UW trustees vote for one-year extension of agreement for school district lab school

LARAMIE – Noting the University of Wyoming’s ties with K-12 school districts across the state, the UW Board of Trustees has voted in support of the university administration’s offer to Albany County School District 1 of a one-year extension of a memorandum of understanding for the district’s UW Laboratory School to operate on the university campus.

This comes after the district took no action on a proposed extension of the agreement that expired in July 2023. UW’s Board of Trustees voted in favor of the one-year extension during its public meeting Friday.

The K-8 Lab School, which has been part of the local school district since 1999, was allowed to operate on the UW campus during the past academic year despite the district’s inaction on the agreement. For several reasons, the university is offering an extension of the memorandum of understanding for only the 2024-25 academic year. Those reasons, according to a UW news release, include:

There are challenges regarding security with having a lab school, which is operated by the school district, located on the university campus.The fact that the lab school operates in a facility not owned by the school district is incongruent with aspects of the state’s public school funding model and construction process.