Superintendent Press Release April 26, 2024
Dear Cedar Bluffs Families,
The Nebraska legislation passed a litany of bills that affect schools. If they didn’t have an emergency clause, they will become operational July 19, 2024. Some of the more contentious bills included LB1329 and LB1402. LB1402 of course was Senator Linehan’s bill that approved a direct allocation of public tax dollars to private K-12 schools. After passing LB753 last year, that allowed corporations, businesses, and individuals to receive tax credit for giving money to a Scholarship Granting Organization that would make money available to students attending a private K-12 school in Nebraska and was petitioned to be put on the ballot in November; the legislation passed LB1402 as a way to get around the petition and upcoming vote. One legislator argued that LB1402 had nothing to do with LB753 and the argument that we should let the voters decided if public money should go to private schools was moot point because this wasn’t a “tax credit” but a direct appropriation of tax dollars. He is right the mechanism for financing is different but the end result is the same. Furthermore, my counter argument would be that if they have nothing to do with each other then why does LB1402 also have a clause in it that says it will rescind LB753. The rescinding date set 4 days before the November ballot vote. Seems like a rebuke to the voters of Nebraska. It’s likely that with the passage of LB 1402, the referendum on last year’s bill will be disqualified from the ballot, though Secretary of State Bob Evnen has not announced his intention. LB 1402 could present some strange legal twists, according to Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad, a lawyer and opponent of the bill, because part of the measure repeals last year’s Opportunity Scholarship Act. If LB 1402 is challenged in court and ruled unconstitutional because it allocates public funds to non-public education, it would render the entire bill void. If the entire bill is void, then the repeal of LB753 is void and thus would leave LB 753 in place. Also if the secretary of state decides to take the current referendum about LB 753 off the ballot and that’s very possible because “advisory votes” are not allowed on the ballot and if LB 1402 is struck down, the senator said it would leave last year’s law in place, without allowing the Nebraska voters to be heard on LB753. As for LB1329, because our legislation spent so much time arguing and not passing legislation, they used LB1329 as a “shell” bill and stuffed it full of other individual bills to be passed as one bill. Per Nebraska law, every bill has to go through a process from submitting the bill, being assigned to a committee, being voted out of committee, first reading with debate, second reading with amendments, and final reading with a vote and along the way having other legislators filibuster at any of the readings, which means legislators have to call for “cloture” or the ending of a filibusters and that requires 33 votes so it is difficult get bills passed. Instead let’s just lump a whole bunch of bills into one “shell” bill and then we only have to go through this once. For LB1329, there are 25 individual bills included, some good for schools and some not so good. Last year was the first year legislators really did this at this magnitude and we got some great bills and some not great bills last year from the “shell” bill. As for LB1329 this year we got: firearms in schools, the reclassification of schools by size, mental health added an excused absence, a change in option enrollment, mandated times for trainings, the ability to use QCPUF dollars for safety and security infrastructure, emergency response mapping, no longer able to use projection maps in schools, no longer able to use collection agencies to collect overdue accounts, and added money for special education teachers in the career scholarship act. Wow, all these bills and more that are technical cleanup bills from past years trying to make the laws they passed more operational. SMH Have a great weekend! - GO WILDCATS!