Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, March 10th. I'm Mac Watson.

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A disturbing video has surfaced of a man on his knees, repeatedly saying he did something wrong while begging a Cheyenne junior high school girl for her name after a physical altercation last week. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that school officials are saying "no comment," while parents are demanding answers.

"He continues to ask for her name because he says he wants to report himself for his behavior. Parents are really upset, not so much that something happened, but what they're upset about is that the school in the school district haven't contacted the parents to tell them, 'Hey, something happened and we're dealing with it.' And so of course, people start speculating, 'Oh, they're trying to cover it up. Why didn't they say anything about that?'"

The short video appears to have been taken by another student outside McCormick Junior High School in north Cheyenne last week. The man in the video can be seen with credentials on a lanyard around his neck — similar to ones worn by school employees, but it's not known if he works at the junior high school.

Read the full story HERE.

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Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon on Monday let the state's new $3.9 billion K-12 education plan become law without his signature. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that the governor says his biggest issue is the Legislature cordoning off instructional funding so it can't help if a "school loses a roof."

"Governor Gordon allowed it to go into law without his signature. So, it's him saying, 'I don't love it enough to sign it. I don't hate it enough to veto it. It's just going to become law.' The teacher, teachers aid, paraprofessional money is all going into this part of the block grant that the districts aren't allowed to pull from. And Gordon's point was, 'What if the roof falls off and they're not allowed to touch this money? You know, you rob them of this flexibility, and I don't like that.' The legislature is under some court pressure to recalibrate, or, you know, recalculate what education costs and issue that amount of funding to the school districts."

Although the governor didn't sign the education bill into law, he lauded the work of the legislative Select Recalibration on School Finance, which met multiple times last year and this January to tailor the state's K-12 spending plan to the educational needs of the current era.

Read the full story HERE.

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TerraPower officially received a construction permit Monday for its first-of-a-kind Natrium reactor in Kemmerer. Cowboy State Daily's David Madison reports the CEO of the Bill Gates-backed project says, "This demonstrates advanced nuclear technology is moving from concept to commercialization."

"There was a historic ceremony today in Rockville, Maryland, at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They gave Terra Power its construction permit. It was a formal signing of the permit. The CEO of the company was there saying, 'Hey, we've gotten the seal of approval from the NRC. That's the gold standard globally. And so we're going to use Kemmerer, the natrium reactor project they're going to start building now with this permit as our showpiece.'"

Five years of engineering, a million staff hours of preparation and 18 months of federal safety reviews culminated Monday in a formal ceremony at Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters, where officials signed and handed TerraPower