Penner: NDE board addressing teacher shortage

As he prepares to begin a fourth year as a member of the Nebraska State Board of Education, Kirk Penner shared what he believes are significant changes approved by the board in December which could address a growing statewide teacher shortage issue. 
Those changes, which have yet to be approved by the governor and attorney general, combined with the input of new board members elected in November have Penner excited to get back to work in January.
“This year and next year are huge for the State Board of Education,” said Penner, who was appointed to the board by Gov. Jim Pillen in 2021 and was re-elected in 2022. “We’ve made huge strides with teacher certification. We need to hit the literacy issue and we need to put some framework around mental health. 
“We still need to get into that teacher certification model and get the control back to the State Board of Education and away from the universities and state college systems,” he added. “It’s going to be an interesting year.”
Penner sat down for an ANR interview over the holiday break, where he offered more detailed perspective on some of the issues he and fellow board members have been working on. Topping that list is a teacher shortage issue, which Penner said he first started hearing about while serving on the Aurora School Board back in 2002.
“So when I first got involved people were saying what are you going to do about the upcoming teacher shortage,” he began. “Well, we’re there, but it’s a shortage nationwide and it’s not just in education. It’s in every occupation, whether you’re in accounting or manufacturing or education, everybody’s looking for employees. And so when I got on the state board, that’s one of the things we wanted to address.”

Temporary teaching license
Penner shared that he heard an idea regarding a “content test” from a local school superintendent which he thought made sense, though it took three years to gain the support needed to advance.
“We get phone calls from teachers who are retired, or their teaching certificate has expired, and they want to come back into the classroom,” he explained. “It was very difficult to get them back into the classroom because they had to go back and take classes and pay the university for 12 or 15 hours of credits, and they just won’t do that. They’re former teachers, former educators, and they’re not going to do it.”
In December, Penner reported, the state board passed a rule change that allows those who have expired licenses to come back and teach with a temporary license. They can either choose to take coursework to get their teacher certificate up and running, or they can use professional development within the school system.
“What we have found is that the university system and the state college system has been dictating to the State Board of Education the number of hours and how to become a teacher,” he said, adding that nobody he asked could explain when or how that number of required hours was established. “That is backwards. We are not a jobs program for the university system or the state college system and the teachers colleges, so we added this professional development avenue where they can do it within the school and those hours that they attain at those professional development situations can go towards their hours they need to get their teaching certificate recertified.”
The second change approved by the board in December involves the process required to attain a teaching endorsement.
“So let’s say you get an endorsement in math or English,” he explained. “If you already hold a Nebraska teaching certificate and you’re teaching at a local high school with your endorsements in math but you would enjoy teaching science and you want to get that endorsement, there’s two ways you can do that. You can go do the course work, that’s always an option. Or two, you can pass a content test to demonstrate your knowledge in that area. That would increase your value to the school district as a teacher because you can teach multiple subjects.”
Penner said the state board is also proposing that the requirement to student teach be eliminated for educators seeking additional endorsements.
“They’ve gone through the pedagogy,” he said. “They’ve gone through the classes on how to teach. We’re just trying to take the red tape away from these teacher certificates, so that’s huge.”
One other change pending approval, Penner mentioned, involves the issue of reciprocity, which allows teachers to carry their credentials from one state to another.
“So if you’re in Kansas and you move to Nebraska, as long as you have an unencumbered teaching certificate from Kansas you can come and teach in Nebraska,” he said. “You don’t have to take any additional courses. That was never the case nationwide. There were some states that allowed it, but you had to take additional coursework. There’s no additional coursework with this plan.”
All those rule changes were approved unanimously by the state board at its December meeting, and Penner said he is hopeful they will be official by spring of 2025.
“Every change that we make has to go to the attorney general, and he’s got to sign off on it, and then it has to go to the governor,” he noted. “What they’re doing is just making sure we’re not violating any state statutes. They’ve got a lot on their plate, so we will do our best to get that taken care of, but it’s a huge change.”
Interestingly, Penner recalled that this list of proposed changes was reviewed in open hearings, which drew objections from 11 people voicing their concerns.
“There were 11 objectors to these changes and 10 were employees of the university and state college system,” he said. “So when you get down to it, we’ve got to get through some of the ‘This is the way we’ve done it.’ As I said earlier, we’re not a jobs program for the university system and what they’re doing is forcing these teachers to spend money at the university system.”
The goal of the proposed revisions, Penner noted, was to remove certification barriers, ensure alternative pathways, retain quality and simplify the system.
“What we want is teachers,” he said. “We want educators. We’re not trying to lower the bar.”
Penner said he made some of these suggested changes three years ago as a member of the board’s Rules and Regulations Committee, but it took time to gain the necessary support.
“The idea where you could get your second endorsement by just taking a test was actually an idea I got from a local superintendent,” he recalled. “I ran on that three years ago when I ran for this position, and it took three years to get it into play. But that was a superintendent’s idea and I think that’s wonderful. This benefits school systems and it benefits the educators themselves as it allows them to do things at less cost and maybe even get an endorsement that would make them more valuable to a school district, so maybe they can go wherever they want to teach and do what they want to do.”
One other change Penner said he hopes to see addressed is establishing a set number of hours required to earn an endorsement.
“The State Board of Education sets the minimum number of credit hours it takes to get an endorsement and I would like to see that be a maximum,” he said. “The minimum is 24, but you have some colleges using way more than that, so we need to set a maximum. That would allow more flexibility for educators to maybe grab another endorsement or work on their masters, instead of spending an extra 20 or 30 hours trying to get that.”

