Nebraska

Bill would start Nebraska K-12 voucher program with $1,500 a year | Nebraska Examiner

Published

2 years ago

January 30, 2024

Bill would start Nebraska K-12 voucher program with ,500 a year | Nebraska Examiner

LINCOLN — The next front in Nebraska’s school choice fight could shift toward a proposal by State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair under which the state would deposit $1,500 a year per student into a new type of state-managed savings account for parents and guardians paying for students attending private K-12 schools.

State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair speaks on the floor of the Legislature in May 2023. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner).

Using the language of national school choice advocates, Hansen said his goal is to “fund students, not systems.” He said he has seen other states such as Iowa and Arizona use similar plans to subsidize private school costs.

“Parents are the primary educators of their children, not the government,” he told the Legislature’s Education Committee on Tuesday. “Our role should assist parents in that job.”

Legislative Bill 1386 would let people use the funds for private school tuition, textbooks, school supplies, therapies, books and academic materials approved by the Nebraska Board of Education. The new educational savings accounts for approved or accredited private K-12 schools would begin in the 2025-26 school year.

The accounts would be overseen by the Nebraska State Treasurer’s Office. But the accounts would offer no tax advantages like the tax-free 529 college savings plans the Treasurer’s Office currently oversees. Instead, under LB 1386, these accounts would act as pass-throughs for state appropriations into a school choice fund that would be created, invested and managed by the state.

Few details yet on costs

The bill did not detail the appropriation needed for the new fund. The only costs estimated by the bill’s fiscal note were about $300,000 for the State Treasurer’s Office to administer it. That funding includes the costs of an auditor to make sure funds are properly spent.

Critics of the voucher push said the voucher plan would violate the Nebraska Constitution’s Article VII, Section 11, which says, “No appropriation or grant of public funds or property shall be made to any educational institution which is not owned and controlled by the state or a governmental subdivision thereof.”

Tim Royers of the NSEA answers questions from reporters on Aug. 30, 2023, about the petition drive for Support Our Schools. (Aaron Sanderford/Nebraska Examiner)

Tim Royers, president of the Millard Education Association, who was also testifying on behalf of the Nebraska State Education Association, told the committee that courts have held such voucher plans as state appropriations to private schools regardless of how many steps the money must take to reach there.

Royers said private schools would receive public money, an issue opponents raised last year about the new Opportunity Scholarship Act.

Hansen, reached after the hearing, disagreed. He and State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that state funds can be used this way three times. He explained the Nebraska workaround: The state will be giving state tax dollars to parents and not to private schools, he said.

He said he proposed starting with $1,500 a year because that’s how much state lawmakers funded last year as a baseline level of state aid per public school student. Iowa last session expanded its student savings account for private school students to the full cost of state aid per K-12 student, $7,598 a year.

Royers said other states starting similar voucher programs have learned that the programs largely help offset the costs of students already attending private schools. He said they don’t often create a large influx of new students from public schools who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend. Private school students in Iowa and elsewhere often see large increases in private school tuition rates once state support increases, he said.

And the funding lost to public schools leaves public school students and districts in worse shape, Royers said.

“We should be learning from the mistakes coming out of other states…,” Royers said. “This does not help needy families. It helps private schools.”

Wayne questions Royers

State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, a school choice advocate, asked Royers why it was OK for the state to subsidize private preschool education and private higher education but not K-12.

State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan details what she views as the impacts of LB 753 in May 2023. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska Examiner)

“Is there something special about those years?” he asked, after Royers did not answer his question.

A representative of the Holland Children’s Movement shared data from its 2023 poll indicating more than 60% of Nebraskans opposed subsidizing private schools with public funding.

Linehan and Education Committee Chairman Dave Murman said they had seen polling that found the opposite, indicating broad statewide support for school choice programs.

“It depends on how you ask the question,” Linehan said.

Hansen expects the bill to reach the legislative floor this session. Bill opponents, including the NSEA, say they will be ready.

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Nebraska

Husker Fans flock to NCAA Volleyball final four despite no Nebraska

Published

11 hours ago

December 19, 2025

Press Room

Husker Fans flock to NCAA Volleyball final four despite no Nebraska

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – With 2025 NCAA Volleyball Championships in Kansas City this season, many Nebraska fans made plans ahead time given the driving distance to Lincoln. The Huskers lost in the regional final at home yet many fans still attended the final four.

“We just want to watch high-quality volleyball, grow the sport, and it’s a competitive sport, and there’s still four very good teams here,” Elizabeth Wright, a life-long Nebraska Volleyball fan, said.

Hundreds of Husker faithful dawned their red Nebraska gear as they entered the T Mobile Center on Thursday night with their team not playing. When asked about which team Nebraska fans would support, the majority of interviewees said Texas A&M.

