Rickett’s actions, comments unjustified and offensive

While we should have come to expect such an approach by now, like most other Nebraska educators, I was still surprised by the late January remarks of Gov. Pete Ricketts.

When asked whether he would sign a proclamation celebrating Public Schools Week, Ricketts said no, that education-related proclamations issued by his office focus on “excellence and choice.”

The Governor’s comment is offensive and wrong-headed. Nebraska public schools clearly do, in fact, provide both excellence and choice.

Ricketts’ remarks are more than hurtful to the 330,000 children attending and the 28,000-plus teachers, 1,200-plus administrators and thousands of education support professionals working in our Nebraska public schools.

His words were also demeaning, coming from an official who is elected to serve every Nebraskan.

The governor’s remark ignored that Nebraska public schools collectively rank as the sixth-best in the country by U.S. News and World Report and are slotted at 11th best in the nation by Forbes.

He ignored the fact that graduation rates in Nebraska have risen for each of the last four years. He ignored that the composite ACT scores of Nebraska students rank only behind Wisconsin and Utah among states where 100 percent of students take the ACT.

The governor also knows, and ignores, that there are almost no limits on school choice in Nebraska. If there is room in the accepting school district, an Omaha kid can transfer to Elkhorn. A Norfolk kid can transfer to Stanton. A Maxwell kid could transfer to North Platte.

But Ricketts has shown a consistent, demeaning and disrespectful pattern of behavior toward public schools and those who make them work. Last year, he took well-deserved heat for using the Soviet-like term “government schools” to describe our superb public schools. We noted at the time that language matters and that it is “wrong and purposefully misleading” to call Nebraska’s public schools “government schools.”

In 2017, he denied a proclamation celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Nebraska State Education Association, a slap in the face to 28,000 member-educators across the state. In fact, one newspaper called the Governor’s actions “petty and foolish.”

He has consistently worked to advantage private schools over public schools through support of voucher schemes, charter schools and tax dodges disguised as private school scholarship programs. In his State of the State address he bragged that a bill he supports this year would triple the spending of public dollars on textbooks for private schools.

Meanwhile, Ricketts claims he is fully funding state aid to public schools – even though the state aid formula is changed almost yearly to ratchet down needed aid – and even with that sleight of hand, state aid has been “fully” funded only four times in the past 17 years. Ricketts’ plan would grow state aid next year by about $21 million. Divvied up between 244 school districts, that’s not much, and continues to put pressure on local property taxes to fund schools.

All of this is happening as teachers are literally putting their lives on the line daily, teaching in-person, often without schools fully following CDC, or even DHHS, guidelines. And their thanks from the state? A September Directed Health Measure from the state declaring that teachers exposed to COVID-19 can return to school and a January change to the vaccination priorities that pushes educators farther down the list for receiving the vaccines, even as studies are showing increased transmission from youth and even though the state has designated educators as “essential workers.”

Adding insult to injury, just days after jilting public schools with his “excellence and choice” remarks, Ricketts signed a proclamation in support of private schools. Ironically, not mentioned at all was the 154-year-old model of excellence and choice in Nebraska: public schools.

-- Jenni Benson is president of the Nebraska State Education Association