In Wyoming, parents are repeatedly assured that public schools have a clear, orderly process for addressing parental concerns. Start with the teacher, then escalate to the principal, district administration, the superintendent, and finally the locally elected school board. If every local step fails, the system promises one last safeguard: the state itself.
That final responsibility rests squarely with the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Wyoming Department of Education. Wyoming Statute 21-2-202 grants the Superintendent “general supervision” of the public schools. In fact, the Wyoming Constitution demands a “complete and uniform system of public instruction.” These are not suggestions—they are the legal foundation meant to protect every child and every family.
Yet in Sweetwater County School District No. 1, that foundation cracked and then crumbled. Parents in Sweetwater County followed the process exactly as designed. They raised documented concerns at the school level. They escalated through every required channel. When local remedies failed, they did what the system told them to do: they took their complaints to the state.
The Wyoming Department of Education acknowledged receipt of formal complaints, however, families received a response that has now become disturbingly familiar from Superintendent Megan Degenfelder: “My hands are tied. There is nothing I can do. You will need to seek legal counsel.”
This was only the beginning of the problem. When parents filed the complaints with the state, they were assured that certain personal information would remain confidential to protect their families from potential public harassment or retribution from school administrators.
And yet in a total breach of fiduciary responsibility, the Department of Education released these families’ confidential information in responding to a FOIA request. Breaking their word and greatly damaging the department’s already tattered reputation.
Superintendent Degenfelder’s response? Brushing it off as a staff member error, saying they are fixing the problem. Basically a “ nothing to see here” attitude. She then told parents she would be talking with the Attorney General to find out what to redact, after they had already released the original documents and confidential information. A shocking admission of malfeasance. Obviously this was not some type of clerical error, but a breakdown of leadership and legal protocols. Blaming staff errors does not resolve the underlying issue, it highlights a failure to supervise, train, and enforce the most fundamental responsibilities of the agency. If leadership cannot ensure that its own employees follow clear legal and procedural safeguards, it is difficult to see how it can be trusted to manage the broader obligations of the office. Trust is not only broken through words, but through patterns of mismanagement that show a lack of control over the very institution entrusted to her care.
Did the problem get corrected? Nope. In fact, the official response was to ask folks that had received the original unredacted documents to disregard the confidential information while the Wyoming Department of Education prepared a second redacted FOIA document. But in what can only be described as extreme incompetence, the second FOIA document set that was sent out still didn’t have the proper redactions.
Federal law (FERPA) and the Wyoming Public Records Act both impose strict duties to review, redact, and protect sensitive student information before any release. Those duties exist precisely to prevent the kind of harm that occurred here. The Department failed at every level of that responsibility. No one at the top appears to have reviewed the documents before they went out. Parents were left to deal with the consequences after the fact.
The pattern of selective inaction is even more revealing. According to families involved, meaningful state action only materialized when the issues clearly triggered the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Superintendent Degenfelder holds an executive-branch office. That role carries more than the power to acknowledge problems—it carries the duty to fix them. It includes directing agency practices, ensuring compliance systems actually work, and intervening when failures become known.
Complaints were received. Violations were merely acknowledged. Opportunities to act were presented at every turn. Those opportunities were not taken. When the state refuses to resolve issues inside its own system, the entire burden shifts to private litigation. Only families with the financial resources to hire lawyers can hope for accountability. Everyone else is left with unresolved problems and a system that has openly told them it will not help.
These instances continue to erode public confidence as the constitutional promise of a uniform system of public instruction becomes a hollow slogan.This is not a policy disagreement but a failure of basic governmental function. The complaint process in Sweetwater County—and in other districts where similar stories are now emerging—worked exactly as designed right up until it reached the one person and one agency with clear statutory power to act. At that final step, the process and Superintendent Degenfelder’s department failed.
A prime example of where the Wyoming Constitution created clear protections for the people, complaints were known and there was clear authority for government agents to address and correct the problems. And yet Superintendent Degenfelder and her staff presided over a serious systemic failure on their watch.