Literacy grant
Another key issue Penner said he hopes the state board can help address in 2025 and beyond is literacy. He reported that Nebraska received a $55 million federal grant for literacy, which he said is being addressed with rather blunt terminology in terms of the impact it has on people’s lives.
“If you are not able to read, you’re going to spend time in prison, most likely, is what they say,” he reported. “They are very blunt about that you’ve got to be able to read.”
Penner said he hopes to see the $55 million grant used to attack the issue, with input from newly elected Dist. 3 board member Lisa Shonhoff of Bennington, who is a literacy expert.
“We’re bring back the science of reading and phonics, things that were pushed aside by people 10 or 20 years ago,” he said. “I don’t know why we got away from phonics, but that’s coming back.”

Mental health services
Another priority issue in Penner’s eyes is a growing need for mental health services, which he believes is due in large part to social media.
“I think there needs to be a framework of what mental health looks like within a public school system,” he said. “We want to keep parents involved. Some of my fellow board members and I want to give guidance on what’s allowed and what’s not allowed in mental health as we get to some of these hot-button issues that everybody knows about.”
Penner cited a mental health program being offered by Educational Service Unit #5, which he hopes to see modeled statewide.
“It’s a mental health program that involves the teachers, the culture of the school and the students and we need to go more toward that model,” he said. “I think we need to set some boundaries because we need to keep the parents involved.”

Election impact
Looking forward, Penner said the November election will slightly change the make-up of the state board, which is touted to be a nonpartisan body, though in reality he says that is not the case.
“This is a nonpartisan board, just like the legislature, but we all know that’s not a true statement,” he said. “So that board three years ago was 8-0, with eight liberals and zero conservatives. It was 7-1 when the governor appointed me and it became 5-3 two years ago. Now with the election of Lisa Schonhoff  (to the District 3 seat), it’s 4-4, with four conservatives and four liberals on that board. That’s just a fact.”
“This board is probably more partisan than it was last year and the year before,” he continued. “Views opposite of each other differ more so than what they did the last three years. We’ve got a commissioner in place (Brian Maher) that I believe is the right guy, and he’s been doing some good stuff behind the scenes within education, and I think we’ll have a good board here for the next two years. We will try and work for the betterment of education in this state on things that we agree on, but on things we don’t agree on it’ll be a split vote, and some of those things just won’t be passed.”