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Leadership
Your Governor:
Jim Pillen (R) (50)
First term began in 2023 (two-term limit).
In 2023, Governor Pillen signed the Opportunity Scholarship Act and was promptly met with a ballot initiative to strike it down by opponents. The Governor in a bold move and with the help of longtime education freedom champions in the legislature amended the program from a tax credit focused initiative to direct scholarships for students in the last two days of the legislative session in 2024. Bold moves from a Governor committed to addressing the lack of opportunity for low-income families in the Cornhusker state.
STATE LEGISLATURE:
Term-limited State Senator Lou Ann Linehan and other education freedom champions cleverly side stepped a ballot initiative that may have ended the 2023 Opportunity Scholarship Act before it served a single student. By shifting the tax credit based program to a direct scholarship, the legislature enabled the program to get underway and begin helping families this coming school year. Kudos to those legislators who care deeply about options for low-income kids and for engaging in some innovative legislative thought to get the job done.
Constitutional Issues
The state has a Blaine Amendment that has been frequently litigated. It was changed twice, and "now prohibits only appropriations ‘to' rather than 'in aid of' sectarian schools.'" Applying the updated Blaine Amendment, the Nebraska Supreme Court has held that the state can supply textbooks to private school students at public expense and can contract with religious schools without violating the Nebraska Constitution," (Institute for Justice) making it likely other choice programs would similarly stand.
Transparency
School report cards are not as easily identifiable from Nebraska’s Department of Education homepage, which would be ideal but once you search for report card it takes you to a great site: nep.education.ne.gov, an external portal for data, where report cards are easy to navigate, and have a great feature that rates the school on a scale of excellent to needs improvement. Data is comprehensive, with both academic and non-academic measures.
Nebraska’s new scholarship opportunities has its own website, which can be accessed at https://www.nebraskaopportunity.org/. Information on this scholarship program should be on the state’s department of education but because it’s run out of the Department of Revenue website information only exists there.
School board elections in Nebraska align with the general election cycle, empowering parents with greater influence in their decision-making due to increased voter turnout.