School District 1 Trustees to Consider New Boundaries

At some time during the coming months, trustees of Sheridan County School District 1 will consider new trustee boundaries for the school district – or whether all trustees should be elected on an at-large basis regardless of where in the district they live.

In a recent trustees work session, District 1 Superintendent Pete Kilbride told trustees the district’s boundaries should have been redrawn after the 2010 census, but were not.

Jeremy Smith, who’s the district’s business manager, told trustees they had several options to consider.

Residents of the school district currently elect one trustee each from the towns of Dayton and Ranchester, two trustees from Big Horn and one trustee at-large. The boundaries are based on the size of populations in the three communities, but those populations have changed in the years since the boundaries were last drawn.

Dave Engels with Engineering Associates – formerly EnTech – said the population of Ranchester is currently estimated at 1,400, Dayton at 1,460 and Big Horn at nearly 2,600.

By Wyoming statute, the populations within each boundary must be within 10 percent of each other, and to achieve that, the current boundary of the Dayton trustee area runs almost to Big Horn High School. Smith said the way the boundaries are currently drawn, it’s possible that four of the trustees could actually live in Big Horn even though one is elected at-large and one in theory would represent Dayton on the board.

Kilbride said no changes can be made on the board before the upcoming elections, because the boundaries can’t be redrawn until after the 2020 census. In addition, any boundary changes must, under state law, be made by Jan. 1 of an election year.

Engels indicated he could have new boundary plans prepared for trustees to review at their meeting next month.