IF THE "PATHWAYS" PROGRAM IS APPROVED BY THE OMAHA SCHOOL BOARD IN SEPTEMBER, IT WILL DO GREAT HARM TO OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

A very short summary: this September, the OPS School Board is voting on a proposal to radically change our school system. This proposal will keep your children from taking the classes they like and lower the quality of their education. Many students will be required to attend a high school they didn't want to go to. We must stop this from happening.

The new program is called "College and Career Academies and Pathways." I will call it simply "Pathways."

In ninth grade, all students will be required to pick a "pathway," a narrow field of study, like picking a major in college. Students will be compelled to take a course in their pathway subject EVERY semester of high school.

These kids are just blossoming out of middle school. They have no ability to pick a "career path" at that age. Instead of high school being a time for exploring new directions, finding new interests, and spreading their wings, kids are forced to narrow their focus from the start.

Each high school will offer only a few pathways. If a student's chosen pathway isn't available at his neighborhood school, he'll have to bus to another school. Or maybe you'll have to drive him.

What if a student picks a pathway but then hates it, or can't hack it academically, or wants to switch but isn't allowed to? OPS says it's FINE if a child is stuck in a pathway he hates. Their position: MAKING a student COMMIT to the career path he chooses in ninth grade is GOOD for him.

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A STUDENT MIGHT NOT FIND A PATHWAY HE LIKES AT HIS NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL. THAT SITUATION WILL CAUSE YOU AND YOUR CHILD INCREDIBLE GRIEF.

Let's say your ninth grader goes to Burke. (Don't worry if Burke isn't your school. What I describe is applicable to ANY school, any kid.) You live in Burke's part of town. Your kid loves math, and he picks math as his "pathway." Burke has excellent math courses: everything through four semesters of Calculus.

But too bad, although math IS a pathway, it's NOT one of the pathways available at Burke. What?! The available pathways were distributed throughout the high schools, and Burke didn't get math. So YOU AND your ninth grader have a choice: send him to a different high school, or he must pick one of the pathways available at Burke (maybe he'll like Journalism), and take classes in that UNWANTED pathway topic throughout high school.

How will he GET to a different high school to be in the math pathway? Well, OPS has arranged that the school buses can take your student to THREE OTHER high schools. So instead of walking to Burke, your student will take the bus to a school with a math pathway.

Maybe. What if the three other schools available to you by bus don't HAVE a math pathway? Then YOU have to drive him across town to school. And back. Or what if the math pathways at those other schools are full? Now your child MUST pick a different pathway. Know what OPS says about that? They say it's NOT A PROBLEM, because ANY pathway will teach a student to share ideas, to reason, to weigh evidence.

If your child CAN take a bus to a math pathway school, maybe he spends an hour and a half on the bus every day. EVERY PARENT AND CHILD will have to make these decisions.

You're thinking, "Why are we doing this? What problems are we fixing? What amazing good is Pathways doing for my child?" I asked those exact questions of a School Board member recently. He did not know. Of course, that means they shouldn't vote for the program!

What if a child likes the "Leadership" pathways at her neighborhood school, and picks Journalism? But oh, Journalism turned out to be full. OPS has ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN for helping a child who wants a pathway that is full. They said, "Counselors will need to manage this with the students," or "students who have engaged parents will be placed in the programs they request." Engaged parents?! That sound fair to you?

Are you following? They want the child to select his career in eighth grade, but if his "career pathway" is full, then he'll just have a different career. It's insane. BY CONFINING A CHILD TO A CAREER PATH EVEN IF THE TOPIC HE LIKES ISN'T AVAILABLE, THIS PROGRAM WILL PREVENT THE CHILD FROM FINDING A CAREER FOR HIMSELF. Pathways will do exactly the OPPOSITE of what it claims to do.

What if a child would agree to take the bus to another school, but she can't, because she has an after-school job that she needs? Or her younger siblings need her supervision after school because both parents work?

Now, close your eyes for a moment and picture how chaotic your life will become if you have TWO children at TWO different high schools. Buses, carpools, friends, school events, PTO meetings, parent-teacher conferences, football games, after school activities, marching band, bad weather transportation. Pathways will cause this nightmare for many OPS families.

