Penner reports progress, concerns with NDE board

Now well into his second year as a member of the Nebraska State Board of Education, Kirk Penner of Aurora says progress is slowly being made in efforts to restore credibility to a government entity he believes should be focused on priority issues such as a growing teacher shortage and assessment tests rather than social issues which tend to grab headlines but have little to do with education.
Having been appointed to the board by former Gov. Pete Ricketts in January 2022 and re-elected in November, Penner said his first year on the board involved a heavy learning curve.
“When I was appointed you get blasted with all kinds of information, like it’s coming out of a fire hose,” he recalled. “There were some issues I tried to defy, like getting health standards permanently rejected, but I lost that fight. They can still come back, so a lot of it is learning what the state board of education can do and what they can’t do, and a lot of times it’s in the legislature’s hands.”
Determined not to back down on his values or political positions, Penner said he was encouraged in November when two new members who share his more conservative viewpoints, Elizabeth Tegtmeier of North Platte and Sherry Jones of Grand Island, were elected to the board.
“The board has a total different feel after the first of the year,” he shared. “What we’re trying to do here moving forward is there are a  couple issues we want to address, and No. 1 is the teacher shortage.”
Penner said he first became aware of teacher shortage concerns when he joined the Aurora 4R School Board in 2002. The situation has grown much more severe since then, he reported, made only worse by the pandemic.
“Elizabeth Tegtmeier and myself are on the Rules and Regulations Committee and are going to hit this issue hard,” he said. “We’ve already made some changes in some of the rules that govern teacher certification. It is just taking way too long for people who maybe didn’t go through the teacher’s college to be able to teach.”
Citing an example of someone who earned a business degree at Wayne State and later decided to teach, Penner said NDE rules now require a teaching certificate that will cost 52 credit hours, 2-1/2 years of school and up to $15,000.
“I know people who have MBAs in business who can’t teach unless they take two years of teaching classes,” he said. “Yes, they need to know how to teach and they need to know some classroom management, but the restrictions haven’t been looked at and some of that is the state board of education’s problem.”
Toward that end, Penner supported LB 603, a bill that would help create an alternative certification process, though that bill’s chances of passage rely on it being successfully included in a packaged education bill.
“This is a major issue in this state because we’re losing teachers,” he said, citing reports of school districts getting three or four applicants when they used to get 20 or more. “Education tends to be very slow in changing and we need to make these changes. We don’t need any focus groups or study groups because we know what’s going on. We also need reciprocity with other states, so if you move from Kansas to Nebraska you shouldn’t have to take X amount of hours in order to teach.”
Penner said he has been talking to and listening to school superintendents since joining the board, many of whom told him the state assessment system takes too long to get results back in order to be effective.
“Many of them want to revert back to the old system, but we’ve spent tens of millions of dollars on this new test and it’s not where it needs to be, so it’s an issue,” he said. “And then you have the issue of are we testing our kids too much, which I agree that we are, so those are two big issues that we can address.”

New NDE commissioner
Hoping to see a different style of leadership with the recent selection of a new NDE commissioner, Penner said he was disappointed in the selection process. Former Commissioner Matt Blomstedt was replaced by Brian Maher last month, with Penner voting against the nominee in a 5-3 vote, joined by Tegtmeier and Jones in opposition.
“We were a little disappointed in the process,” he admitted. “I had three questions ready to go on teacher shortage and since I didn’t submit them and they weren’t approved I wasn’t able to ask the questions to all the candidates,” he explained. “We are in the minority on that board so that’s what happens and sometimes you just can’t do anything about it.
“But I’m staying positive because I want to get things done in this state,” he said of a desire to work with Maher and the board going forward. “I think we can work on teacher shortage, work on assessment and accreditation and we can all work on them together. Hopefully he (Maher) has been following the Nebraska Department of Education for the last two years and he understands what’s been going on with some of these issues. I’m hoping he brings a good understanding of that and wants to work to kind of solve these things.”

Social issues
Recalling a controversial health standards proposal which brought statewide attention to the board’s focus on social issues involving sex education and gender identity, Penner said he’s been vocal in voicing concerns when those issues arise. Just recently, he caught fire for criticizing the state teacher of the year, who posted on social media plans to share books she learned about at a drag queen story hour, which was part of a national education conference.
“If we’re going to have a teacher of the year or any teacher bring drag queen story hour books to the classroom I’m going to let people know about it,” he said. “The gentleman who wrote that book (“The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish”) is trying to break down the American family and break down all the societal norms that we have. When you have grown men dressed as ladies reading books to 5- and 7-year-olds I have an issue with that and we’re going to talk about it because it doesn’t belong in our schools.”
The NDE teacher of the year, Renee Jones, demanded that Penner apologize and that he be reprimanded by the board, creating an exchange that blew up on social media.
“She’s not going to get an apology and I’m not going to be reprimanded, but it got picked up by The Daily Beast, a liberal news organization, and they’re running with it,” he said. “I have no problem with standing up for what’s right. We have thousands of teachers who would have never gone to the drag queen story hour, but we have schools where this is happening and it needs to stop, so I will do anything I can to bring light to it.
“We have some things going on in education that just shouldn’t be,” he continued. “Just think how good we could be if we stopped some of that and just concentrated on career and technical education, STEM and English.”
Penner said he is committed to his efforts to put the state board of education back in a positive light, focused on helping teachers teach and students learn.
 “Some of those issues are in school districts so I’m not saying that’s not important, but in order to get the reputation of the state board back to where it needs to be we need to focus on things that need to be addressed,” he concluded. “Some of those social issues, including the health standards, the gender fluidity and drag queens, it’s just bizarre and I’m going to fight against it because it’s what is right.”