Nebraska
Nebraska Promise propels Mitchell into classroom
When asked about her small town upbringing, Nebraska Promise recipient Nonie Mitchell doesn’t mince words.
“I’m about as Nebraska as it gets,” she said. “I grew up between four cornfields and graduated from a school in the middle of a cornfield. I rode the bus an hour each way to get to that school — it almost felt like a different time period.”
A first-generation college student from a single-parent family, Mitchell grew up in a household that prized reading and writing, instilling in her an early love for English. The Nebraska Promise program, which covers tuition at any University of Nebraska school for students from Nebraska families who make $65,000 or less, enabled Mitchell to take that passion for literature from her Oxford hometown to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
“The Nebraska Promise was really a lifesaver for me,” Mitchell said. “I never thought that I would go to college. I wanted to go to, but my senior year of high school, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to afford it.”
High school was also where Mitchell developed a life-changing relationship with her English teacher, who both inspired her to seriously pursue college and, eventually, become an English teacher herself.
“She always believed in me. It was never ‘If you go to college,’ it was always, ‘When you go to college,’ which was something that I really couldn’t see for myself having no one in my family go to college,” Mitchell said.
Now at Nebraska, Mitchell is working toward a degree in English education in the mold of her high school English teacher who did so much for her. She credited the English department faculty and staff as being hugely influential to her during her time on campus and reinvigorating her love for the subject.
“I think I’m biased because I’m an English major, but the English department on campus has the best staff ever,” she said. “They all really care about you, want you to do well and know who you are. That’s just not something I expected, especially at a Big Ten university.”
As for where she’ll end up teaching after graduation, there’s really only one answer for Mitchell.
“I for sure would like to go back to a Title I school, being from a low-income background,” she said. “Long term, I think I will stay in Nebraska. I can’t imagine being anywhere other than here.”
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Hundreds of people are without power in southeast Nebraska after a severe storm passed through Thursday morning.
The Lincoln Electric System outage map showed 115 customers without power across the city at 11:36 a.m.
Norris Public Power District’s outage map also shows 45 customers affected by the storm. As of 11:36 a.m., there were nine active outages.
According to the Nebraska Public Power District outage map, 657 customers were affected by the storm. Most of the affected customers were near Plattsmouth in southeast Nebraska. As of 11:37 a.m., 27 customers remain without power.
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Mandatory evacuations have been ordered near Crawford, including Fort Robinson State Park, as the South Fork Fire continues to spread in western Nebraska.
According to the City of Crawford, evacuations are currently underway for an area north of Crawford that includes the area south of Dodd Road, west of Dodd Road, and FF Street.
Fort Robinson has also been evacuated.
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission said Fort Robinson State Park and Peterson Wildlife Management Area have been temporarily closed due to the fire.
The fire has burned approximately 9,000 acres and is currently 0% contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Nebraska Game and Parks said the park and the WMA will remain closed until further notice to support firefighting operations and protect public safety.
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