107A LB281 LPS Testimony
23 February 2021
Senator Lynne Walz, Chairperson
Senator Terrell McKinney
Senator Adam Morfeld
Senator Dave Murman
Senator Jen Day
Senator Patty Pansing Brooks
Senator Lou Ann Linehan
Senator Rita Sanders
Good afternoon, Chairperson Walz and distinguished members of the Education Committee.
My name is Connie Duncan, C-O-N-N-I-E D-U-N-C-A-N, I am a board member on the Lincoln Board of Education. I am here today to testify in opposition to LB281.
You have heard from proponents today of the great value of this curriculum. We do not disagree about its value, and we have something similar in place in Lincoln Public Schools.
We are sharing our opposition to the bill for two other reasons.
The first involves the process of how this curriculum will be developed with worries about ensuring that effective, research-based curriculum for students, staff and parents is made available and utilized systematically across the state. Colby Coash from NASB has already addressed this issue very effectively in his testimony, …
….so, I would like to address the second concern – that LB281 appears to be a uniquely unfunded mandate. It requires a district to redirect its existing federal programming budget to make room for this curriculum, classroom instructional time, professional training of teachers and parental involvement components.
This appears to be an unfunded mandate to districts because it steals away funding from existing programming. Three of new mandates involve paying educator time, which sometimes appears “free” when it really isn’t. The required educator elements are:
- Teaching the four sessions
- Attending professional training
- Providing a parent involvement component
It isn’t free as the cost of funding each of these new requirements is “paid for” through the deletion of existing programming, noting that no specific state requirements are being removed from schools to offset the addition of these new requirements.
Two – Since it places multiple programs in competition for the same funds, a district may keep the existing program in place and split funding, unintendedly resulting in two less effective programs.
These are some of the issues that can arise when the state adds additional requirements without dedicated new funding.
The alternative is for local districts to pay to add these new requirement and keep the existing programming by raising local taxes.
All in all, how damaging may this mandate be to districts? Is it crippling? No. If the bill passes, would we find a way to do it? Of course. Most districts are already doing much, if not all, or even more, than what is required in LB281. But, for some districts across the state, the passage of LB281 will create an extra, unfunded mandate. It will create this at a time that several state leaders decry public school spending as the source of property tax issues.
We believe that if the state mandates new requirements for School Boards to enforce, it should come with the funds to implement the requirement at a high level of quality and systematically.
While we share Senator Albrecht’s desire to better empower children and educators to protect from and prevent instances of sexual abuse, we respectfully oppose this bill in its current form.
