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Title: Options for Updating Wyoming’s Regional Cost Adjustment

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2015

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Abstract: Like 11 other states, Wyoming adjusts its school funding formula to reflect regional differences in the cost of hiring a school district’s most important (and most expensive) resource—teachers. The Wyoming Regional Cost Adjustment (RCA) which only applies to the salary components of the school funding model, is an amalgam of two alternative labor cost indices—the Wyoming Cost-of-Living Index (WCLI) and the Wyoming Hedonic Wage Index (HWI). Both labor cost indices are constructed so that the state average has an index value of 100. Locations where labor costs are 10% above the state average have an index value of 110 while locations where labor costs are 10% below the state average have an index value of 90. The WCLI is updated biannually, but the Wyoming HWI has not been updated since 2005. Each district’s RCA is the larger of the WCLI, the 2005 Wyoming HWI or 100. In other words, districts where labor costs are below the state average are treated as if their costs were equal to the state average. This Lake Woebegone approach, wherein no districts are below average, narrows the range of the geographic cost adjustment and greatly diminishes the ability of the RCA to equalize district purchasing power.

Url: https://www.wyoleg.gov/InterimCommittee/2015/SSRRpt1001AppendixC-1.pdf

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Authors: Taylor, Lori, L

Publisher: The Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Other

Countries: United States