Nearly 300 local residents sign petition at Aurora events
A group of retired and current local educators say they support the concept of choice when it comes to sending your children to public or private schools, but they oppose a new state law focused on that topic and want to give voters a choice in the matter by putting the issue up to a vote in November.
Nebraska lawmakers passed LB 753 earlier this year, a bill that will provide $25 million in the first year, escalating to as much as $100 million in the fourth year, to private schools through a tax credit program for those who make donations to scholarship-granting organizations. Supporters of the bill successfully argued that it would offer families of children who want but cannot afford a private education a chance to obtain one, but since the bill’s passage the Nebraska teachers union and other advocates for public education say LB 753 is misleading in many ways, if not unconstitutional in its funding mechanism.
“I really don’t think this bill would have come up unless we had out-of-state people putting big chunks of money in,” said Dave Long, a retired Aurora business teacher working to gather signatures in hopes of ultimately repealing LB 753, known as the Opportunity Scholarship Act. “What they are trying to do is give choices to people who don’t even know our system, so that bothers me a little bit. I look at how we fund education in Nebraska, which comes from property taxes big time, and I think they want us to subsidize their child’s choice. I’m afraid that senators made the decision with pressure on them from outside money instead of understanding what our educational systems are like.”
Having taught in Aurora’s school system for many years, Long said he firmly believes public schools provide a quality education.
“Just using the schools in our county as an example, they can perform,” he noted. “On the national level, we can compete. I just think the opportunities are there now. The big push that they’re doing is that they want choice and I think the big push I want is for people to be able to vote.”
Long said he, personally, has not received any negative feedback during the signature campaign, noting that he is not going door to door, but rather inviting people to understand why he thinks it is important to get the issue on the ballot.
“We’ve sort of left it up to the people if they want to sign it, with a pretty gentle approach,” he said. “I don’t want to offend anybody. I just want them to be able to vote. I’m for choice too, except I don’t want to subsidize somebody else’s choice. My children went through this school up here and I’m completely happy with where they’re at today.
“Their big fight is ‘Decline to sign,” Long said of an opposing effort to reject the appeal initiative. “That’s saying they don’t want people to vote on it. Are they scared of something? But if we vote, I’ll accept the vote. This is a democracy and I’ll accept the vote.”
National agenda
Retired Aurora teacher Julie Jensen said she too is concerned with the real purpose behind LB 753, which she said she fears is part of a larger, national agenda.
“I think the larger problem across the whole nation is that most of the money coming to fund this effort is coming from ultra wealthy people like the Walton Foundation, the Gates Foundation and others,” she said. “Millions and millions of dollars have come in every state where they’ve pushed this initiative over the last 10 years.
“I have come to believe that they would rather have some control over schools by starting their own charter school or having some investment in a charter school, rather than let public schools exist where they don’t have any control over public schools,” she said. “But you just can’t compare their performance. Public schools do really well and private schools do really well. They’re just not the same. I don’t have anything against private schools. If people send their children to private schools, I don’t have anything against that, but they should pay for it or let the private school establish a scholarship fund.”
As for LB 753’s stated goal of providing opportunity to low-income families which can’t afford that option, Jensen said she believes the bill’s scholarship priority list raises serious questions.
“If you read the law, the first priority for awarding these scholarships will be existing students who are on scholarship and any of their upcoming siblings,” she said. “If it’s really about income, and providing this wonderful opportunity to low-income students, that first priority doesn’t have anything to do with income need and those will go to some pretty wealthy families.
“Then you get to the second, third and fourth priorities and those have more to do with income and IEPs (Individual Education Programs) and kids who are bullied and harassed, although it doesn’t say how they’re going to establish that that’s happened,” she continued. “The second, third and fourth priorities do kind of list things that most people could get behind. But then the fifth priority is any student, regardless of income, so technically if the senators really wanted to benefit low-income students and those concerns, they didn’t do a very good job of drafting the legislation because the first and fifth priorities, unless I’m not reading it correctly, there are no income guidelines in there at all.”
Jensen said she is also concerned with who will benefit the most from the Opportunity Scholarship Act, based on what has happened in other states that passed similar legislation.
“I’ve done a lot of research about this and over time, after four or five years in most states, about 70 to 80 percent of all these scholarships are going to wealthy white students,” she said. “It just gravitates that way eventually. Those are the easiest students to serve and they’re the easiest ones or private schools to accept.”
Another key concern cited by Long and Jensen is what they perceive as an effort to bypass state guidelines which prohibit giving taxpayer dollars to private entities.
“It concerns me that our state government wants to incentivize this behavior with a tax incentive,” Jensen explained. “Usually we think of tax incentives as encouraging us to do something that will be good for society, like buy an electric car or create jobs. So what is going to be the big payoff to have incentives to send kids to private school? I just don’t accept that. I think they just hate the idea of giving money to the government (to fund public schools).
“The tax incentive thing just rubs me the wrong way,” she added. “When we all give money to our churches, to the Edgerton and whatever national charities, we probably don’t even get to itemize, but then these wealthier people get dollar for dollar for donating (through LB 753). That’s significant and it concerns me that our state legislators thought that was a good idea to incentivize this behavior to that extent.”
Jensen said she is gravely concerned with what she perceives as a lack of support for public education from Nebraska’s current lawmakers.
“Public schools operate under so many federal and state mandates and many of them don’t make a ton of sense and don’t really serve schools or students very well,” she noted. “Meanwhile, private schools operate under relatively few mandates, so it’s interesting that this Nebraska Legislature passes this law to divert (up to) $100 million of tax revenue, eventually, to private education and yet they still have time to pass a few more restrictive laws on public schools. So we’re going to give money to schools that we don’t regulate, yet we dream up some new rules that public schools have to follow. I just don’t see how they make sense out of that.”
Signature deadline
The local group involved with this effort reported this week that 135 signatures were gathered during a drive-through event last month, along with 155 signatures gathered at the Hamilton County Fair. They are hoping to add to that 290 total, noting that the goal for Support Our Schools Nebraska statewide is to collect 92,000 signatures, which must be submitted by Aug. 30. Ultimately, 61,000 signatures must be verified in order for the issue to be placed on the ballot.
“With the short timeline we had, pretty much just July and August, we didn’t feel like we had time to schedule presentations,” Jensen said. “We thought if we could just work to get it on the ballot, then we’ll work more on Q&A and the info presentations in September and October.”
Jensen noted one other concern, and that is the perception she’s heard from some that local communities or counties will not be impacted by the Opportunity Scholarship Act because there are few if any private schools in their area.
“It’s hard for people to understand that over time this is not going to just affect schools, it is going to affect the amount of money available for the Department of Transportation, DHHS and other areas,” she said. “I mean, $100 million has to come from somewhere. Everybody is going to start to feel that.”
The stakes are high on this issue, Jensen concluded, which is why she and others are so committed to gathering signatures, raising awareness, and ultimately trying to give all Nebraskans a chance to weigh in by voting.
“The future of our society depends on a strong public education system,” she said. “Every state that has already passed this law still has the majority of their children attending public schools and we have to have the strongest public education system possible for the health of our society, for the future of our society. We’ve got to protect public education.”