Because while the top expands its paychecks, the foundation; the teachers, staff, and students; are being stripped of resources, stability, and support.
All the while, teachers received only fixed amounts per salary-cell adjustment, meaning the more experience and education a teacher had, the smaller their raise became.
So the people closest to students, doing the toughest and most essential work, received the least reward, while those farthest from the classroom took home the largest gains.
No private-sector board would reward a CEO with such raises while closing branches and losing customers. If your district is closing schools, something in leadership is not working. The growing percentage of homeschool, private, charter, and virtual school enrollments tells a clear story: families are leaving the system because it no longer reflects their trust or their values.
That same year, the district announced a system-wide administrative pay revamp, granting $7,600 raises to central-office administrators. Yet the Superintendent’s raise was more than four times that amount; as a director or executive director, under the same title.
So while teachers, aides, and support staff stretched every dollar to serve students, top leadership quietly expanded its own compensation all while warning the community about budget shortfalls and now claiming the need to close two schools to “save $1.7 million.”
And here’s another question that deserves daylight:
Does the Board even know what Central Office Leadership Directors or Executive Directors are making? Are they aware of the raises of the raises that the superintendent got over those lean budgetary years? Which raises another question: are there any other benefits that the superintendent gets that the board is not aware of?
Because while some salaries appear to be nowhere publicly listed—buried deep in financial reports, while community schools face extinction.
Some documented salary can be found via the below and through the CRERW report from the department of education here https://reporting.edu.wyo.gov/ibi_apps/portal/CRERW
If transparency is truly the goal, these numbers should be openly available for every taxpayer to review.
And perhaps even more importantly; who is involved in these salary discussions?
Who approves the Superintendent’s raises, and who has access to the salary details of Executive Directors? These are taxpayer-funded positions.
There should be clear documentation, open to the public, showing who participates in the decision-making process for leadership compensation.
If district policy states that the Superintendent is the Board’s sole employee, then where is the evaluation that justifies continued pay increases or contract extensions?
Why is there no public record of a formal Superintendent evaluation, performance rubric, or community input process?
Every teacher, principal, and classified employee in the district receives regular performance reviews. Why is the highest-paid employee; the one responsible for millions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of children, apparently exempt?
Transparency invites accountability, and accountability opens the door to trust, compassion, and authentic connection the very qualities our schools should model for children.
We are in a time of no more secrets.
Taxpayers have a right to know how their dollars are being spent and whether decisions are driven by fiscal responsibility or by administrative convenience. Declining enrollment should be a call to innovate and repurpose, not to shrink opportunity while central leadership expands its paycheck.
Public schools belong to the public.
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Wyoming law gives this Board a clear, Wyoming-specific stewardship path. Under W.S. 21-3-111(a)(xiv), when the District determines that a school property “is not being used and will not be used,” it may convey that public land, with or without consideration, to another public entity – the City or County – for public use. At the same time, W.S. 15-1-103 authorizes cities and towns to receive land “in trust for public [or] charitable purposes” and to do all things necessary to carry out that public purpose. And Article 16, Section 6 of the Wyoming Constitution prohibits public entities, including school districts, from making donations to private individuals or corporations. Taken together, these provisions encourage us to keep publicly funded assets in public hands, dedicated to public purposes – for example, as a park, trail, community center, or other community facility – rather than allowing them to drift into purely private use.
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BUT “we’re just mothballing it” is not a blank check to let it fall apart. A district still has to deal with:
State fire-safety laws
State and local nuisance laws
School facilities planning & maintenance rules
This means that the district will still have a set amount of expense to holding that facility
Elected officials are public servants, not private gatekeepers.
It’s time to open the books and stop making back-room agreements that feel more like playground deals than professional stewardship of our children’s future.
Facilities and the Mothballing Pattern
On Nov. 10, trustees stated:
Bar Nunn Elementary will be mothballed.
Woods will not, because the district laundry operates there.
Taxpayers have already watched Westwood, Mountain View, and others sit empty for years.
The question remains:
What does it cost to maintain heat, security, and upkeep for buildings serving no children?
And
Why aren’t these buildings being used for community programming, trades training, early-childhood hubs, or public wellness spaces?
What Elected Trustees Are Obliged to Do
Trustees are not there to rubber-stamp administrative recommendations. They are stewards of the public trust, tasked with asking hard questions and ensuring transparency.
Responsible governance would include:
Open community forums (not just formal board meetings) advertised widely through local media and social platforms so residents can brainstorm solutions.
Transparent data gathering, including community surveys published in full.
An options matrix exploring creative alternatives before closure, such as:
Co-location with nonprofits or food banks
Partnerships with greenhouse/garden initiatives
Shared community wellness or adult-learning hubs
Magnet or choice-based reconfigurations
Adaptive reuse for early-childhood or alternative programs
A Constructive Path Forward
We, residents of Natrona County, petition the Board of Trustees to:
Pause the implementation of closures for at least 180 days.
Hold six open community forums—two in Bar Nunn, two at Woods, and two centrally in Casper.
Conduct an independent community survey and release all data publicly.
Publish a transparent options analysis showing how every alternative compares on cost, access, and impact.
Re-affirm governance clarity: the Superintendent executes board direction; the board does not execute superintendent orders.
Form a Community Reuse Task Force to prevent closed schools from decaying into “mothballed” eyesores.
The Call to the Community
Take a drive. Visit the “mothballed” schools already closed in our county. Ask yourself what might have been possible if the community had been invited into the conversation before the decision was made.
Imagine those buildings as thriving community hubs: a greenhouse classroom, an indoor market, a wellness and learning center, a space where kids, families, and seniors meet.
Public schools are not private property; they belong to the people.
https://law.justia.com/codes/wyoming/title-21/chapter-3/article-1/section-21-3-101/
When leadership fails to listen, it is the community’s right and responsibility to take action.
Sign the Petition
I support a pause on closures, true public engagement, and transparent decision-making before permanently shuttering Woods Learning Center and Bar Nunn Elementary.
https://app.hellosign.com/s/EHQ2zMy0