CASPER, Wyo. — Wyoming Superintendent Jillian Balow, Senate President Dan Dockstader and Senate Majority Floor Leader Ogden Driskill will be holding a media conference at the Wyoming Capitol at 10 a.m. Friday, September 10, according to the Wyoming Department of Education.
“They will discuss proposed legislation to fight back against Critical Race Theory in Wyoming’s K-12 classrooms,” the WDE says.
The WDE release does not point to a specific piece of draft legislation, though the legislature’s Joint Education Committee met on Wednesday and is expected to meet again Thursday to discuss a variety of interim topics.
WyoFile reported that The Joint Education Committee in July defeated draft legislation that aimed to have Wyoming set its own “equality and equal rights” teaching standards and would have allowed the superintendent to reject federal funding if a condition of accepting that funding would be to adopt curriculum contrary to Wyoming’s equality standards.
Balow has been pushing back against some federal education approaches since at least spring 2021. In May she offered a rebuke of a proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Education prioritizing “racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives” into American History and Civics Education.
Balow has been critical of the New York Times’ “1619 Project.” That project aims to place the history of slavery in the United States as well as the contributions of Black Americans as a more fundamental part of the public dialogue, according to Wikipedia.
The media conference on Friday will be held outside of the superintendent’s office in the Wyoming Capitol.
