Hedonic Index Passed

The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Education Committee passed the new school finance measure that includes a controversial new way for paying salary costs.  The committee approved a regional cost adjustment that uses what is called a hedonic wage index which takes into account a variety of cost factors where a district is located.  The model would cost Teton County up to 3.8 million dollars.   House Committee Chairman Matt Teeters opposes an effort to postpone changing the regional cost adjustment until the issue could be further studied, but says he is concerned about the impacts on Jackson Hole.  Teeters told Wyoming Public Radio he is committed to work to ease the pain of those lost revenues.  He says he recognizes that it is an unusual situation in the state where it costs so much to live in Jackson – and he thinks the state needs to find a way to deal with that. At the same time, the committee decided not to go forward with pay increases for school employees after hearing a report that education salaries in Wyoming were among the best in the nation.