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A staffing overhaul is shaking up Teton Science Schools.
In recent months, at least three director-level employees, three program coordinators and seven field educators have either been fired, agreed to depart or not asked to return next year, several current and former staffers say.
In 2025, the organization had about 145 staff under its umbrella, a mix of seasonal, full-time and part-time employees. That number is not expected to change significantly.
Executive Director Wayne Turner said the restructuring is not to save money or downsize. Turner said the organization will rehire some positions and tailor others to better align with its mission: connecting people, place and nature through education.
“We are not replacing one-for-one, we are really adjusting the mix to be right-sized with enrollment projections,” he said.
Founded in 1967 by Ted and Joan Major, Teton Science Schools is one of Jackson’s longest-standing education institutions and has been known around the country for its wide suite of outdoor education offerings.
But the nonprofit’s restructuring comes after years mired in issues: a wave of leadership resignations in 2021, the graduate school being put on pause in 2023, a truncated executive tenure in 2024 and the shuttering of the high school the same year. Across a range of education offerings, Turner said, enrollment had fallen for years and the organization had “drifted” from its mission.
Now, Turner is leading an effort to deliver on new priorities, including managing debt.
When he took the helm in February 2025, the school had about $5.9 million in debt accumulated over years, he said. In recent years it has spent about $17 million annually, according to public records.
Staff changes over the last 10 months have been announced by email and addressed in all-staff meetings as recent as this week. Turner described these cuts as the “hardest that I have to make.” He said the nonprofit would offer career counseling and job placement help for instructors who didn’t make the cut.
Former staff, however, said the moves have been poorly communicated and left them scrambling for housing, jobs or forced to leave Jackson altogether.
About seven of 15 field instructors were not asked to return after expecting to be rehired in a new cycle starting in January, according to several former employees, including Leah Mowry.
The 23-year-old already planned to move on, but said the overhaul was a shock given that instructors were regularly rehired in recent years. She said field instructors made between $130 and $150 on a typical day.
“Instructors [feel] like they’ve been asking a lot of questions and not really getting any transparency back,” she said.
Several other employees, who did not wish to use a name for fear of souring future job prospects, described the blow as particularly challenging in a tight-knit team.
Many sleep and eat together in heavily subsidized employee housing spread across Jackson, Wilson and Kelly. Some will now have to leave Jackson on short notice or scramble to find other housing and work.
Turner, whose experience with the school goes back to the 1980s, said field instructors are typically furloughed during the shoulder seasons and that new positions would have a greater focus on science and safety.
That didn’t sit well with non-renewed employees who said they and their peers have college-level and professional backgrounds in physics, wildlife biology, biology, outdoor education and emergency medicine treatment. They wondered how, after receiving positive reviews, different hires would be an improvement.
“It’s felt really unclear and it’s hard to move on from a situation and you’re really unsure of why it ended,” Mowry said.
For Turner, the recent changes are the unfortunate side-effect of getting a runaway train back on its tracks. When he came on, TSS had borrowed within an inch of its full line of credit.
Board treasurer Rich Bloom said that less than a year ago, the organization was spending about $1.5 million a year more than it was bringing in.
KHOL was not able to speak with any director-level employees who had been laid off or slated to depart before publication. Emails viewed by KHOL show that at least one position, the director of operations and risk management, was remote and now described as needing to come back in-person.
Bloom and Turner said TSS’s prospects have been pulled back from the brink.
Under Turner’s direction the school rapidly raised over $5 million to dig itself out of the hole. It is now out of debt.
But coming hat-in-hand to donors for a bailout is not the plan moving forward. He’s now looking to launch new programs and ensure those that exist can remain affordable to students from all backgrounds.
Bloom said the organization is headed in the right direction.
“We’ve gotten ourselves out of crisis,” Bloom said, “but the work is not complete.”