What if the student doesn't WANT to leave her school to find a pathway she likes, because her peer group from middle school is staying at their neighborhood school? Or because a high school athletics coach has his eye on the student and wants her to stay? Or the band conductor wants her to stay? Or the drama teacher? Teachers talk to each other, and high schools have "feeder" middle schools.

So your child ends up in a pathway she doesn't like. Wait, you say, why are we doing this again? What problems are we fixing? What good is it doing for my child? The School Board cannot answer these questions.

THE PATHWAYS PROGRAM WILL HARM THE SCHOOLS, TOO.

I'm still using Burke as my example school. Insert your neighborhood school here.

So it's awful for your Burke ninth grader, but it's awful for Burke, too! As you now know, the Burke area students who love math are going to try to leave Burke, because Burke isn't a math pathway school. What's going to happen to the math teacher who teaches those advanced courses? Where will his students come from? Are the kids who flocked to Burke for the "marketing" pathway going to crowd his calculus classes? Answer: no, his courses' attendance will wither. This effect will happen in other fields as well: at all high schools, advanced courses in subjects that are not part of a school's assigned pathways will fade away.

Burke has worked for decades to create a skilled and varied course program. Is the Board really going to harm it like that? What does OPS say about this? "Some programming could ultimately disappear from a school simply due to low student interest. This should happen." Read the quote again: "This SHOULD happen." THE LOSS OF THE ADVANCED CLASSES AT ALL THE SCHOOLS IS NOT AN UNWANTED CONSEQUENCE OF PATHWAYS, IT'S AN INTENDED FEATURE!

Just what good is this doing for your child?

There's more bad news for the schools. The high schools were assigned their pathways. They'll need teachers to teach the pathways courses, but we're in a significant teacher shortage right now. Another nasty twist: at some schools, a teacher who really knows how to teach a core class (like English or math) skillfully, because she's taught and refined it so many times, will be forced to re-write her lesson plans. Why? Because she'll be required to teach her material along the topic lines of a specific pathway. In other words, don't just teach math or English, but teach math-for-Interior-Design-kids, or English-for-Forensic-Sciences-kids -- keep it relevant, y'all!

Trust your own judgment. Don't put up with it!

THE SUPERINTENDENT AND SCHOOL BOARD HAVE ENGENDERED A BAD RELATIONSHIP WITH TEACHERS AND COUNSELORS.

Did you know that most teachers and school counselors are OPPOSED to the plan, but they are AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT against it? I myself have contacted high school staff who wouldn't speak with me about pathways until they closed their office doors. Teachers I've talked to have forbidden me from quoting them. They're afraid of reprisals from the school administration. Reprisals! FOLKS, THIS IS A CRYSTAL CLEAR SIGN THAT SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS BEING FOISTED UPON US. The School Board should be DEMANDING ideas and input from our teachers, not making them FEAR to give their opinions!

OPS SAYS STUDENTS WILL PICK THEIR PATHWAYS IN NINTH GRADE. IT WILL FREQUENTLY HAPPEN IN EIGHTH.

Kids aren't dumb. If an eighth grader KNOWS which pathway she wants, and that pathway isn't available at her neighborhood school, she's not going to want to go to that school, make friends, and then leave to go to a different high school for 10th through 12th grade. She'll want to START ninth grade at the school where her pathway is. So really, lots of kids will be picking their pathways in 8th grade. That should make you feel even worse about the program.

PATHWAYS IS ALSO WRONG FOR STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT NECESSARILY COLLEGE-BOUND.

The pathway descriptions are littered with terms like "career and technical education," "career-ready" classes, "employability skills," "partnering with industry," having classes "informed by the local workforce."

Providing excellent support to students who want a more vocationally-oriented experience is good. But pathways is emphatically not the answer. I'll relate what the experts in vocational education and counseling I've spoken with have been telling me.

We have huge potential resources in the area of trade/vocational education that OPS has not tapped, resources that would benefit the students far beyond the Pathways program.

