Wyoming Homeschool Requirements: Nothing to File Since 2025, and the $7,000 Account That Is Its Own Legal Track

Wyoming calls it a home-based educational program, and the rules sit in Title 21 of the Wyoming Statutes, mostly in a single section, 21-4-102. Below is what that section and its neighbors say, in the Legislature's own text, alongside the Wyoming Department of Education's own pages and the 2025 law that changed them.

The short version

• No notice, no curriculum filing, no testing, no records to submit. The yearly curriculum filing was repealed effective July 1, 2025.
• Teach seven subjects: reading, writing, mathematics, civics, history, literature, and science, in a sequentially progressive curriculum.
• If your child is leaving a public school, the statute still asks for an in-person meeting and written consent to the withdrawal. If your child never enrolled, the Department says there is no legal requirement to report.
• Compulsory attendance starts the year your child turns seven by August 1 and runs until your child turns sixteen or finishes tenth grade.
• Your district must let your child join its activities, on the same fees and rules as enrolled students.
• The Hathaway Scholarship has a homeschool path, built on test scores instead of a GPA.
• The Steamboat Legacy Scholarship ESA deposits up to $7,000 a year. It is running again after the Wyoming Supreme Court lifted an injunction in May 2026, but the lawsuit over it is still open, and a child on it follows the ESA's rules, not the homeschool statute.

What the 2025 law changed

Until mid-2025, Wyoming asked every homeschooling family to send its curriculum to the local school board every year, and the statute treated a missing filing as prima facie evidence that the program didn't meet the law. House Bill 46, the Homeschool Freedom Act, struck both. Enrolled Act 28 took effect July 1, 2025, and W.S. 21-4-102(b) now reads in full:

A home-based educational program shall meet the requirements of a basic academic educational program pursuant to W.S. 21-4-101(a)(vi). It shall be the responsibility of every person administering a home-based educational program to ensure a curriculum is administered to pupils in the program that complies with the requirements of this subsection.

The duty is still yours. What's gone is the paperwork that proved it to someone else. The Department's homeschooling page says it plainly: Per HB 46, effective July 1, 2025, the homeschooling entity is no longer required to submit this curriculum to the local school district. If you read an older guide that tells you to file a curriculum each year, it predates the change.

The one meeting that's left: leaving a public school

The 2025 law didn't touch subsection (c) of the same section, and the State Superintendent said so in a June 16, 2025 statement. Subsection (c) says a parent of a child under eighteen who has not otherwise notified the district of enrolling that child in a different school district or in a private school or home-based educational program, shall meet in person with a school district counselor or administrator to provide the school district with written consent to the withdrawal of that child from school attendance.

The Superintendent read it this way:

Therefore, if a student has been enrolled in a public school district, parents must notify the school district upon withdrawal from that school district. However, there is no legal requirement for a student who has never enrolled in a public school district to report to the district.

Two details are worth knowing before you go. The meeting is written for a parent who has not otherwise notified the district of enrolling the child in a home-based program, so ask your district whether a written notice of that does the job. And the written consent form the statute describes shall include a separate provision authorizing the release of the student's identity and address to the Wyoming national guard youth challenge program, for recruitment only. Read the form before you sign it. The Superintendent's statement also said she would ask the Legislature to clarify these withdrawal duties, and it encouraged districts to limit their communication with homeschool families in the meantime. We didn't find a later change to subsection (c); the text above is the one the Legislature posts today.

What you teach

W.S. 21-4-101(a)(vi) defines the standard:

"Basic academic educational program" is one that provides a sequentially progressive curriculum of fundamental instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, civics, history, literature and science. These curriculum requirements do not require any private school or home-based educational program to include in its curriculum any concept, topic or practice in conflict with its religious doctrines or to exclude from its curriculum any concept, topic or practice consistent with its religious doctrines;

Seven subjects, each building on the last year's work, with no test and no record you have to hand in. Wyoming's definitions say a private school may include home-based educational programs, which is how the attendance law, which says a public or private school, covers you. That law asks for attendance during the entire time that the public schools shall be in session in the district in which the pupil resides. The homeschool section sets no hours or days of its own, so your district's school calendar is the honest yardstick for how long your year should run.

Ages and the penalty

Under W.S. 21-4-102(a), attendance is required for a child whose seventh birthday falls on or before August 1 (or September 15, if the child started kindergarten early under an approved district request) and who has not yet attained his sixteenth birthday or completed the tenth grade. Whichever comes first ends it. Under 21-4-105, a parent who willfully fails to comply may be punished by not more than ten (10) days of community service and may face proceedings under the Child Protection Act or the Children In Need of Supervision Act.

Activities, classes, and the college entrance exam

W.S. 21-4-506 says any school-age resident of a district who isn't enrolled there full time shall be permitted by the district to participate in any activities offered by the district, including, but not limited to, activities which are sanctioned by the Wyoming high school activities association. The district may charge the association's fees and its own participation fee, but no more than enrolled students pay, and it may not charge tuition. Your child follows the same rules as everyone else in the activity.

