CHEYENNE -- Some school superintendents would like more help from the Wyoming Department of Education in developing applications for charter schools.

Currently the local school superintendents and their staffs have this responsibility, which not only entails a lot of work but can create conflicts.

The superintendents met Tuesday morning to submit their concerns with the Department of Education's new proposed rules on charter schools.

The new rules are supposed to make opening a charter school easier by simplifying and clarifying the process.

The new rules also are designed to foster communication and cooperation between the school districts and the charter school sponsors.

Paige Fenton-Hughes, the Fremont County School District No. 1 superintendent at Lander, said sometimes an adversarial relationship develops between a superintendent and the people applying for a charter school.

Ted Adams, superintendent of Laramie County School District No. 1 at Cheyenne, said the school board has denied two applications for charter schools because they were incomplete. The issue for him, he said, is the amount of work involved in helping charter school sponsors.

"They need to develop a complete application that describes the school from the ground up," Adams said Tuesday morning. The local school board then can decide if the charter school is something the school district needs.

Adams said the state department could assign one person to the charter application work who could help the sponsors build a budget and explain the requirements of the Wyoming School Facilities Commission and other entities.

Now he must pull staff off a regular job to help the charter school group. The conflict arises because, as superintendent, he then must decide whether the application is complete and whether to recommend to the school board that the charter school is needed in the district.

The proposed rules as they stand say the local school superintendents are to supply an application package to the sponsors and the "rubric" or scoring tool of a good application.

Amy Edmonds, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Public Charter Schools and a legislator, is out of the country until Oct. 17 and was not available to comment on the superintendents' concerns..

Edmonds said earlier that the rules are not a final solution.

The Wyoming Board of Education will review the superintendents' concerns at a meeting Nov. 18-19.

Contact capital bureau reporter Joan Barron at 307-632-1244 or joan.barron@trib.com