SENT TO: Gov. Dave Heineman, Brad Ashford, and Omaha Public Schools Superintendent Mark Evans
The policies governing truancy in Nebraska must be changed. How long will you,
our elected officials, allow policies to excuse those who abuse your people?
Is there no limit to the confusion and pain this law can cause? Does the the
accumulation of cases in our county attorneys’ offices mean nothing to you,
nothing also our taxpayer money flowing into a burgeoning number of cases,
nothing our families’ struggles to educate their sick children, nothing our
people’s dislike of big government, nothing the disproportionate ill-treatment
of those with little financial resources, nothing the pleading of those you
claim to protect here in Nebraska?
Education policies may
govern or punish. All evidence gathered by the Nebraska Family Forum http://www.nebraskafamilyforum.org/
shows that these so-called truancy policies are resulting in punishment and
worse, gross miscarriages of justice and flagrant over-reaching actions by
school administrators and county attorneys and court appointed officials. It is
being used to punish those who follow the rule of sending their children to
school, as stated in statute 79-201: “each day that such school is open and in
session, except when excused by school authorities or when illness or severe
weather conditions make attendance impossible or impracticable.” Amendments have
capped absent-limits, and gone on to require school districts to have a policy
in place to deal with “excessive absenteeism” and yet, there is confusion and
misapplication. I believe “turn em in and let the courts sort em out” is an
unwritten policy, and when cases are given scrutiny and the light of day, it
often seems that the only thing made clear is a great deal of
finger-pointing.
In that travesty of
“fixing” turning sick children into criminals, known as LB933, nothing has been
fixed, and nothing made clear. Why are charges of criminal truancy still being
leveled against excused absentees? My heart bursts each time I read one of these
cases of sick children, desperate parents, and uninformed, if not disingenuous
civil advocates. So I ask you gentlemen: as public servants, elected to serve
the people, how long will you allow them to be punished and harassed for
perfectly normal behavior? The whole policy needs to be reworked from the
beginning.
Not only is this problem
worse and bigger than lawmakers and enforcers are ready to admit, but you, its
supporters, are missing a golden opportunity to do something real and meaningful
for education policy in Nebraska. Instead of making enemies of your constituents
and their children, you could offer actual solutions. Instead of pouring money
into county services and diversionary tactics after the fact, you could offer
help to families before their situation becomes critical. I am sure there are
many things I don’t understand about the cash flow and the restrictions on how
money is directed into these programs, but ask yourself this: which is cheaper
in health care, health maintenance or triage and hospitalization?
We are using triage in
education to fix problems (heck, the GOALS memo even calls it triage) that could
be managed much more cheaply. As a result we have poor attendance, poor
performance, and underfunded districts. The “patient” is in constant crisis, and
still, with all the dollars we throw at education, the National Council of
Governors for major US cities claims that even if all the people in their
workforce were offered a job, they would not have the education or skills to
fill it. Statistics indicated that we stink at math and science, and it’s only
getting worse. In Nebraska, our standards (as compared nationally and
world-wide) produce “great results” because our expectations are so miserably
low. So how is all this money helping? It helps keep kids in school, but does it
educate anyone? And, oh, we are talking about a lot of money.... As you are
reading the story below, collected recently by NNF members, try a simple
exercise: try to keep a running total of all the billable hours of all the
officials who appear in this one story out of thousands, and weigh that against
the time, trouble, and heartache yet another family has gone through. Imagine
what we could do if we used that cash to help kids learn.
It should be understood,
gentlemen, that I exempted my own children, with many a tear and prayer, from
the public school system, and I now instruct them myself. I use the local
homeschooling communities, the public library, some homeschool materials and the
internet, the great democratizer, to help my children learn. As a result, I set
my own schedule, they read and learn whether they are sick or well, and they
study Latin and Greek and English grammar and math all summer. I am not rich nor
am I particularly brilliant. With the support and help of many faith-based
groups who laid the way plain for me, I have met home educators and families
whose tales are now documented on the NFF, who attempted to make school systems
work for them—overall a vast and diverse group of people. And I have found a
very curious thing. I find consensus among people where you would never expect
to see it. I see ultra-conservatives, religious folks, libertarians,
right-wingers and left-wingers, atheists, traditionalists, and progressives all
nodding their heads and agreeing that our school system here in NE is just one
more example of big government gone completely out of control. Perhaps this has
something to do with Senator Ashford’s unsuccessful mayoral bid. If you don’t
understand how messed up things still are, listen to this report of diversion
court by a conscientious observer:
My advice is that you, Senator Ashford and you, Governor Heinemen, work with our legislators and appoint a multi-disciplinary education task force and begin to explore the possibilities of using technology to fill the people resource gap and to better track what children are learning and find new ways to help them learn so they can win in life. How much more useful this would be than recording minutes their bottoms were in a certain GPS location and prosecuting those who have trouble keeping them there. Perhaps if we give people who are struggling some options, not just punishment, some understanding, not just enforcement, it will help Nebraskan children and families be proud of their education system and have them fighting to get in instead of fighting against it. And you know what, gentlemen? You could both be heroes, because instead of riding the downward curve like Detroit and its ilk, and watching as the learning and family life is legislated out of every classroom in the country, you could make the first real effort to fix public education. You could be the guys who took a suffering state full of underachievers and turned it into another Vermont, at the top of the list. I know a lot of folks who would vote for those guys.
Thank you,
Ann R. B.
Summers
Omaha, NE