Appropriations Committee
Sen. Robert Clements, Chairperson
Sen. Anna Wishart, Vice Chairperson
Sen. Christy Armendariz
Sen. Myron Dorn
Sen. Robert Dover
Sen. Steve Erdman
Sen. Loren Lippincott
Sen. Mike McDonnell
Sen. Tony Vargas
Good afternoon distinguished members of the Appropriations Committee:
My name is Kathy Danek (K-A-T-H-Y, D-A-N-E-K) I am a member of the Lincoln Board of Education. I am testifying in opposition to LB 1402.
I am focusing my testimony on LB1402 as a funding mechanism for a law that we opposed as LB753 a year ago. The state should not appropriate $25M for tax credit scholarships because the law cannot reach its stated goal of “improving the quality of education available to all children” (77-7102).
First, the law does not measure learning improvement. The law does not include a requirement of pre- and post-academic measures to see if the students who utilize the scholarship improve their academic performance. The law does not include any oversight of the use of the scholarship funds, so it is impossible to determine if the funding from the scholarships is used to support academic programs impacting achievement (77-7111 4(a)-(d)(iii)). Since no measures of academic performance or financial investment in academic programming are made, improvement cannot be measured, and this portion of the goal cannot be met.
Second, the law is not intended to help all children. The $25M appropriation proposed in LB1402 could not help improve the quality of education available to all children when, according to 77-7103, subsection (4), other than for race, scholarship granting agencies and the schools that receive these scholarships can establish requirements in their enrollment practices to limit certain children from attending their schools, making it impossible for this program to be available to all students. Examples of reasons a student may be denied access to the scholarship program include their religion, their sex, their gender, or if they have a disability. In fact, schools eligible to receive these dollars are guaranteed in current law that they do not even have an obligation to continue to enroll those students whom they initially accept with a scholarship funded by this program (77-7112).
For these reasons, we oppose LB1402. I am happy to answer any questions.
Sincerely,
Kathy Danek
Board Member since 2002
Lincoln Board of Education
