Pinedale Wyoming in the news
Editorial
by Dawn Ballou, Editor, Pinedale Online!
September 20, 2006
Lots of people are talking about Pinedale, Wyoming these days. There was an article posted on CNN yesterday about how the tax revenue generated from the natural gas production on public lands is pumping a ton of money into our school districts in Sublette County.
Natural gas fuels education in Wyoming (9/19/06, AP article)
Our two school districts in the county are doing their best to utilize the windfall as wisely as possible to upgrade equipment and buildings, raise teacher and staff salaries, and make improvements to education programs. They aren’t apologizing for taking that money while it is available and putting it towards things that will last for a long time to give local kids the best facilities and equipment possible so they will have a leg up on opportunities for their education. We know our future is in educating our kids.
We also know the bust will come, and the school boards and staffs are planning for that too.
For a county with a population of around 6,000, the people who live here know what it is like to struggle for years to pay the bills and survive through very lean times too. Wyoming is a hard place to live. Winters are long and cold and it’s a long ways between towns and services. We don’t even have a single traffic stoplight in the entire county. The people who stick it out living here are rugged, independent, self-reliant and typically not extravagant.
One of the interesting points in the CNN article talked about the forward thinking of the school boards and educators in Wyoming as they struggle with a "problem" that other school districts wish they had, more money than they know how to spend.
"The revenue stands to vault Wyoming above the rest of the country in per-student spending and represents a historic opportunity to transform education in this state and make it perhaps the finest in the country," stated the CNN article.
I’ll repeat that, "a historic opportunity to transform education in this state and make it perhaps the finest in the country."
That’s an opportunity we’re happy to have and give to our children.
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