LINCOLN — Omaha Public Schools, the largest school district in Nebraska, is less than 50 days from handing over management of its pension fund to the state.

But a new state audit widened the scope of problems Nebraska could inherit from the Omaha School Employees Retirement System, leaders of the state retirement system were told Monday.

It’s not just the OPS pension fund’s $1 billion shortfall after years of bad investment decisions. It’s that local management mistakes made things worse, and it’s not clear how much.

State Auditor Mike Foley found mistakes including overpayments that were not corrected or collected and inaccurate calculations of cash and medical benefits that helped or hurt some retirees.

For instance, some accounts were not credited with the interest they had earned. One lost $23,000. Some records were inaccurate. One person received $53,000 after having already cashed out.

Members of the Nebraska Public Employees Retirement Systems board questioned State Auditor Mike Foley’s team about who will be responsible for fixes after the state takes over Sept. 1.

Foley, responding to emailed questions Monday from the Examiner, said his auditors have “serious concerns regarding the quality of data the state might be inheriting from OSERS.”

“We have written-up OSERS multiple times on these matters and we are skeptical that the corrections will be made prior to the state takeover of the plan,” he said.

Questions about timing and fixes

John Murante, the , asked whether OSERS must correct its errors made before the state takeover and, if not, how many hours it will take state employees to address them.

Murante, the former state treasurer and a former state senator,  said the Legislature might not have agreed to run the system had lawmakers known the level of day-to-day management challenges at the Omaha pension fund.

“It was not the understanding that the state was assuming control of a poorly managed plan,” Murante said in a followup interview. “The understanding was that we’re assuming control of a plan that made bad financial decisions a long time ago.”

He said the state’s process and staffing needs for administering a plan that might need to correct the accounts of 15,000 pension members “is a totally different world.” He said the agency would “do an assessment of how much correction needs to take place.”

The auditor typically samples about 25 fund contributors for each of its tests on retirement funds, one of its auditors explained to the NPERS board.

Audit checks of multiple accounts found excess balances of more than $8 million. The state has not finalized how much it will charge OSERS for administrative costs, Murante said.

“One of the frightening parts of your audit, like every audit, is that it’s just a sample,” Murante said at the meeting. “These dollar amounts are staggering, even with just a sample.”

Investigation found problems

Most of the problems with the OPS retirement fund came to light during an Omaha World-Herald investigation of poor investment decisions made by the local pension fund from 2007-09.

Many centered around sell-offs of stocks during the 2007-08 recession and efforts afterward to move money into less flexible funds and investments as stocks rebounded. OSERS leaders faced questions about how they decided which investments to make.

The World-Herald recently found the gap between projected benefits and payments into the plan from the district and plan participants.

OSERS Administrator Shane Rhian, in a letter responding to the audit, wrote that OPS had not made all the fixes identified in the audit but said it would correct them before the state takes over.

“Mr. Rhian, CFO and OSERS administrator, and our district have committed to addressing all the necessary items ahead of the Sept. 1 transition, in addition to funding the plan for the members it serves,” OPS spokeswoman Bridget Blevins said.

Omaha Education Association President Kathy Poehling said she is pleased to see the state take over day-to-day management of OSERS, including calculating benefits and sending retirees their benefit checks.

She said local pension fund leadership has told the union and its members that the audit issues are being addressed and that “there is no threat to their pension checks now or in the future.”

“The district is making the necessary catch-up payments and the investment returns under state management are good,” Poehling said. “The actuarial projections show the unfunded liability will be reduced over time as these payments continue to be made.”

State retirement board member Jim Schulz said his concern is how many accounts might need correction and who will have to do the correcting. He worries about major miscalculated payments.

Murante said OPS district taxpayers and its retirees will end up having to make the program whole, because the state will keep OSERS separate from the state plan for teacher retirement.

Next steps for plan

He said current and former OPS teachers should know that the state is “100% confident” that it will address and correct any management issues that are identified.

Progress toward the transition to state management was discussed Monday, including the sharing and scanning of nearly 60,000 documents and the sharing of computer data.

Data migration appears to be running up to 12 weeks behind, an IT employee told the board, held up partly by problems OSERS faced during a data conversion in the early 2000s.

But he told the board his team expects the state to get what it needs to handle the transition for current OPS employees and retirees by early September.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

OMAHA — Three Nebraska K-12 school districts are planting future teachers this spring in a new pilot program the Legislature seeded last year with $1 million.

North Platte Public Schools, Lincoln Public Schools and Westside Community Schools in Omaha are joining with higher education institutions and the state to ease the path from para-educator to teacher.