The Superintendent's 2025 statement agreed that homeschool students have a right to high school activities, but called middle and junior high activities unclear and said some districts were reportedly scrutinizing their old practice of allowing them. She asked districts to keep allowing them while she sought a law. If your child is in middle school, ask your district what it does now.

On classes, the same statement said no homeschool student was known to have been denied part-time enrollment, cited W.S. 21-4-301(a)'s promise that public schools be free and accessible to all students, and noted that the law does not specifically differentiate between full-time and part-time students. That's a reading, not a guarantee, so ask before you plan around a class.

One more that families miss: under W.S. 21-3-110(a)(xxix), each district shall provide the opportunity for all home school and private school students in the eleventh and twelfth grades and residing within the district to take the examinations at no cost to the student on the same date public school juniors and seniors take the state's college entrance or career readiness exam. That score matters for the next section.

The Hathaway Scholarship's homeschool path

The Department's homeschooling page points every high schooler to a Hathaway advisor, and the statute has a path written for you. Under W.S. 21-16-1308(b)(iii), a student in a home-based program:

• Shall make application for an initial scholarship before his twenty-first birthday;
• meets the usual eligibility rules except graduating from an eligible high school and the GPA that goes with it, but shall comply with curriculum requirements specified under W.S. 21-16-1307, as applicable;
• and, with the required national percentile rank score, is eligible at the same level and to the same extent as students graduating from eligible high schools.

So for a homeschooler, the test score does the work a GPA does for everyone else, and the Hathaway course list still counts. Section 21-16-1307 sets that list for the higher award levels, including four years each of math, language arts, and science, with specific courses named. Keep a course record from ninth grade on, even though Wyoming doesn't ask you to, and talk to a Hathaway advisor early about how the course rules apply to a home-based student.

The Steamboat Legacy Scholarship: a separate track, not a homeschool grant

This is the decision to understand before anything else. Wyoming's education savings account, created by the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act (W.S. 21-2-901 through 909), deposits seven thousand dollars ($7,000.00) a year for a school-age child who is eligible to attend a Wyoming public school, paid quarterly. (A pre-kindergarten version exists too, limited to households at or below 250% of the federal poverty level.) The money pays approved providers for things like tuition, tutoring, curriculum, devices, software, tests, therapies, and online programs.

Here is the sentence that matters, from W.S. 21-2-904(f):

An ESA student receiving individualized instruction in a non-school setting shall not be construed to be a student of a home-based educational program as defined in W.S. 21-4-101(a)(v).

A child on the account isn't a homeschool student under the law; the signed ESA agreement is what satisfies the attendance law instead (21-2-905(f)). And that agreement, under 21-2-904(b)(ii), comes with rules a homeschool doesn't have:

• instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, civics including studies of the United States constitution and the constitution of the state of Wyoming, history, literature, and science, and assessment of academic progress (no instruction that conflicts with your religious doctrines is required);
• the student must take the statewide assessments or a nationally normed achievement exam;
• the student may not be enrolled in a public school district, and you must annually provide the student's resident public school district notice of intent to participate.

Neither choice is wrong. But a family that takes the account trades Wyoming's no-filing, no-testing homeschool for a yearly notice and a yearly test, and a family that doesn't take it should know what it's leaving on the table. The statute also lets the Department hold back up to 5% of deposits in the program's first two years, and up to 3% after that, to run it, and every award is subject to the availability of funds. When applications outrun the money, seats go first come, first served, with returning students and their siblings first in line.

Where the lawsuit stands

A district judge blocked the program in 2025. On May 14, 2026, the Wyoming Supreme Court reversed that injunction in Degenfelder v. Wyoming Education Association, 2026 WY 54, because the challengers failed to clearly show they might be irreparably and personally injured. The court was careful to add that it was not ruling on whether the Act is constitutional, and it sent the case back to the district court, where it is still pending as far as we could find. Applications reopened in July 2026, and news reports in September described a rough rollout, with more approved applicants than funded seats. Plan your year so it still works if the money pauses.

Where Kitchen Table School fits

We're not a listed provider in Wyoming's ESA program yet. If you're on the account, the list above is what the statute lets your funds buy, and the Department's ESA page has the program's current details. If you're homeschooling without it, Wyoming sets the seven subjects and leaves the how to you.

What this actually means for your week

Wyoming asks for seven subjects taught in order, a meeting only if you're pulling a child out of public school, and nothing else on paper. That freedom has one cost: when your teenager applies for the Hathaway, or wants to rejoin a public school, or you just want to know your child is on track, nobody else has been keeping score.

That is what we built for. Mrs. M teaches your child the core subjects one on one, at their level, and keeps a record of every session as a byproduct of teaching it: which subject, which lesson, what your child worked on, and how they did. Wyoming doesn't require that record. You'll be glad to have it anyway. You're still the one who decides what your child learns. We don't promise any particular test score. Nobody honest does.

Curious how this works day to day with your own curriculum? Here's the honest guide to teaching your own curriculum with us, written for every out-of-state family, Wyoming included. Since Wyoming leaves the record keeping to you, homeschool record keeping is the natural next read. Or see the requirements for every other state.