Omaha Public Schools has a "Career Center," where high school students can get "a glimpse into a career without the hefty price tag of college," according to their website. Some of the classes available to OPS students are:
Automotive Collision Repair & Refinishing
Training to become a Certified Nursing Assistant
Electrical Systems Technology
Welding
Construction

However, OPS hasn't been taking advantage of far superior career-technical education opportunities that are AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW. The school districts that surround Omaha Public Schools, like Bellevue and Ralston, already have extensive and mature relationships with Metropolitan Community College (MCC), with "vocational" high school students taking classes at the college.

For example, say a student takes the Automotive Technology pathway at the OPS Career Center, or the Fire Science pathway at Northwest High. Fine. He got some training, by his high school teachers.

But what if OPS partnered better with MCC like the other school districts, and the student took the CURRENTLY AVAILABLE Automotive Technology Career Academy course at Metro? Now he's taught by college instructors, getting COLLEGE CREDIT (like you can in an AP course), in bigger classes, with better resources. How better? How about a 104,000 square-foot, $32 million Automotive Technology facility? I encourage you to watch the first minute of this video. Show that video to students interested in any vocational technology pathway, and they'll be pounding down the doors at MCC. They'll be camping out at their counselors' offices, asking how to make it happen. OPS's vaunted Pathways program will seem like watery milk.

With MCC's power, and the volume of students from all the high schools, MCC can have MUCH better training facilities than any single OPS high school.

These Career Academies at Metro, partnering with local high schools, are set up and working today. Browse the twenty-six amazing MCC Career Academy offerings at this link.

Then, when the student graduates, he's gotten high-power instruction in a high-power facility, he's got college credit, he's got a relationship with Metro, and he's on his way to an Associate Degree there.

But oh no, these programming improvements for OPS students weren't presented to or even discussed by the Board. The Board is ONLY thinking about approving the Pathways program that the Superintendent wants. More on that soon.

If you were a student on a more vocational path, would you rather be confined to a high school vocational pathway, or would you rather polish up your core skills and attend MCC in your Junior and Senior years?

See? Even for the non-college-bound, Pathways is a loser.

Epilogue to this topic. Note that with OPS's Pathways program, a student at South High who's in love with the idea of studying Fire Science would have to BUS TO NORTHWEST HIGH, to take their high-school Fire Science pathway. Instead, dump Pathways, and maybe that student can attend the Fire Science Technology Career Academy at Metro. Oh, and Metro is only a little over a half-mile from South High. Not much about the Pathways program makes sense to me.

THE REQUIRED PATHWAYS WILL SOMETIMES PREVENT STUDENTS FROM ACHIEVING CAREERS IN THEIR CHOSEN FIELDS.

I discussed earlier how the Pathways program will prevent a child from FINDING a career he likes, by keeping him out of a pathway he'd like to try, because that pathway is "full," and then wasting his time by forcing him to stay in the pathway he doesn't want throughout high school.

In addition, the program can prevent him from ACHIEVING a career he already knows is right for him.

An example: Northwest High Magnet has a "Cybersecurity" pathway. After your required six semesters in the cybersecurity pathway, you are not yet employable. You need more school to enter this complicated field. Job prospects for graduates of UNO's cybersecurity program are limitless. However, UNO wants to see an ACT score of 20 to be admitted. Northwest High had an average composite ACT score last year of 15.4.

Those SIX SEMESTERS you spent in a cybersecurity class would have been MUCH better spent polishing your math and English skills, raising your ACT scores, maximizing the chances that you can STUDY CYBERSECURITY AT UNO! It's the CORE high school classes (English, science, math, social studies) that will get OPS students where they want to go, not the pathways.

Another example: the student in the Architectural Design pathway. OPS will deliver six semesters of architecture courses. But if you want to actually BE an architect, you need five years of college to get a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. If we decrease the student's chance to polish her core skills so she can get accepted to an architecture school, we're HURTING her career chances. As an OPS Principal pointed out to me, with the Pathways program, it's the pathways electives that are driving the schedule, rather than the crucial core subjects that are driving the schedule.

