40 percent of Wyoming schools not meeting expectations, By Leah Todd, October 26, 2013, Casper Star-Tribune: “The Wyoming Department of Education released its pilot report on school performance Friday, announcing that about 54 percent of Wyoming schools were meeting or exceeding expectations in the 2012-13 school year. The report is a first for the department, which was directed by the Wyoming Legislature in 2011 to create its own system of school accountability. The new system is in trial mode this year, according to a WDE media release. The school ratings will not carry consequences for underperforming schools until the 2014-15 school year, when the system will be fully implemented…”
Tag: Wyoming
Homelessness and Housing – Wyoming
- Caught in the Cold: Wyoming’s strong economy pushes rise in homelessness, By Benjamin Storrow, March 31, 2013, Casper Star-Tribune: “Robert Larsen spent three years crisscrossing the country looking for work. He cleaned oil from Florida beaches after the BP oil spill. He found work in the booming oil fields of North Dakota until a disagreement with his boss cost him his job. He chased leads in Colorado , New Jersey, Nevada and Utah. When he read there were jobs in Wyoming, he strapped his helmet to his backpack, cobbled together the little money he had left, and he and his fiancée hitched a ride to the Cowboy State. In early March, Larsen sat at a picnic table in a South Cheyenne park on a cold but sunny day. Lured by the promise of work, he had not been in Wyoming a week but was already acquainted with the wind. Since arriving in Wyoming, he has lived at the COMEA House, a Cheyenne homeless shelter…”
- Caught in the Cold: Wyoming struggles to develop plan to address homelessness, By Benjamin Storrow, April 1, 2013, Casper Star-Tribune: “Cathie Hughes is a woman with seemingly limitless energy. But she sounded dejected when she answered the phone in early March. Hughes, CEO of Southwestern Wyoming Recovery Access Programs, learned the previous night that funding for her organization’s emergency homeless shelter would be cut because of a technicality, threatening the closure of the only shelter in Lincoln, Sweetwater, Sublette and Uinta counties. The SW WRAP shelter was small, sleeping six people in its men’s facility and four in its women’s/families’ facility. Nonetheless, its closure would mark the disappearance of the only safety net for the homeless in southwestern Wyoming…”
Homeless Families – Wyoming, Kansas
- In Wyoming, many jobs but no place to call home, By Jack Healy, January 12, 2013, New York Times: “After losing everything last year to Southern California’s soured economy, Tiffany Kipp and her family packed up three boxes and a diaper bag and caught a Greyhound bus to Wyoming, their best chance at a fresh start. They were drawn to Wyoming, where Ms. Kipp has family, by the promise of plentiful jobs and a booming energy sector, and a thin hope of rebuilding their futures on the High Plains. But like a growing number of people here, they ended up on the underside of the boom…”
- Number of homeless children in Wichita grows, By Roy Wenzl, January 12, 2013, Wichita Eagle: “Gavin Shelton does not know he is homeless; his father has kept that from him. He is 8 years old with dark hair, a big smile, ambition. When asked for his life plan, he grinned. ‘WWE wrestler,’ he said. ‘Or NASCAR.’ He went to sleep this past week in a clean, neat room at the Salvation Army shelter downtown, unaware that he and his father came close to living on the street. It was sheer luck that the Salvation Army had a room open when his father called Dec. 27. Gavin has no idea that he has helped Wichita schools set what district officials call a disturbing record. Last year, social workers and teachers found a record 1,733 homeless children in Wichita schools. By Friday, the total for this year reached a new high – 1,829, including 14 identified on Thursday alone…”