Guest column by Jeremy Ekeler
Director of Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska
As an English teacher, I used to tell my students to avoid overusing quotes: it tells the reader you can’t say it well enough yourself. I’m going to break my own rule because I can’t say it better than Nebraska parents who benefited from school choice:
“Oh praise God – we can buy groceries!”
-Nebraska dad
“My daughter wanted her kids in a Catholic school. When she died, I figured it would never happen for them. These scholarships are a miracle for us, for the kids, for their mom.”
-Nebraska grandmother raising deceased daughter’s children
“I have never voted. But this is about my babies – you can be sure I’ll be in line to cast my ballot.”
-Nebraska mom
Like this mom, on Nov. 5, Nebraskans voted on several important issues and elected positions. One of those issues – Referendum 435 – encompassed human dignity, religious liberty, parental rights, and the right to a quality education. Sadly, despite 370,000 voters supporting school choice, 57% of Nebraskans chose to repeal a law that gave thousands of families hope.
Did Nebraskans know they were taking opportunity from that single dad, that grandmother, that mom, and the parents of more than 4,000 scholarship recipients?
While my organization, Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska (OSN), committed our funds to helping these families with scholarships, state and national teachers unions spent millions to create a cloud of fear. The millions spent misleading voters will likely amount to nearly as much as the law itself provided to kids! All of this in an effort to strip families of education freedom.
The millions in opposition funding was used to tell Nebraskans that school choice takes money from public schools (it’s not part of the public school budget), private schools are not quality (all are accredited and approved by the state, and 35,000 kids choose them), and public school teacher salaries would diminish (30 years of school choice research has proven the cost savings of school choice, and increased funds for public schools).
Yet, by focusing on false issues of “what,” the union’s millions distracted from the true “who” stories – the actual people helped by education opportunity.
Here is the “who”:
OSN partnered with more than 170 schools to serve thousands of Nebraska families from “coast to coast.” In a matter of months, we saw more than 7,000 applications and served kids with over $12,000,000 in scholarships. Those scholarships went to families in need (more than 80% of funds went to students below 213% of poverty), rural students (47% outside of Lincoln and Omaha Metro), kids with learning disabilities, children who were being bullied, foster children, and kids in military families.
Despite all of that work, scholarships were modest and we could not reach every applicant.
Now scholarship families are left wondering how this happened and what the future holds.
Another quote by a local dad sums it up well: “Why in the world would anyone want to take this away from my family? We just wanted a place our kids could thrive.”
I am saddened by the loss Nov. 5. It is not easy to talk with the families. It is difficult to explain that political maneuvering and mountains of funding were used to take away their access to the right education. And it is impossible to explain that while school choice is becoming the norm nationwide, Nebraska no longer has even a modest law to support their state’s children.
But while I am saddened, I am also encouraged. One more quote from a parent sums it up: “Mr. Ekeler, we may have lost the moment, but not the movement. We will not go away on this one – we will fight for our children.”
And so, I encourage everyone to consider how they can join that fight. Pray for this “movement,” consider how you can advocate, and think deeply about the opportunity our children deserve: access to the education that is right for them.
