Wyoming School Counselor
Wyoming school counselors work with K-12 students. For the broader counselor and advisor category, the state projects about 70 openings a year from 2024 to 2034 and a May 2025 median wage of $63,430. Most districts expect a master’s in school counseling and a Wyoming Educator License with a School Counselor endorsement. The state has one CACREP-accredited program.
Wyoming Links
Wyoming is a small state with a big map. About 306 school counselors worked in its public schools in 2023-24, according to ASCA’s analysis of federal NCES data. They serve everything from Cheyenne’s larger schools to frontier communities where one counselor may be the only support professional in the building. The job is consistent across settings, but the context isn’t.
Most Wyoming districts expect a Wyoming Educator License with a Professional Services Endorsement for School Counselor, issued by the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board (PTSB). The standard route requires a master’s degree in school counseling plus an institutional recommendation from your program. State law also lets districts hire counselors who hold certain other Wyoming professional licenses, such as a mental health professions license, though many districts still require the PTSB credential. The certification page linked below walks through the details.
What School Counselors Do in Wyoming
A student at a high school in Sheridan starts skipping classes. Her grades drop. A teacher flags it, but between 30 students per period and no prep time, there’s not much she can do. The school counselor sits down with the student and learns there’s a housing problem at home. The counselor connects the family with community resources, adjusts the student’s schedule to ease the immediate pressure, and checks in weekly for the rest of the semester. That’s the job.
Wyoming school counselors work across three domains defined by the ASCA National Model: academic development, career development, and social/emotional development. Their work also aligns with the Wyoming Content and Performance Standards, which set expectations for what students should know and be able to do. In practice, that means helping students plan for college and careers, running group counseling sessions, coordinating crisis response, and consulting with teachers and parents when a student’s needs go beyond what the classroom can handle.
At the elementary level, counselors focus on early social-emotional learning. That means the skills students need to manage emotions, resolve conflict, and engage with learning. In middle school, the work shifts toward identity development and early conversations about future pathways. High school counselors carry heavier college and career planning loads, often guiding hundreds of students through applications while also handling crisis intervention and mental health referrals.
Wyoming funds school counseling through its K-12 school finance model rather than a statewide counselor ratio, and dedicated funding for elementary school counselors begins in 2026-27. ASCA recommends 250 students per counselor. Wyoming averaged 298 students per school counselor in 2023-24, according to ASCA. That’s well below the national average of 376 that year, but still above the recommendation.
Wyoming has 48 school districts, according to the state’s School Facilities Division, and many of them are small and far apart. That changes the job. In a 2022 Wyoming School Counselor Association survey, nearly two-thirds of responding counselors said they coordinate or proctor standardized tests. Many also described handling 504 plans and administrative duties on top of counseling. In a frontier school, all of that can land on one person.
Job Outlook in Wyoming
Projections Central data puts Wyoming at about 70 openings a year from 2024 to 2034 for educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors, a federal category that includes school counselors along with college and career advisors. Most of those openings come from counselors retiring or changing jobs, not from brand-new positions. Employment in the category is projected to grow 14.7% over that period, roughly four times the 3.5% projected for the category nationally in the same round.
Openings are spread across a lot of ground. Districts in Cheyenne and Casper tend to post most consistently. Some rural districts struggle to fill counselor openings, so if you’re open to a smaller community, ask individual districts about any hiring incentives. The school counseling career offers steady demand in Wyoming because the state’s district network is so broad.
School Counselor Salary in Wyoming
Wyoming’s median wage for this occupation was $63,430 in May 2025, just under the national median of $64,330. These figures cover the federal category for educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors, which includes some workers outside K-12 schools. Location matters. Casper’s May 2025 median was $88,180, based on a small group of about 60 workers, while Cheyenne and the state’s nonmetropolitan areas landed in the low $60,000s.
| Percentile | Annual Salary (May 2025) |
|---|---|
| 10th | $49,440 |
| 25th | $57,730 |
| Median (50th) | $63,430 |
| 75th | $74,840 |
| 90th | $91,330 |
| Metro Area | Median Salary (May 2025) |
|---|---|
| Casper, WY | $88,180 |
| Cheyenne, WY | $63,760 |
| Western Wyoming nonmetropolitan area | $62,980 |
| Eastern Wyoming nonmetropolitan area | $62,270 |
CACREP-Accredited School Counseling Programs in Wyoming
Wyoming has one CACREP-accredited school counseling program, at the University of Wyoming. Our state tables are ordered by program size, not quality. With a single program, there’s no order here at all.
| Institution | City | Degree | Accredited Through | Master’s Graduates (2023) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Wyoming | Laramie | M.S. | March 31, 2028 | 26 |
How this table was built. Every program here is accredited by CACREP as a School Counseling program, verified against the CACREP register on September 30, 2026. Any program whose CACREP status shows a teach-out, closure, show-cause or withdrawal is excluded, because a reader cannot reliably enroll in it. Programs are ordered by the number of master’s graduates each university reported to the federal IPEDS survey for 2023 under CIP code 13.1101, which measures size, not quality. That count covers the whole university, so a school running more than one school counseling master’s reports them together, and a low count can mean some graduates are reported under a different code. Treat the order as a rough guide to size rather than a ranking. Programs with the same count are listed alphabetically. Where a university reports no graduates under that code we name it below the table rather than place it in the order. CACREP accreditation is not the same as state approval: check the Wyoming requirements for school counselor certification before you enroll.
Wyoming Adds Elementary School Counselor Funding for 2026-27
Senate File 81, which became law in March 2026, adds dedicated funding for elementary school counselors to Wyoming’s K-12 school funding model for the first time. The change takes effect in the 2026-27 school year.
It’s a funding change, not a hiring mandate. Each district still decides how many counselors it hires, so what it means for openings will vary from one district to the next.
- Steady openings — Wyoming projects about 70 openings a year from 2024 to 2034 for the broader counselor and advisor category, with 14.7% growth over that period.
- Pay near the national median — The category’s May 2025 median was $63,430, with Casper well above the rest of the state.
- Rural context matters — In a 2022 Wyoming School Counselor Association survey, most counselors reported testing duties on top of counseling.
- New elementary funding — Dedicated elementary school counselor funding starts in 2026-27 under Senate File 81.
- One in-state CACREP program — The University of Wyoming in Laramie offers the state’s only CACREP-accredited school counseling master’s.
Ready to explore your path to becoming a Wyoming school counselor?
