Legislative Issues Conference

The Nebraska Association of School Boards Conference was held today in Lincoln. Governor talked about how the state assessment results have shown improvement every year. He read the names of schools that had shown improvement every year in reading and Math, and Bancroft-Rosalie was on the list of schools that have improved their state scores in Math each of the three years the tests have been given. The Governor advocated for reducing taxes since the state cash reserve is much higher than he feels we need, so some of it should be returned to the taxpayers. Senator Campbell, Chair of Health and Human Services, spoke in support of the Medicaid expansion. Senator Mello, Chair of Appropriations, said that he is not in favor of cutting the cash reserve because of the expected increase in costs in the next biennial budget. Senator Sullivan, Chair of the Education Committee, covers several issues, the most interesting of which was the Superintendent Contract legislation. This bill requires school district to publish the contract of the Superintendent (most likely it would be on the school website). It must include an estimate of all of the current and future costs associated with the contract. Not sure why they specified only superintendents out of all public employees in the state, and it isn't clear why "estimated future costs" was included. You would think the contract would speak for itself. We had lunch with Senator Brasch, who hurried over after the completion on testimony on one of her bills. She said that it is difficult to predict what will happen during this short legislative session. So far things are moving very slowly.