August Yancey

The Opportunity Scholarship Act, passed by the Nebraska Legislature in May, takes money that would usually go to public schools and other public services to fund private school scholarships with the intent to give underprivileged kids an opportunity to attend a better school. This act seems to inherently imply that private schools are better than public schools. Public schools educate 89% of kids in Nebraska. It’s an insult to take that money away for the sake of ‘opportunity’ for someone else. 

At first glace, the act wouldn’t take that much money from any one school. It’s only authorized up to 25 million in tax credits for the next year (annually increasing, though,  to a max of 100 million), while the Nebraska Department of Education spends roughly 4.4 billion every year. In fact, Millard Public Schools receives about 256 million every year from the department of education- about 0.058% of that budget- while the rest goes to other public schools across Nebraska. When the Opportunity Act fully starts granting scholarships, up to 25 million of the usual public school budget will instead go to scholarships for private schools. In this case, Millard’s budget will decrease by around 2.54 million, which is about the amount the district spends on 211 students in a year. The budget cut could definitely be worse, but frankly, it’s really not the time to be decreasing school budgets, what with the massive teacher shortage and all. 

Another problem presents itself within the choice of private schools- out of the 228 private schools in Nebraska, 192 are religious institutions, meaning that in most cases, public money will be going to a religious organization. Overall, this feels like a violation of the separation of church and state. 

Bluntly, there’s much better things we could be doing with 25 million dollars for schools. Raise teacher pay, hire more educators, add more school support staff- literally anything is better than just taking public money to use for private schools. For an act to steal money from public schools and then claim to provide opportunities is outrageous. It should be insulting to everyone who has ever benefited from public education- to anyone ever given an opportunity by it. 

Because those very opportunities will be the first thing to go during budget cuts. Programs like Early College cost a lot of money to put on- and Millard has a lot of programs. Things like the Young Adult program, the Montesorri program, the English Language Learner program, the Metro and High School College and Career Academies, AP classes and Dual Enrollment- All together, it’s a lot of money for such specialized programs. 

If we’re honest with ourselves, public education probably does need reform. There are problems that need fixing, but putting your hope into an incredibly unregulated system isn’t the solution. And taking money from the already underfunded schools will not help- It’ll just make everything worse. As public budgets are cut, the quality of education will fall, and so more and more students will find themselves at private schools. This will funnel even more money to private schools, and the cycle will continue on and on and on.

The good news is that although the act was passed, a petition drive this summer gathered almost double the 60,000 signatures required to put the act to a vote, and now the act will be on the 2024 ballot. Voters will have a chance to say whether these opportunity scholarships are something they want for Nebraska.

  So when opportunity knocks on your door, ask yourself which students will be missing theirs.