Members of the learning community council collected a total of $192,000 in per diem payments for meetings they attended as they shaped the new education cooperative meant to serve disadvantaged youths in Douglas and Sarpy Counties.
That's enough money to buy 6,104 economics textbooks or 1.1 million yellow No. 2 pencils.
The group's 18 voting members last year took in an average of $11,000 apiece, too much for State Sen. Deb Fischer who wants to outlaw the practice.
“This is not right; it's not right,” Fischer told members of the Legislature's Education Committee on Tuesday. “School board members are there to represent children. They're not there to make $12,000 a year like state legislators.”
The issue came up during a hearing on several bills related to the learning community, including two bills that would allow council members to spend more tax money on programs to improve academic achievement.
The Legislature created the 11-district cooperative in 2007 to redistribute property tax dollars among districts; settle boundary disputes between districts; set up learning centers to serve impoverished students and those who don't speak English; and administer an open-enrollment plan to foster socioeconomic diversity.
Kermit Brashear, a learning community lobbyist, asked the committee to pass either bill that would expand funding options and defended the per diem payments that were part of the law that established the new education entity. The law allows each council member to receive up to $200 per meeting, up to a $12,000 annual total.
Brashear said senators wrote the law the way they did because they believed that they were creating a new educational model and that the council's significant work would require time and effort.
Asked after the hearing why council members should get so much, he answered: “I know how hard they work.”
Fischer, whose district encompasses several large rural counties, including most of Cherry County, said none of the state's 253 school boards get paid. She said she regrets voting to allow the per diems.
Under her Legislative Bill 937, the council no longer would be paid but still could be reimbursed for mileage to meetings.
In line with current law, the learning community council adopted a policy of paying members $200 for each council and subcouncil meeting and $150 for each committee and task force meeting. The payment policy means council members who attended the most meetings collected the biggest checks.
Some attended as many as 10 meetings a month.
The highest-paid member last year was Paul Hartnett, a former Bellevue legislator who has received per diems straddling two fiscal years of $13,450. Lowest-paid was Freddie Gray, a member of the Omaha school board, who collected $7,600.
The Nebraska Association of School Boards “strongly opposes” the per diems, said spokesman Brian Hale. Paying council members but not local school boards may have created a “caste system” in the metropolitan Omaha area, Hale said.
The workload for learning community members, he said, is not much different from urban school board members.
Sen. Kate Sullivan, a committee member representing east-central Nebraska, said she knows school board members who “spend time every day of every week and do not get paid.”
Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha said the bill is worth considering since economic times are worse than a few years ago.
Brashear, testifying for the council, said it supports the bills introduced by Committee Chairman Sen. Greg Adams and Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln that would give the council more authority and freedom to spend tax dollars.
Avery's bill would remove spending restrictions on an existing 5-cent levy currently restricted to capital projects such as learning centers and focus schools, allowing the council to spend on anything they saw fit.
Bob Twiss, a Sarpy County resident, testified that Avery's bill would open “whole floodgates” for a tax increase.
Adams' bill would eliminate the 5-cent capital projects levy, replacing it instead with levies of up to 2 cents for focus schools and program facilities and 1 cent for learning center programs, services and facilities.
Learning Community Council Chairman Rick Kolowski described the challenge of delivering services to as many as 10,000 disadvantaged elementary school students in north and south Omaha as an imposing task that needs the funding help.
Contact the writer:
444-1077, joe.dejka@owh.com
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