Navigating Diverse Waters

by Kyle McClellan

The Omaha Public School district maintains its own research department that measures what and who is in its classrooms. Omaha’s largest district churns out daily lessons to more than 50,000 students in 84 schools. About 67 percent are minorities, speaking 100 different languages. Navigating this complexity requires training and some required reading.

The book OPS is assigning its teachers ...

Beating The Odds

by Robyn Wisch

New test scores from Nebraska’s public schools recently showed a big drop in math scores, as the state adjusts to new testing requirements. In the first of a series of reports on how Omaha schools are performing, we stopped by South Omaha to talk to a principal who’s beating the odds.

As Principal John Campin walks the brightly colored halls of Gomez Heritage Elementary School, he points out...

Educator Tackles The Other

by Leo Adam Biga

Ferial (Mohamed) Pearson's work with GLBT and other high-risk youths at South High Magnet School earned her the 2010 Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's National Educator of the Year award and the 2011 National Education Association's Creative Leadership in Human Rights honor.

Pearson, now with the Avenue Scholars Foundation, continues her advocacy work among kids struggling with...

Common Sense Adds to Truancy Law

by Robyn Wisch

It’s a plan that builds on an older plan. Last year, LB 800 was signed into law. That enacted sweeping reforms in truancy prevention and juvenile justice – if a child was truant for more than 20 days of the school year, the county attorney would get involved, and the parents and children might find themselves in court or facing fines. That led to an influx of truancy cases that county attorneys...

Inviting Nebraska Dreams

by admin

by Lindsey Peterson

Crete, located in southeast Nebraska, is a town not unlike many other rural towns. It faces an increasing immigration population and a burdened education system. And, like others, it’s scrambling to find ways to handle an influx of students and parents who don’t speak the language.

What does make Crete different is the lack of picket lines, protests and media coverage....

Still in Focus

by Brandon Vogel

The rumors were starting to pile up like the early January snow surrounding Underwood Hills Focus School. Faced with looming state budget cuts, the innovative elementary school near 90th Street and Western Avenue was in danger of closing. Last December the Elkhorn school district was the first to pull out of the collaborative venture with the Westside and Omaha school districts. Twenty percent of...

The Graduates

by Leo Adam Biga

Four years ago Daniel Mayorga-Alvarez and Treasure Anderson took the challenge of enrolling in a new high school with strict disciplinary codes, high academic standards and the requirement of working a paid internship. The teens signed on to the inaugural, all-freshman class at St. Peter Claver Cristo Rey High School. The Cristo Rey Network affords youths from low-income families a quality...

Next Generation

by Leo Adam Biga

UNO communication professor Chris Allen recently returned from a two-week needs assessment trip to Afghanistan. His journey was part of a federally funded journalism faculty-student development program between the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Kabul University. As Afghanistan attempts normalization in this post-Taliban era, the nation’s indigenous media uneasily co-exist with Islamic law...