When Did Public Schools Become the Enemy?

I have sat back over the last two years or so and watched and listened to public education take a beating from folks around our great state and I can’t take it anymore. I’ve seen and heard organizations like the Platte Institute, Farm Bureau, and even the State Chamber of Commerce take some cheap shots at us for spending and “under-delivering.” Heck, even some of our elected officials in the Capitol view public education as a burden.

As a career educator that didn’t grow up in Nebraska but has been here since 2000, I have come to love and appreciate what our great public school system offers.

Did you know that over 86% of Nebraska Public High School students took the ACT in 2014? Their average composite score of 21.7 is the HIGHEST IN THE NATION for states that had 80% or more of their students taking the ACT!

Did you know that Nebraska has one of the best high school graduation rates in the nation, with nearly 90% of our seniors graduating?

Now, we hear about how our spending is “out of control” and we’re the culprit for obscenely high property taxes. Well, we have spending lids and tax levy lids that we are mandated to adhere by. Many of our districts absolutely do have an overreliance on local property taxes and you would have to think that one of the main reasons is that Nebraska ranks #49 in the nation for the percentage of its state budget that goes towards K-12 public education.

In 1998-99, right at 32% of the state’s general fund was spent on K-12 educational aid. During this 2015-16 fiscal year, that percentage has plummeted to 27.6%. It is projected to be even lower in 2016-17. If K-12 aid made up the same percentage of the budget today as it did in 1999, the state’s general fund support would be over $187 million more than it is.

Most states provide significantly more state aid to K-12 schools. In fact, Nebraska would have to increase state aid to K-12 education by more than $700 million just to reach the national average.

Here in York, we’ve seen our state aid go from $3.7 million a few years ago to $1.56 million this year. We are projected to lose another million for 2016-17 and receive just $560,000 in state aid. All the while, our total revenue, which includes state aid, federal monies, special education reimbursement, etc. has only increased by an annual average of just over 2%. We HAVE to increase local property taxes just to make up for the huge losses in state aid.

Local school districts are very wary of their spending. They have public board meetings every month where their bills are discussed and approved. Here in York, our spending is so “out of control” that it has grown by an average of 1.8% over the last six years. What other organizations, businesses, and institutes can say the same? Right at 33% of our spending increase has been for grant funded programming that we’ve added over the past six years for pre-school, children living in poverty, and before/after school programming. If we didn’t have these student needs, we wouldn’t have increased our spending!

We have lots of room for improvement in every public school district in this state. We will always be a “work in progress.” It just sickens me that people that have never walked a step in the shoes of our dedicated teachers, support staff, and administrators get to continually put us down.

Come visit a high needs special education room and help care for severely disabled students that can’t go to the bathroom on their own. Come visit a pre-school or kindergarten room and help provide meaningful instruction for youngsters that haven’t eaten anything since they left your classroom at 3:15 yesterday. Come deal with the mental health issues we have in our middle and high schools. Come deal with more and more unfunded mandates and school accountability. Come spend a day with your local school administrator and deal with the chaos that often begins before 7:00 AM and ends around 10:00 PM. We do it every day and love it and can’t wait to do it again tomorrow!

What services do they want us to cut? What are we providing for our students that is so out of line?

We’ll hear an awful lot this legislative session about how under-performing our state’s public schools are. Folks will be pushing charter schools and vouchers, spending lids, and all kinds of measures that paint public education as the enemy. We’re not. Come visit us and see for yourselves!

Mike Lucas
York, Nebraska