Zach Wendling
LINCOLN — Christina Chvala of Omaha remembers feeling trapped last year when learning she couldn’t financially help both of her daughters attend the private schools of their choice.
Chvala’s younger daughter, Lela, now a seventh-grader, had already been in private school, but increased tuition complicated her continued attendance. And Chvala’s older daughter, Olu, now a high school freshman, had her sights on Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, an all girl, Catholic college-preparatory high school.
“I had no idea how I was going to figure it out, and I had no more hours in the day for another job,” Chvala said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do and I was going to be faced with kind of that ‘Sophie’s Choice’ of OK, whose education do I take away?”
Chvala has been a single mother for over 10 years. She had met with a financial adviser, cut back on groceries and essentials and tried to find funding, but supporting both Olu and Lela seemed out of reach.
“And then I got that email, and I just started crying,” Chvala said when she learned both her daughters would receive “opportunity scholarships.” “I knew that I didn’t have to have that awful conversation. I knew that I could then be the bringer of hope.
“It’s so small to some people, but for our little family, it’s life-changing,” Chvala said, describing the scholarships as “a breath of fresh air” and “a wind in our sails.”
Millions in scholarships distributed
Chvala is one of three mothers interviewed by the Nebraska Examiner who urged Nebraskans to vote to “retain” on Referendum Measure 435 on the Nov. 5 ballot to preserve the main section of the state’s latest “school choice” law.
The three families have a total of nine children receiving “opportunity scholarships” under Legislative Bill 753, passed in 2023 under the leadership of State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn. The first-of-its-kind Nebraska program was designed as a $25 million annual tax credit encouraging donations for scholarships to private K-12 schools.
A total of $2.6 million in scholarships was distributed, the average at $1,723, to 1,515 students for the 2024-25 school year.
The remaining contributions will be sent to students for next school year or to transfer students, according to a spokesperson for the Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska scholarship-granting organization, the largest in Nebraska.
The organization received 965 tax credit contributions, totaling $9.53 million, ranging from $50 to $100,000. The average contribution was $9,800.
That program will officially end after Thursday. Linehan led the effort to end the program in favor of LB 1402, a direct appropriation to the Nebraska State Treasurer’s Office, at a cost of $10 million a year. Nebraska State Treasurer Tom Briese is set to award all scholarship funds to 4,000 families on Thursday, too.
If voters repealed LB 1402, any unspent funds would return to the State of Nebraska, as would any unclaimed tax credits, up to the $25 million limit under the previous law. Linehan is in her final year in the Legislature because of term limits.
‘It’s not about public-private’
Katie Zach of Lincoln said the scholarships mean hope and opportunity for four of six of her children who are receiving funds under LB 753 to attend private school. Zach is a stay-at-home mom. Her children range in age from 6 months to 9 years old Her husband, John, is a private school teacher and coach.
Zach said her family’s income is right around the poverty line so any small disruption could be disastrous.
“A small thing like the refrigerator going down, which just happened, already tips us over,” Zach said. “That kind of relief makes a huge difference.”
‘Thank goodness there are people out there who care that those kinds of things make a difference,’” Zach said of the scholarship funds.
Public school advocates have said the state should not offset attendance costs for private schools, many of which are religious, because they are held to different standards than public schools and could pose threats to future public school funding if the program costs increase.
Zach said the question isn’t whether the schools involved are public or private but about better education for all children. She said her family didn’t have a true “choice” because of their finances.
“At the end of the day, it’s every family wanting to have the same chance at or the same ability to use the right tool for them,” Zach said. “It’s not about public-private. It’s about lower-income families being able to give their kids a shot.”
‘A slap in the face’
Opponents of the programs note that public schools must follow nondiscrimination laws and accept all students, regardless of any special needs. But for Ann Rief, a mother near St. Paul, Nebraska, that wasn’t the case for her son Azraeyl.
“That’s not the whole truth, because we were turned away, and that was because our son had some special needs,” Rief said.
The Riefs, who have two sons in high school, served as foster parents to Azraeyl before finalizing his adoption in July. They wanted to send him to the same school his older brothers attended, but Azraeyl was on an individualized education plan.
Rief said the local school district didn’t have the resources needed to help.
“It felt kind of like a slap in the face,” said Rief, whose family no longer lived in that district’s boundaries. “Here we are, solid family, wanting to send him back to the place where our boys had a good experience and the public school setting that’s close to our house. And then to be told ‘no,’ it was hard, discouraging, disappointing.”
Azraeyl went to kindergarten one year later and is now thriving and catching up, Rief said. She said her family chose the school because it would attend to Azraeyl’s “whole person,” including faith, which is important to the family, and diversity, to support Azraeyl, who is African American and “trying to find how he fits.”
Rief said she couldn’t help but think of other students, who might come from a trauma background, who are in foster care or who come from minority communities and might benefit from a different environment but can’t because of financial limitations.
“Having these scholarships in place to allow, whether it’s the foster parents or the guardians or the parents, to make that choice is really huge for those kids and their future,” Rief said.
Chvala and Zach said the prospects that the program might go away is heart-breaking to think about and said parents question their life choices when they can’t provide for their children.
‘I’ll do anything for my kids’
Chvala said her older daughter worked hard to receive an academic scholarship to Duchesne, and the family thought it could be a place she could thrive after Olu’s past experiences with racism and sexism.
Olu was worrying about whether she needed to find a job or work in the summer at 14 years old to help pay for her education, which her mother said would have taken away from her passion as a lacrosse player, which could help with college.
Linehan has frequently said that she’s never believed that if Nebraskans understood that they’re “taking hope” from children and parents that they would vote to repeal the program.
If they do, Linehan said she thinks the legislation will return in part because she believes Gov. Jim Pillen is “in the fight for the long run” and the thousands of families who lose scholarships will demand answers and change.
Leaders for the Support our Schools campaign to repeal LB 1402 — Tim Royers of the Nebraska State Education Association and Jenni Benson, leader of the campaign — have said they’re not to blame for taking the scholarships away because Linehan voluntarily got rid of LB 753 to get around its referendum, already on the 2024 ballot.
Asked about LB 1402, Royers and Benson have pointed to a lack of accountability and transparency measures required by private schools and pointed to other states where the programs haven’t been beneficial.
Chvala said she can understand and respect where opponents to the laws are coming from and that she knows opponents aren’t saying they value her daughters’ education less. But she said that won’t be the message her daughters hear LB 1402 is defeated.
Instead, it will be that their dreams are worth having if only they have money.
“I’ll do anything for my kids. It’s really not me that that affects,” Chvala said. “It’s my daughters.