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Passing Legislative Bill 705 was one of several small steps the Legislature took in 2023 to give local school districts more tools to address an ongoing shortage of classroom teachers.

Once accepted, program participants — the classroom aides or educational assistants — can cut the cost and time it takes to complete a tailored teacher education program.

Credit for classroom work

The program’s higher ed partners at Chadron State College, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Midland University will grant college credits to paras for some of their classroom experience.

Organizers call it the “apprenticeship model.” Paras are paired with mentor teachers in their schools who serve as co-teachers and offer feedback to the paras and college faculty.

State Education Commissioner Brian Maher announced Westside as the state’s third pilot district Wednesday at Westbrook Elementary School, where ed assistant Shelly Sip helps kindergartners with reading.

Sip said she participates in a district-funded precursor to the state program. That program pays for an undergraduate teaching program at Midland at night while she works full-time during the day.

The 15-year ed assistant said she and many other para-educators want to be teachers but could not afford to attend a teacher education program without financial help from the district or the state.

“I wanted to be in the front of the room,” she said. “I wanted to make the lesson plans. And I found out that Westside is doing the program 
 and the district will pay for my education.”

She said she has benefited from seeing classrooms in her role as an education assistant. She helps lead reading groups, helps with math and walks kids to recess and lunch.

She said she attended the district, sent her kids to the district and now wants to teach there.

“I’m here, and I’ve been here since kindergarten, and I will be here for probably ever,” she said.

Another tool for school hiring

Andrea Haynes, Westside’s assistant superintendent for human resources, said the new program would reduce the time that paras spend outside of the classroom preparing to become teachers.

She called the program a “groundbreaking partnership” that shows the district and the state’s commitment to “nurturing talent and fostering a strong educational community.”

She said it helps address the teacher shortage by “building a sustainable pipeline of amazing educators right from our own classrooms.”

“We believe this innovative model not only accelerates their path to becoming certified teachers, but it also empowers them to elevate their impact,” Haynes said.

Mary Ritzdorf, dean of the Walker School of Education at Midland, said the university and Westside were still working out specifics of how many credits paras could earn while at work.

Traditional students in teaching programs don’t get into classroom settings regularly until their final year of college. In this, officials said, paras have an edge.

The apprenticeship model would likely, among other things, help accepted paras to stay working in their schools through their student teaching, reducing the need for substitutes.

More certified teachers needed

Nancy Christensen, the associate professor of education who runs Midland’s teaching programs for ed assistants and paras, said the goal is getting more qualified teachers certified.

The Westside district alone has 200 or so ed assistants, Haynes said, including many serving as helpers for special education teachers, general ed teachers and as hall monitors.

Using existing para-to-teacher programs, Westside expects to graduate about seven to eight paras this spring and 10-15 a year, she said. Each agrees to work five years in exchange for the aid. The length-of-service commitments vary from district to district.

Districts statewide are exploring higher pay, bonuses and benefits to lure new teachers and retain those they already employ, officials said Wednesday.

Maher said he understands they are “robbing Peter to pay Paul” by finding new teachers among the ranks of also difficult-to-hire paras.

“We need to fill both buckets, quite frankly,” he said.

LB 705 set aside $1 million a year for the program from the Education Future Fund. When asked whether he thought the Legislature might find more funding if the pilot program was successful, Maher said it appears more likely that school districts would fund such programs if they help find and hire teachers.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

OMAHA — Seeking to eliminate “book deserts” in Nebraska, the State Department of Education has directed $2 million toward getting more than a half-million books into households with the youngest Nebraskans.

The Nebraska Growing Readers effort kicked off Monday with a batch of books distributed to Educare of Omaha at Indian Hill, one of 18 urban and rural child care providers and other statewide sites that will help get the books to families.

While at the South Omaha stop, a team of education advocates mingled with the target audience — pre-kindergarteners — and Education Commissioner Brian Maher even took a few minutes to read a book to a group of 3-year-olds.

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“Reading is the foundation to everything we do,” Maher said.

“What it boils down to is, ‘How developed is your vocabulary?’ Reading and being around language helps tremendously 
 so you can read, be literate and then begin to think critically.”

Among those accompanying Maher was Mary Jo Pankoke, president and chief executive of Nebraska Children and Families Foundation, and Suzanne Pillen, wife of Gov. Jim Pillen, who has been visiting classrooms and working on issues to promote literacy.

The foundation is partnering in the project, along with the Statewide Family Engagement Center and Unite for Literacy. A state education spokesman said the $2 million comes from the department’s pandemic-related federal allotment of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds.

