March 3, 2025
Sen. Dave Murman, Chairperson
Sen. Margo Juarez
Sen. Jana Hughes, Vice Chairperson
Sen. Dan Lonowski
Sen. Danielle Conrad
Sen. Glen Meyer
Sen. Megan Hunt
Sen. Rita Sanders
Chair Murman and Senators, members of the Education Committee:
My name is Piyush Srivastav [spell out first and last name] and I am here today on behalf of the Nebraska Association of School Boards and the Lincoln Public Schools, where I serve as a member of our school board.
I am here today in respectful opposition to LB550, proposed by Senator Lippincott.
This bill is a nefarious attempt to undermine public education commitments by providing a school day allowance for religious instruction by outside entities. We believe this bill interferes with what should be an unwavering line between church and state, and that religious instruction is best left to parents and families and should occur outside of the school’s reserved instructional time.
Our schools are committed to a democratic and secular education, serving students of all backgrounds—not prioritizing those of any particular religious persuasion, sect or belief system. In the Lincoln Public Schools all means all and we support all students.
A long-standing principle of legislative guidelines for the Lincoln Public Schools is prioritizing the importance of local control. This bill would diminish local control by requiring an allowance that candidly infringes upon the parameters of the normal school day. We believe that as a public school entity, we are the body best situated to make determinations about the use of instructional time and what occurs in and is considered permissible during the school day.
In other states that have instituted release time for religious instruction (or RTRI), there have been many and documented concerns about how such programming actually fosters academic and social disparities, or haves versus have nots— including peer pressure and bullying of students who do not participate in the RTRI programming. We believe that this runs contrary to the inclusive and supportive nature of education LPS provides.
To further describe our concerns with this bill, from a risk management perspective, and from the standpoint of ensuring our students are striving to meet our curriculum requirements, we believe that the coordination and administration of release time for religious instruction creates an unnecessary logistical and risk management challenge for schools.
Finally, as we think about the broad range of backgrounds within the Lincoln Public Schools, we already acknowledge and understand that our community has a wide variety of rich and varied religious traditions, celebrations, and observances. Furthermore, current enrollment provisions already allow us, and we are very supportive of dual enrollment students such as many of those in our Career Academy who participate in and experience the excellent academic programs and pathways offered by Lincoln Public Schools as part-time enrollees who are otherwise homeschooled— in many cases for families’ religious reasons. Thus we already have a model in place that is working without the state imposing its notion of what must be required.
We respect families’ choice to recognize their religious commitments. We honor the parent as the ultimate authority in excusing absences, and we strive to make sure that students have reasonable opportunities to make school work up when missed. With that said, we believe that it is not the place of the school to set aside or partition the school day for religious instruction.
We oppose the advancement of LB550. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Piyush Srivastav
Board of Education for Lincoln Public Schools
402-440-9092
