OPS Financial Crisis

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kirk Penner joins us for a bit this morning, a
member of the State Board of Education and a founding
member of a fan which is advocates for all Nebraskas. Kirk,
it's good to have you back.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Good morning, very good morning. God give you my disclaimer
speaking for myself, not for the whole board.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Sure. Yeah, Rosie and I were talking to yesterday about
where does the responsibility for this air ali In your view,
is it both at OPS and the state Department?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yes, it's both. That form is filled out by the
superintendent or in Omaha you're gonna have a business manager.
They're getting get involved and they're going to fill in
all eighteen blocks on this school funding mechanism called KIOSO,
which is as a game basically is what it is.
The board approves it, they send it to NDE for

(00:55):
its blessing. So OPS didn't catch NDE didn't catch the
air and until an audit was done that is when
it was caught. So a lot of people to blame.
I'm glad it was caught. I'm meeting with Commissioner ma
Her today at three point thirty to go over it.
But it looks like it was the community eligibility provision

(01:16):
of the National School Lunch program that threw it off.
But that's a big deal. And I do know the
person that didn't catch it at ND has been let
go and is no longer working there.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
I see, what about ops? I guess that's more of
an in the house issue, right.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, that would be in the house who missed it,
where they fed wrong information, who gave the information? Accountability
is big.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
What is your what is your solution that? I mean,
this thing is like, you know, there's an old timy
thing called you know, there was a there was a
complicated contraption they used to make cartoons out of it,
and this this t Tioka thing is like that. It's like,
who can possibly figure out this formula? What is your

(02:05):
solution in fixing this?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
So TIOSA is made almost impossible to understand. Superintendents don't
understand it one hundred percent all the time, although they
get a lot of training. I guarantee school board members
don't understand it. I can guarantee. I've sat there for
sixteen years and you can never figure out what's going on.
So our to that is this is to fund teacher

(02:32):
salaries from the state level at fifty thousand dollars, create
a base salary from the state of fifty thousand dollars.
And what that does is taking it for example, you
have a school of one hundred teachers that would be
a certified teachers that's five million dollars that would come
from the state and they would not have to tax

(02:57):
the local taxpayers or the school district wouldn't have to
tax local taxpayer for that five million dollars. That is
coupled with a fifty percent reduction in your property taxes.
So it's a it's the Apple plan. It's fifty percent
reduction in your property taxes. So right now you are
taxed on one hundred percent of your residential property assessed

(03:21):
not market value, assess value. And then now it's going
to be fifty Your agg land is now taxed seventy
five percent. It's going to be taxed at thirty seven
point five percent.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
I mean, who would be opposed to that? That right
there is a solution. Who would oppose that?

Speaker 1 (03:37):
School board?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Those who teachers union are yep, those who are involved
in it for power and money. It's an easy win
for the teachers union and the upper management of teachers
union is out against it, which is just amazing. He
said in a quote that he didn't like it because
it only addressed the teachers. Well, you're the you're the

(03:58):
teachers union. You're supposed to to help. So we're gonna
have a fifty Yeah, we're gonna have a fifty thousand
dollars base salary coming from the state. And let me
make sure everybody understands, there's no new taxes to do this.
We're using existing tax base from the Kiosa formula. We're
going to encourage new teachers to get into the field.
All existing teachers are going to get a bump and

(04:19):
pay because everybody's salary schedule is based off the base pay,
which will now be fifty thousand dollars. It's a win win, huge,
huge win and joke. People understand that the state is
required to provide a free public education, and for somehow
the state dictated that local tax payers are going to

(04:41):
pay for our state education. And that's got to stop
because really local control is a myth in the state
of Nebraska legislature.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, that's would take legislative action. You can go to
all four Nebraskans dot org and find out more about this.
If you're interested in signing a petition and getting maybe
getting this moving.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
You'd think I think thirty three Republicans in the Nebraska
unicameral could agree to that.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
You would, are you?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
We have, we have senators signed on already. Somebody's got
to step up to the plate.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Hey Kirk, thanks for the time. I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
I appreciate it.