Repeal a good place to restart

Nebraskans decided a couple weeks ago that public funds for education should fund public education … and only public education. You can skip the “well, duh.” Without two petition drives, a solid campaign and Nebraskans doing the right thing, the question in question — Legislative Bill 1402 — may very well have started using tax dollars for private school tuition next fall.

The decision to repeal LB 1402, which provided public money for private school scholarships, was fairly loud and quite clear. Nearly six in 10 Nebraskans who voted said no to the idea, originally pushed through the legislature in a different form, then rewritten at the last minute in a fit of policymaking presto-chango. Nevertheless, in only 11 of the state’s 93 counties did LB 1402 get a passing grade.

The outcome was the right decision on an idea that was wrong from the beginning.

Those who sought petition signatures to get the measure on the ballot, knocked on doors to convince their neighbors, wrote checks to pay for the effort and generally campaigned to repeal LB 1402 are entitled to a little celebration. Well done.

Now it’s time to move on. The repeal of LB 1402 does nothing to solve the problem of underperforming schools that cheat students out of a quality education and diminish the state’s track record of being among the nation’s best public school systems. Yes, the law was the wrong solution, but let’s not forget that many Nebraska parents indeed do want better educational opportunities for the kids.

As the legislature approaches its next session, it would be wise to consider the election results: Nebraskans don’t want public funds to pay for private school tuition. But no one wants schoolchildren in this state to get anything less than our best.

For starters, while fighting the culture wars in classrooms and school board meetings makes headlines and generates drama, it does nothing to improve instruction. We need to spend less time and energy fussing over book titles that are available for Johnny to check out from the school library or borrow from his classroom and more time and energy (and yes, maybe even more money) on the fact that he might not be able to read them anyway.

While we’re at it, we should argue less for parental rights in public schools because they already have those rights. We can also start insisting that schools teach all of American history and quit whitewashing its more dubious chapters. We owe our kids the truth, just as they will owe theirs.

Surely, too, we can come to some workable solutions that allow trans and gay kids to get a full education while being treated with respect and dignity, just as we promise to do for all kids, from the mission statements of local school districts to oaths of office for state senators and state school board members. And for the love of Mike, can we stop with the conspiracy theories? Schools performing sex change operations or students going behinds-over-backpacks because they read in a book that Sally has two moms? (I still wince at the cat-litter-box-in-schools memory.)

Let’s use the repeal of LB 1402 as a restarting point in making the state’s public schools the envy of the rest of the country.

The election also confirmed the burgeoning power of Nebraska’s blue dot in the 2nd Congressional District, which went solidly for the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And it wasn’t really even close.

As promised by Republicans in the “officially nonpartisan” Nebraska legislature and detailed in this space several weeks before the election, the blue dot may soon be covered with a heavy red blanket. Several state senators have said they will introduce legislation to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state, creating a difficult calculus for the blue dot when mixed with the crimson across the rest of the state.

For those of us who question the ongoing validity of the Electoral College — six states’ voices louder than the rest of us? — the blue dot presents a bittersweet dilemma. While I love the resistance, passion and, of late, regularity of a dapple of brilliant azure in a field of red, my beef with the Electoral College continues. Its elimination, however, would erase the blue dot. Of course, by the end of the next session of the Nebraska legislature, the blue dot may be moot … and mute.

If that should come to pass, what will be incumbent upon us will be to offer the story of the blue dot to the curriculum of Nebraska history in our ever-improving, ever public, public schools.