“Part of me wants to watch Texas A&M win just because they beat us, and if they win, it gives us a little validation that we lost to the best team,” Karla Huneke, a Grand Island native and Nebraska Volleyball fan, said.

Overall, the surprise of Nebraska not making the NCAA Volleyball Championship didn’t impact Nebraskans from attending the final four.

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Nebraska

Nebraska State Patrol investigating after body found in farm outbuilding

Published

23 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Nebraska State Patrol investigating after body found in farm outbuilding

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – The Nebraska State Patrol is investigating after a body was found on a farm in rural Furnas County on Wednesday.

The patrol said the body was found in an outbuilding on a rural farm north of Oxford.

A representative of the farm’s owners was inspecting the property ahead of a sale and found the body in the outbuilding, according to the patrol.

Investigators documented the scene and are working to identify the body.

The patrol said it was “apparent” the person had been dead for “some time.” There is no believed to be no threat to the public.

An investigation is ongoing, and an autopsy is scheduled for Friday.

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Nebraska

Nebraska CIO on Preparing for Future Talent, Tech Needs

Published

1 day ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Nebraska CIO on Preparing for Future Talent, Tech Needs

Nebraska officials have spent 2025 focused on laying the groundwork to advance IT talent pipelines, AI implementation and more in 2026 — and on reducing IT costs while doing so.

State CIO Matthew McCarville was tapped to lead Nebraska IT in 2024, in part with the goal of delivering cost savings to taxpayers. He views diversity, in a broad sense, as a mindset through which to find new technology solutions and talent.

Nebraska IT is in a position to modernize now, McCarville said, and that is in part a result of IT work in recent years. When he came to the state, systems were almost entirely on-premise mainframe. Since his arrival, work has begun to get the state off mainframe and into a cloud environment in the next calendar year; a vendor selection is expected in January. That will be key to state adoption of emerging technologies like AI.

“[The cloud environment] enables us to leverage all of that data in a new way we’ve never been able to before,” he said, explaining that using AI on an on-premise mainframe is “cost-prohibitive.” Now, state data can be used more effectively, enabling predictive analytics and AI in a cost-effective way.

The other piece of the AI puzzle is the skillset needed to implement it effectively. In Nebraska, roughly one-third of full-time employees qualified for retirement about a decade ago, according to McCarville, so the talent question is a high priority.

The state has a Data and AI Center of Excellence in Omaha, which enables officials to launch an internship initiative as an early talent pipeline for people who may not have worked with state government. The internship is expected to launch “full-bore” in January, and the first-ever statewide IT apprenticeship program is expected to arrive in 2026.

The apprenticeship program is GI Bill-qualified, so its funding will support the state’s collaboration with educational entities to train exiting military members — and the broader public — on AI, data and cybersecurity. The program is also intended to encourage people to stay in Nebraska.

These initiatives, McCarville said, aim to help the state address modernization needs while dealing with a soon-to-retire workforce, cost-effectively.

Part of modernization is implementing a mindset shift to one that is more forward-looking, he said. For example, rather than remaining entrenched in vendor agreements created 20 years ago, state IT is diversifying its ecosystem and moving away from such long-term relationships.

Diversifying vendors does require knowledge about more products, but it better positions the state to tackle new projects by being able to work with the lowest-cost provider. This shift is not a critique of previous vendors, McCarville said, but reflects meeting modern needs.

The state launched its first Joint Security Operations Center in 2024, powering a whole-of-state model through which state IT officials serve all 93 counties and their cities, plus more than 250 K-12 supporting organizations, governor’s cabinet agencies, and non-cabinet boards, agencies and commissions.

“So, we are building a kind of ‘Field of Dreams’ for cyber,” said McCarville of the state’s approach — creating the infrastructure in an effort to attract organizations to participate.

There has been much discussion of potential changes at the federal level that could affect state cybersecurity funding, but McCarville said state cybersecurity must rely on sustainable funding sources — and federal funding is not always that. He said he views federal funding as an “added bonus” for state cybersecurity.

Although the state is investing in IT, doing so in a cost-efficient way is a priority to address budget constraints. The state Legislature is facing a $471 million deficit in the annual budget, and the governor has established a goal for cabinet agencies to cut $500 million a year over the next two years.

The Nebraska Office of the CIO (OCIO) is in a unique position because rather than receiving a general fund appropriation, agencies pay for its services from general funds they receive. Still, OCIO is reducing its rates and expenses to offer them discounts — cutting $2.5 million in annual recurring overhead so far, with the goal of reaching $13 million. This was not mandated, but is OCIO’s way of helping the state address the deficit.

“Cutting dollars in IT doesn’t always end up having an added benefit,” McCarville said. “But we are trying very hard in modernization, which typically costs more money, to lower our expenses — but yet modernize and do all of these initiatives at the same time.”

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