Pankoke said part of the objective is to get parents and family members involved in reading with children on a daily basis.

Available books are generally filled with pictures, ranging in topics from family to animals, organizers said, and are accessible in Spanish and other languages if desired.

The initial phase is to reach 16,000 children, 12,000 households and 1,000 early childhood providers, and organizers said they hope to get a series of books into each household.

Each of the distribution sites is to receive technical assistance. And the project is to use data and interactive mapping tools to monitor progress and provide feedback for stakeholders and child care providers.

The overriding goal is to make Nebraska one of the nation’s extensive “book gardens” and to eliminate book deserts.

According to a , an estimated 32% of homes in Nebraska have more than 100 books. That compares to a nationwide share of 31%. The 100-book threshold is viewed as an important indicator and predictor of school success.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

LINCOLN — About one week before school started this fall, Omaha Public Schools informed Kelsey Escobar her child would need to change schools to continue his individualized special education. She could choose among a dozen different sites.

Escobar said her son transferred into one of those sites, but the afternoon school bus that was arranged to pick up her son did not arrive multiple times during the first week of school, and school administrators didn’t tell her about a change in plans until 4:30 or 5 p.m. She said that no one from the OPS central office told her in advance and that it felt like OPS was trying to “bully” her family into selecting another school.

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Though the situation has since improved, Escobar told the Nebraska Legislature’s Education Committee on Friday the experience traumatized her and scared her son for being left behind.

“It was very stressful for me,” Escobar told the committee. “It was something that I didn’t think I would ever have to go through because, obviously, it’s the school system, they know what they’re doing. Our kids are in their hands pretty much.”

“I always have my phone next to me just in case the school tells me, ‘Hey, the bus is not coming today,’” Escobar added.

Vacancies pushed students from three schools

The Education Committee called for Friday’s special briefing after — Walnut Hill, King and Central Park — were left without a single special education instructor this year.

Spencer Head, president of the Omaha School Board, said the five vacancies at those schools are the result of four resignations and one transfer in the spring. The vacancies are just a handful of 133 special education teachers missing in OPS classrooms.

Across the three North Omaha schools, 137 students have been displaced or are going without services if they chose not to relocate.

OPS, Head said, has 52,000 students. Roughly 21.3% of them are on an individual education plan, or IEP — the national average is 15% of students. OPS’s share of special needs students is greater than the number of total students in all but five of the state’s 244 districts, Head said.

IEP teams can include five to 15 support staff members and are crafted delicately according to state and federal laws after meetings usually lasting one to five hours.

“It’s a complicated process with one primary goal: to ensure that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate education,” Head testified.

The process has also gone through “lawyerfication” with 330 families now coming to IEP meetings with lawyers who treat the process as “mini-trials,” according to Head. Five years ago, the district averaged five cases of families who were represented by lawyers, Head said, and the increases are because juvenile courts have appointed legal counsel for families in unrelated cases.

“It’s a process that really makes no sense,” Head said. “IEPs are meant to be collaborative rather than combative endeavors.”

‘What are we doing?’

Lawmakers at the hearing often traded grilling questions to Head as well as to Charles Wakefield, OPS’s chief operations and talent officer, and Kara Saldierna, executive director of special education for OPS.

At times, lawmakers scrunched their faces or used their hands to hide their faces or hold their noses after asking OPS officials what steps they took to minimize the fallout and communicate with families.

At one point, the room fell silent after Omaha State Sen. Justin Wayne, who represents North Omaha alongside State Sen. Terrell McKinney, asked, “What are we doing?”

No OPS official had a response.

State Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln asked whether OPS had taken other steps, such as negotiating with the local teachers union, communicating with the Nebraska Department of Education or using emergency funds to address the vacancies. Wayne asked whether the district considered contracting with private companies to provide certain services.

Wakefield said OPS last negotiated teacher contracts in the winter but has not done so recently because teachers would breach their contracts and risk losing their licenses if they left their current districts to come to OPS.

Why these schools?

Conrad asked the officials, “Is this an emergency?” and Head nodded, “Yep,” and explained the district is now looking at using reserves in some way. Head said the district is also in contact with the Nebraska Department of Education.

OPS board members approved the district’s next budget, which Wayne noted includes fewer funds for the North Omaha schools that no longer offer certain special education services.

Saldierna said that the intent is to restaff the schools and that OPS will not require students who have transferred to return to their schools unless they want to.

OPS is also shifting  for speech language pathology to online services through the Chicago-based TeleTeachers. An in-person staff will monitor students.

