School board candidates discuss transparency, accountability to parents, and the culture wars in education panel
This election year has brought several new, conservative candidates to school board races around the Omaha Metro Area. Five of them spoke at a panel at the Pachyderm Luncheon last week, which was moderated by state senator Lou Ann Linehan. Linehan has made education her priority in the Nebraska legislature for eight years. Last year, she was able to pass the state’s first school choice program, which anti-school choice activists are hoping to have repealed via ballot initiative in this election.
The candidates on the panel were Tyler McGlade for Bennington, Edward Weniger for Papillion La Vista, Spencer Lombardo for Gretna, Brett Elliott for Elkhorn, and Justin Curtis for Millard.
Exodus from Omaha?
Students in the Omaha Public School system (OPS) have dramatically lower scores in reading and math on average than those in other school districts in the metro area. This in spite of OPS spending significantly more per student than those districts.
For example, OPS spends $20,414 per student annually (average daily attendance) while Bennington spends only $13,512. At the same time, 60% of Bennington high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 51% tested at or above that level for math compared to 17% of OPS students for reading and 8% for math.
Some OPS administrators see no problem with test scores like these. “Don’t focus on the grades too much,” said Julia Pick, principal of Buffett Middle School in Omaha, on social media. “I know lots of ‘C-average’ adults who are successful and amazing.”
Parents, of course, see things differently, and the failures of OPS has drawn families to districts like Bennington hoping for a better education for their children. In the past ten years, enrollment in Bennington public schools has increased over 250%, from 1,557 K-12 students in 2012-13 to 4,017 students in 2022-23. During those same years, enrollment in OPS has decreased.
“Bennington is seeing unprecedented growth,” Tyler McGlade said. “We are putting in a new neighborhood of 2,000 and 3,000 homes every day, it seems like. If you’ve been out there, you’ll just see the fields being cut and set up and everything. So there’s going to be a large influx of people.”
Accountability to parents
One concern for several candidates on the panel were school boards focused on the needs of a Superintendent and the education system rather than of those of parents and their children. Lou Ann Linehan told candidates that, once elected, the State School Board Association would tell them, “you have two jobs — listen to your Superintendent, and be a booster for your school.”
Brett Elliott recalled a constituent’s conversation with the Elkhorn superintendent years ago, paraphrasing, “If you can’t control your school board, you’re not doing your job.” Elliott observed this in practice afterward. “I started to notice that the six people who were elected on the school board worked for the administration, the superintendent. They didn’t work for us, the voters,” he said.
Spencer Lombardo agreed, having spoken with one of Elliott’s competitors for the Elkhorn school board. Spencer recalled, “He said, ‘well, you got to remember our job is to support the schools.’ And that just struck me the wrong way … isn’t every elected official’s job to support the people?”
Curtis chimed in. “The role of the School Board member is to be a servant leader,” Curtis said, “people who are willing to, to some degree, listen to constituents, listen to administration, listen to the superintendent, but also the confidence to lead when you need to.”
Linehan also expressed frustration that school board members don’t talk to members of the legislature. “I rarely ever get to talk to a school board member,” she said. “I talk to the lobbyists. I talk to the administrators. Every time there’s a school board association meeting that I’ve gone to, the administrator is sitting right by them.”
Culture Wars
Edward Weniger’s run for office began after multiple visits to school board meetings as a parent, where he hit a brick wall addressing concerns about sexually explicit content in schools. “I started to get a sense that the board isn’t really listening to parents, and at least not the ones that are showing up for the board meetings,” Weniger said.
Steve Sunde, a Papillion city council member, vocally supports Weniger’s run for school board for this reason. “For the past several years, there have been parents coming before the school board, speaking at each meeting about the graphic pornography available to our kids in the Papillion La Vista schools,” Sunde said. “These current city board members, who happen to be Edward’s opponents, just buried their head in the sand and didn’t address the problem, even though parent after parent after parent came before them and urged them to do so.”
“When I drop my kids off at school, they’re behind a lock and key,” Weniger said. “There’s spiritual warfare going on in that building, whether it’s the rainbows that are all over the school, whether it’s the counselors who are trying to get inside your kid’s head, I don’t have access to them during that time.”
Brett Elliott said, “I’ve knocked thousands of doors and talked to thousands of people, and consistently, I hear, ‘I don’t want you to teach ideology in the school.’ And whether that’s social justice, or whether that’s Biblical justice, they don’t want it in school … that doesn’t mean to push our ideology, but rather keep their ideology out.”
Spiritual warfare is a topic close to home for Justin Curtis, Executive Pastor at Coram Deo Church in Omaha. His vocational ministry as brought some resistance to his candidacy now as a school board member.
“There’s a lot of people pushing against me, [saying] ‘There should not be a pastor on the school board,'” Curtis said. “I believe in separation of church and state. You need to have the freedom of worship. That’s critically important, but I do think it’s important that we have a number of different people represented on the school board.”
Lou Ann Linehan chimed in. “The idea that a minister should not be on the school board is nuts, This whole idea that the separation of church and state, that’s to protect us, not to protect the state.”
“Let’s focus on education,” Lombardo added, “not focus on religion, or anti-religion. Let’s keep education, reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
A Question of Authenticity
Each of the five candidates on the panel are the only Republican candidates endorsed by their respective county parties. In many cases, left-leaning candidates will wear a Republican label in the hopes of flying under the radar.
Stephen Bader, who has worked on campaigns for Congressman Don Bacon and state senator Christy Armendariz, is also working on campaigns of all five candidates on the panel. He said, “You would be so surprised to know that on the local level even in ruby-red precincts, they are being represented by hardcore liberals who are pushing the most insane things you’ve ever seen.”
Marcus Madler, current President of the PLCS Board of Education, was one of four Republicans on the Papillion La Vista board who was censured by the Sarpy GOP earlier this year. Madler has since switched his party affiliation to independent. He also came out in support of allowing boys who identify as female to use girls' restrooms. He is now endorsed by the Sarpy County Democrats as well as a left-leaning PAC that opposes Weniger and other conservative education candidates. Members of this PAC were also responsible for pressuring Brittany Holtmeyer, previously the lone conservative on the PLCS Board, to resign last year.
As the current election nears its end, with voting already underway, a new slate of conservative candidates could be the start of meaningful change in districts like Papillion La Vista. “We literally have generational effect elections in each of these school districts,” Bader said. “It is the difference between liberal indoctrination or a conservative check.”