And I previously pointed out how the Pathways program harms the CORE classes. At some schools, even the core teachers, such as math and English, are required to change their finely-honed classes so that everything, even core classes, points toward one career, tailored for kids in that pathway.

THE DECISION TO IMPLEMENT PATHWAYS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SCHOOL BOARD TRYING TO IMPROVE OUR SCHOOLS!

The Superintendent of OPS arranged for an outside company to come to Omaha and perform an "audit," an evaluation of our high schools, to see what changes might be beneficial. The company recommended that we institute the "CAREER ACADEMY and Pathways" program.

But the head of that outside company is the President of the National CAREER ACADEMY Coalition. The National CAREER ACADEMY Coalition's Mission Statement, its very PURPOSE, is to bring Pathways programs into as many school systems as possible. Of COURSE they were going to recommend Pathways to us!

Why would the Board agree to such a biased, worthless evaluation like that? Answer: they didn't agree. The SUPERINTENDENT hired the pathways people HERSELF, without the KNOWLEDGE of the Board, using money she got from a donor, so she wouldn't have to expose her plan. She kept the Board out of the loop. This is highly irregular.

It gets worse. Then, the Superintendent immediately hired the SAME PATHWAYS COMPANY to help OPS implement the program here! That is the very DEFINITION of conflict of interest: A well-run institution would never expose itself to a conflict of interest that obvious.

It gets worse. The Superintendent tried to push through the Pathways program WITHOUT EVEN A VOTE OF THE BOARD. Then, however, someone discovered that OPS governing laws REQUIRE a Board vote for a policy change this immense. So now we will have a vote, in September. That's why you are writing and calling the Board members.

But it gets worse. Elements of the "audit" are just awful. (The audit is here if you're interested.) What RESEARCH did the audit company do to learn about us, about our schools, our teachers, our parental involvement, our resources, our activities, our values, our community, so they could make wise and useful and rational recommendations? There was a 30-minute "walkthrough" of each high school. They held a 30-minute focus group at each school. They sent a questionnaire to the principals (not all questionnaires were even returned).

That amount of research wouldn't get you a C+ on a middle school history theme paper.

The whole thing was a setup, a fake. The Superintendent wanted Pathways for OPS. She went behind the Board's back, hired a Pathways company to "evaluate" our schools. They did a fake evaluation, and surprise surprise, recommended Pathways. The Superintendent tried to hire them to institute pathways here, but ran into a problem, which is the upcoming September vote of the Board.

NO, damn it. This is Omaha, Nebraska. We're known for good schools, dedicated, involved teachers, and careful, considered action. This is not how we roll.

If the Board wants to change how we teach, they need to collect real information, find what our real problems are, identify the most pressing problems, discuss alternatives for addressing those problems, arrange for presentations on various different educational models, come up with ideas for change. Include teachers, counselors, parents, students, education experts, physicians, from the very beginning, to offer insight and ideas. Do this all transparently, keeping parents in the loop.

Was ANY of this done? No, no, no, and no.

THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP AT ALL BETWEEN THE PATHWAYS PROGRAM AND ANY SERIOUS, THOUGHTFUL ATTEMPT AT IMPROVING OUR SCHOOLS. The Board did not do its duty. Whether that's due to Board incompetence or bullying from the Superintendent, YOU don't have to be the victim here. Any work or effort into tweaking pathways to make it more palatable, or to talk ourselves into thinking it's the right thing to do, is misplaced and self-destructive.

(FOUR-MINUTE VIDEO) WITH THE ABOVE INFORMATION, YOU'LL UNDERSTAND BETTER MY SPEECH TO THE OMAHA SCHOOL BOARD ON AUGUST 2, 2021:

AND NOW YOU KNOW WHY THE PATHWAYS PROGRAM SOUNDS SO CRAZY AND DESTRUCTIVE.

A brief anecdote: About two weeks after I had started studying the Pathways program, I was in conversation with a current principal of an Omaha public high school. I said, "But it sounds completely crazy. It'll harm the schools, hold the kids back, do the opposite of what OPS's marketing says, cause endless trouble for the parents and the kids and the teachers. Tell me there's something I'm missing, some component of the program that causes it to make sense, some nuance that's over my head."

