PINEDALE -- Every fifth grader has a new laptop, and where teachers once stood at the front of their classrooms and got chalk dust all over their hands, lessons now are streamed onto $30,000 "smart boards" over the Internet.

If that doesn't sound fancy for a tiny school district way out in sagebrush country, check out the plans for a $17.2 million aquatic center -- current channel, three-story climbing wall, two racquetball courts and, yes, a competition-sized pool.

Money is a gas these days for Pinedale schools. Natural gas, that is.

It's flowing from Wyoming as fast as pipelines can carry it -- more than 1.5 trillion cubic feet a year, enough for one in three homes in the United States -- generating revenue that stands to vault Wyoming above the rest of the country in per-student K-12 spending.

While educators in other states talk wistfully about what they'd do if only they had the money, Wyoming has moved well beyond such daydreaming.

"We have the money," Superintendent of Public Instruction Jim McBride said.

Gas has graced Wyoming with a $1.8 billion budget surplus. Divvying it up last winter, the Legislature boosted K-12 spending 24 percent to more than $12,400 per pupil. That's close to the top state, New Jersey and its $12,981, without even counting the $1 billion Wyoming has started pouring into school construction.

It also doesn't include a new $400 million endowment to provide scholarships for Wyoming high school graduates; those with a 3.0 grade point average and 21 ACT will receive nearly a free ride to the University of Wyoming or one of the state's seven community colleges.

The big money makes McBride, appointed last year and now campaigning for his job, full of bold predictions.

"We probably will have the nation's No. 1 graduation rate, maybe college attendance rate. We probably will have the highest NAEP scores, which is the only national assessment that you can compare state to state," he said, referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Even before the additional K-12 funding has begun flowing, teacher pay has emerged as Wyoming school districts' top priority.

Most have already sharply increased teacher salaries, boosting the state's average starting pay 23 percent to $36,000, about 20 percent above the national average. Topping that list could be Jackson, where the school board voted Wednesday night to increase the starting salary of new teachers to $50,000 -- a 48 percent increase.

The pay increases have been a long time coming.

Wyoming ranked sixth for teacher pay during a coal and oil boom in the 1980s. But the boom fell flat in the late 1980s and early 1990s and Wyoming slid to 42nd; the state lately has ranked around 37th for teacher pay, according to the Wyoming Education Association.

"It was making it difficult for school districts to recruit and retain quality staff," WEA President Gary McDowell said.

Pinedale's recruits received a relatively modest 17 percent raise to $41,000. But even in an exceptional state for school funding, Pinedale is very much an exceptional case.

Wyoming redistributes local revenue from wealthier districts to poorer ones, but there's an exception: the very wealthiest districts are still allowed to keep some of their above-average local funding.

That has produced windfalls for school districts in gas country. Last school year, Pinedale received a $14.2 million windfall. Across the Green River Basin, the school district in tiny Big Piney got $4.1 million.

In Gillette, a big gas area in northeast Wyoming, the school district received $5.9 million, though that amount was spread among 7,500 students. "I can tell you, we only hope to have smart boards," said Gillette's superintendent, Richard Strahorn.

If districts don't spent their windfall money, the state collects it. Pinedale bought a slew of high-tech equipment and computers and got working on the aquatics center. A bus garage and middle school expansion are also in the works.

"It takes more than money," Superintendent Charles Grove allowed. "But money, if it's spent wisely, will help do the things that need to be done."

The source of the wealth isn't far from his window.

Scattered around the Green River Basin sagebrush country, where antelope are easy to spot and the snowcapped Wind River Range spike the horizon, hundreds of wells pump Cretaceous-era gas deposits into a maze of pipelines. Pinedale is the Sublette County seat, and soaring gas production coupled with rising gas prices tripled the county's assessed value from 2003 to 2005.

At $2.9 billion, Sublette County's tax base last year computed to $422,000 per person, more than Beverly Hills, Calif.

The trend will continue. This year, the value of Sublette County's minerals production -- nearly all of it gas -- has topped $4 billion and state officials have forecast that the next windfall for Pinedale schools will be $25.1 million.

Grove said he can't justify getting that much more than other districts, and if the money keeps coming, his district wouldn't be able to use it. "We can spend some of it, but there's no way you could spend all of that," he said.

But they could use a new elementary school, he said, and a new high school has been discussed. While the state would fully fund either school -- as it now pays the entire bill for dozens of school renovation and construction projects statewide -- going it alone with the windfall money would give the Pinedale district a lot more design flexibility.

How long the money will flow is another question. Sagging prices undid the last minerals boom after less than a decade. Wary of getting stuck, legislators paired this year's prolific spending with aggressive saving.

"It's not going to be here forever," said Ron Ruckman, a fifth-grade teacher at Pinedale Elementary School.

The boom has its downside, too. Hundreds of gas workers have moved to Sublette County; enrollment in the Pinedale school district surged 9 percent this year and is forecast to double in 10 years. The same students move on quickly. Teachers who used to watch children progress from kindergarten through 12th grade witnessed 20 percent turnover last year.

"We have a lot of other things that we have to deal with that come along with having this money," Ruckman said. "It's not all cream."

But for McBride, it's not a bad time to run for his job. "I think the stars just properly aligned," he said.