Maybe I’ve just missed it, but there’s been surprisingly little chatter about the recent closing of two Wyoming high schools.
The schools in two Platte County communities, Glendo and Chugwater, were closed by a vote of the Platte County School District No. 1 on May 15.
The Platte County Record-Times reported the 9-12 portion of the Glendo school was closed, while the entirety of the Chugwater school was closed — in part due to the new Prairie View Community School, a charter school, opening in Chugwater this fall.
The language used in the reporting was that the board voted “not to staff” the schools. But let’s be real about what just happened.
Chugwater and Glendo are the first public Wyoming high schools to be closed in two decades, since Albin High School closed after the 2003 school year.
In part, I think some of the reason for the quiet is that the schools’ inabilities to field athletic programs the past few years has pushed them out of the statewide public eye. Glendo fielded a girls basketball team just once since 2016, that in 2020; the boys team had been active just twice (2017 and 2020) since 2015. Glendo last fielded a volleyball team in the fall of 2020. Meanwhile, Chugwater hadn’t had boys basketball since 2012 and girls basketball since 2011. Chugwater last had volleyball in the fall of 2018.
The only individual sport at the schools, track, had participants but not necessarily success. Chugwater’s boys last scored points at the state meet in 2016, the girls in 2018; Glendo last notched points at the boys meet in 2018 and girls in 2015.
Enrollment figures from the Platte County School District No. 1 show Chugwater with 30 total students in grades K-12 and Glendo with 27, as of May. Enrollment data submitted to the state last October listed nine students in grades 9-12 at Chugwater, including two seniors and no juniors, while Glendo had eight students in 9-12, with four seniors and no juniors.
The next-smallest high school in Wyoming, after Chugwater and Glendo, is Ten Sleep, which had 28 students in grades 9-12 last year.
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Public Wyoming high schools to close in the last 70 years include:
1954: Manville
1956: Ranchester/Dayton (to form Tongue River)
1958: Egbert, McFadden, Reliance, Rozet
1961: Elk Mountain
1962: Superior
1963: Sunrise
1966: Hawk Springs/Veteran/Yoder (to form Goshen Hole)
1969: Morton/Pavillion (to form Wind River), Hillsdale
1970: Fort Laramie
1971: Arvada, Carpenter
1980: Huntley/Goshen Hole (to form Southeast)
1983: Cowley/Deaver-Frannie/Byron (to form Rocky Mountain)
1987: Basin/Manderson (to form Riverside)
1992: LaGrange
1997: Jeffrey City
1998: Medicine Bow
2003: Albin
2023: Chugwater, Glendo
–patrick