State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn asked why the issue fell on the three North Omaha schools, which Saldierna said was not OPS’s choice.

“What we did have control over was to ensure that students at those schools were able to receive special education services,” Saldierna added.

Head said Matthew Ray, OPS interim superintendent, made the final call to move the North Omaha families. Doing so was meant to avoid a “ripple effect” impacting more students if the district took an alternate route, Head said.

‘We scavenge wherever we can’

Conrad asked why the changes seemed sudden in mid-August when families were first notified, considering the district knew about the vacancies in April.

Wakefield said OPS had every intent to fill the positions, working to recruit year-round, attending multiple career fairs, visiting 20 different states and advertising through billboards in districts miles away to “steal” teachers.

Still, the vacancies — similar to districts nationwide — persisted.

“We scavenge wherever we can, but no matter how much money we actually contract 
 we’ve got to have the people to do it,” Wakefield said, stating no teachers are available.

OPS officials said the district would be in further trouble if a teacher suddenly resigned or was injured. Wayne asked repeatedly what the contingency plan was and expressed concern for liability in the district.

Legislature mulls more legislation

Solving the shortage of special education teachers is a little more complicated than a shortage of general education teachers because there is a licensing requirement. There are current teachers certified in special education, but Wakefield said they’ve not been approached because of a similarly feared “ripple effect” for those students.

Head suggested possible changes could include changing a licensure requirement so it could be fulfilled through a Nebraska Department of Education course or allowing teaching certification tests to substitute additional education and get teachers in the classroom sooner.

Conrad said there has to be a price point to incentivize teachers. She said she hopes OPS and other districts facing similar circumstances will use the moment to come up with a clear plan so the Legislature can further address teacher retention and recruitment.

This year, the Education Committee eliminated certain certification fees and budgeted stipends to retain teachers as two ways of addressing the issues with legislation led by State Sens. Lynne Walz of Fremont and Linehan, respectively.

‘We are exploiting their altruism’

Elizabeth Eynon-Kokrda, managing attorney for Education Rights Counsel, which provides support to under-resourced public pre-K-12 students, said the Legislature could choose to address student-to-teacher ratios, resolve transportation concerns or require more accountability.

“Some children, you can give them those tools and they don’t use them,” Eynon-Kokrda said. “But the vast majority of students that we work with, when they get those tools, they start succeeding.”

She added it’s hard to understand why no teachers were removed from schools that, unlike in North Omaha, do not have a majority of students of color or families living in poverty.

Edison McDonald, executive director of The Arc of Nebraska, which advocates with and for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, thanked the Legislature for this year’s investments in special education. However, he said, more support will soon be needed.

Conrad said the situation raises racial and gender justice issues and has another complexity: a history of society and the state not valuing teachers.

“We’re not paying them for the professionals that they are,” Conrad said. “And we are exploiting their altruism and dedication because they are passionate about teaching and kids in education, paying them salaries that don’t let them buy a house or live in any sort of peace of mind.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

State Sen. Jen Day of the Gretna area said she was stunned to learn via recent email that an Omaha area school had tried to teach lessons of the Holocaust but stopped after receiving pushback.

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Such incidents underscore the necessity, they and others testified Tuesday, of Legislative Bill 888 — which would add the Holocaust and other acts of genocide to existing Nebraska statutes that already call for multicultural education to K-12 students in public schools.

Currently, the law requires that multicultural education focus on the culture, history and contributions of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and Asian Americans.

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Introduced by Day, the broader language had been pushed previously by a former lawmaker but stalled.

Ten people testified Tuesday in support of the resurrected measure presented to the Education Committee. No one spoke in opposition.

The committee took no action, though Lincoln Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks said she found it “despicable” — and a reflection of “the state of politics today” — that the school Day referred to (but did not identify by name) would receive such pushback about Holocaust education. 

Day cited a recent survey indicating that 66% of millennials were unable to identify Auschwitz (the Nazi concentration and death camp).

That the Holocaust’s systematic murder of six million European Jews occurred relatively recently, during World War II, is further reason to be alarmed, Day said.

“Never Again”

She said she was further concerned that only nine Holocaust survivors remain in Nebraska as a “living, breathing” tool that can equip students with the knowledge to identify and reject discrimination and hate.

“We’re really missing those human to human stories,” said Day. “Ignorance will only increase as (the Holocaust) falls further into history.”

Gary Javitch of B’nai B’rith Omaha said a spike in anti-Semitism is “reason enough” to increase Holocaust education. He said Nebraska should become the 24th state to adopt the legal language.

Said Javitch: “The phrase ‘never again’ needs to be more than just a slogan.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .