WHEATLAND – 1991 Wheatland High School graduate Dustin Kafka is no stranger to Platte County having been born there and chose to raise his family there. He has been a part of the WHS school board for the past five years and has just accepted an appointment to be the chairman.

At the beginning of Kafka’s senior year, the United States was part of a 35-nation task force that went against Iraq in the Gulf War. By the time he was into his final semester at WHS Operation Desert Storm had gone forth.

Right after high school, Kafka enlisted in the United States Air Force.

“I figured that the way the world was looking right then, I just as soon wanted to be in the military service I wanted to be in,” Kafka said. “I actually became part of the Air Force during my senior year. I spent the summer at home and in September ’91 I’m in basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.”

He finished up his basic training and then went to school in the military where he said that he learned to work on planes such as the C130 cargo plane. He remained in the military for the next eight years.

During his service, he was part of the humanitarian aid team that flew out of Germany to help those in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian war.

After his stint in the Air Force, he was then a part of the Air National Guard and was also earning his first degree from LCCC in Ag Business. As a sidelight he was doing rodeo also out of Cheyenne and riding bucking horses around the country.

“My father’s family were all ranchers and my mom’s family were all farmers,” Kafka said. “My sister and I were both born on the ranch here in Wheatland, but as I got older, the family moved to town. Dad worked in a tire shop and also worked hauling freight. We still got to go out to everybody’s brandings and all of that.”

Kafka says that he learned a lot from his mentor who was his father. When he thinks of him, he remembers athletics during high school.

“Some of my first memories are wrestling,” Kafka said. “He was the wrestling coach here for 10 years. And when I took up riding bucking horses, on my first ride, it was my dad who pulled the gate for me.”

Kafka won’t blow his own horn, but he finished his high school career 61-2 and most of his matches never went past the first period.

After Kafka earned his associate degree in Agri-business, he went into the natural resources field.

“I found out there that I wasn’t as prepared for THAT as I wanted to be,” he said. “Between ‘96 and just shy of the year 2000 I took some other courses that I hadn’t picked up yet. Some of the things that would be transferrable to UW.”
At that point, his next degree would be in range land ecology and watershed management in 2002.

Backing up a step to Christmas 2001 another important portion of Kafka’s life would begin. He was in Cheyenne visiting his sick grandmother and with some extra time and a little more Christmas shopping to do, he headed downtown.

Little did he know that what he wanted for Christmas was in a display window at Wyoming Home, a high-end western décor emporium. He didn’t notice the display or the items for sale, but he did notice the window dresser.

He coaxed her out of that display case, they toured the store, they hit it off and the Dustin-Carrie love story began. From the first date at “The Armadillo” they knew they were meant to be together.

A year almost to the day of their first date they were engaged. Dustin by this time was working a civilian position for the Army National Guard in Guernsey and by the time the couple had gotten married they began their life together as Guernsey residents.

As their family grew with two boys, Wyatt and Jaxson, the couple were very involved in all things school-related. Eventually he was approached to become a school board member.

“It came out of the blue,” Kafka said. “Being instrumental in the boy’s lives, I was one of Wyatt’s baseball coaches when he started in the minor league. We were up at the Little League fields when Greg Meyer approached me and asked, ‘as a coach, you’re supposed to teach these guys some skills, teach them a love for the game and develop some lifelong passions. And every kid out here is successful. Do you think the schools are doing the same thing for them?’

Kafka thought long and hard about the question and wasn’t sure he knew the answer.

“He said, ‘consider running for the board, I’m going to need some good people,” Kafka recollected. “I did know that I couldn’t really complain about the school system if I wasn’t willing to throw the hat in the ring and get with it, so I did. And I got elected which was sort of an eye-opener for me.”

Kafka who was the vice chairman of the board in 2021 is taking another step up as he was approached by another board member to ask if there was any interest in chairing the board.

According to Kafka, Beth Hendon, the present chair has a year left to go in her position, but she is also at the same time committed to another position and it puts quite a lot on her plate.

“Beth is also the area 10 director for the Wyoming School Boards Association,” Kafka said. “So it means she is a district representative of multiple school districts and has a chair at that table. To be both the chair of the district and the area 10 director is a rather large lift. That’s pretty high-powered stuff.”

There are seven people on the school board and there has to be a unanimous vote to elect a new chair, and Kafka was elected and began his duties Dec. 20.

His message as he steps forth to lead is simple, but profound.

“The message I would like to send is that we have to focus on a strong organization both strategically and operationally,” Kafka said. “The job of the board is to determine the ‘What We Do,’ and ‘Why.’  The School Board allocates resources and determines policy, and the "How" is carried out by the administration and staff.”

When asked about the challenges and the things that may scare him, Kafka was quick to thought and slow to speak.

“When you ask what scares me, I mention the ‘unknown’ because there is no way to know what is coming and we would become reactive instead of proactive,” Kafka said.  We are on the doorstep of a Budget Session for the Wyoming Legislature, and no one knows how that will turn out.  The other side of that coin is that declining enrollment leads to declining budgets, and that can become a vicious and self-sufficient cycle when programs and people are reduced. I would just as soon head that off at the pass, although what the future holds may look a little different from what we all knew as normal in previous generations.  The key to our future success and relevance is adaptability; the world of education is changing, and we have tools, technology, and resources that other generations didn't have.  We must best utilize those tools for today's students as they begin to shape tomorrow.”