He responded, "Sorry, Steve. You have it exactly right. It makes no sense to me, either."

And now YOU know WHY. It was a setup. The Superintendent was going to institute it no matter what. The Omaha Public School Board wasn't even involved. There was no apparent thought whether this education model was beneficial for our kids or right for our community.

WHAT DO I SAY, YOU ASK, WHEN MY SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER OR THE SUPERINTENDENT TELLS ME HOW GREAT THE PATHWAYS PROGRAM WILL BE FOR ME AND MY CHILDREN?

If you are in a discussion about pathways with a Board member, or a school representative, or even another parent, you may hear a lot of "Now, now. There, there," to your complaints. DON'T get corralled into a discussion of "Oh, it won't be that bad, just one course a semester," or "It might actually be good for some students," or "Let us vote it in: we'll tweak the program to make it better."

One technique they'll use (and I've seen it used already) will be to get you to agree that one tiny part of the program isn't completely terrible, and then conclude that you LIKE the ENTIRE program. Example:

Board member: "It's just one tiny course per semester! That's not so bad."
You: "Well, maybe not the worst, but..."
Board member: "Okay then, see, it'll be great."

Well, maybe, not so great. That discussion kind of ignores the fact that you have two kids busing to two different high schools, studying topics they don't want to study, unable to take the electives they want, when they should be spending the time polishing their core subjects for college admission, and sharing friends, and the schools are losing lots of high level classes, and the core classes are worse, and the teachers hate it but can't speak up, and, and, and.

If you're reading this document, you know enough to not be gaslighted. And don't fall for the marketing, either. Even though the Board approval vote hasn't happened yet, OPS has flooded the Internet with descriptions of how great it will be for you and for your kids' success. All platitudes and pabulum. NONE of the troublesome details. Stay focused on the facts.

THE PATHWAYS PROGRAM CANNOT BE FIXED, TWEAKED, OR SALVAGED.

As we saw in the previous section, pathways is a bad idea for our school system, arrived at dishonestly. There are still many, many undefined components to the program. Some concerned parents went recently to the Superintendent to ask important, CRUCIAL questions, and her answers were riddled with "We'll figure that out later," or "The student will discuss this one-on-one with his counselor."

There is no way to fix it up. I'll give you one example. What if they say that signing up for a pathway is now completely optional? But, all of the schools have still been assigned pathways; the schools still have to establish new courses in those pathways and find teachers to teach them, you've quadrupled the number of school buses, etc.

Our job, and the School Board's, is NOT to see how we can make this plan more palatable. DEMAND that the whole program be voted down.

INTERLUDE: A BRIEF RANT ON ASKING YOUNG KIDS TO PICK A CAREER PATH

Where is the evidence that an 8th or 9th grader can pick a "career" path for herself? Or that she SHOULD? Parents, please, tell the School Board that the very idea is insane. And to base this entire massive revision of our schools on that ludicrous premise?

Do we really think that our children, age 13 or 14, are going to sit down and consider their future and select the right pathway for themselves. In EIGHTH GRADE? Or JUST maybe, they decide based on what school they DON'T want to BUS TO, or what their friends from middle school are doing, or on what their parents think, or they decide simply on a WHIM! Earlier, I said that the Superintendent told some concerned parents that making a student COMMIT to the career path they choose, IN NINTH GRADE, is GOOD for them. She also said that that expectation will MOTIVATE THEM TO SUCCEED. Nice.

Sorry, an 8th- or 9th-grader, 13 or 14 years old, is simply not capable of selecting a "career-ready" choice, one with "employability skills." What planet are we living on?

(End rant.)

Tell me again, what good is this doing for your child?

SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS ARE ELECTED. HOLD THEM RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PROBLEMS THEIR ACTIONS CAUSE.

There are nine OPS School Board members. In the fall elections next year, four of them will be on the ballot. If your Board member votes to implement pathways, and you and your children are suffering as a result, vote that School Board member out!

The nine Board members represent nine Omaha geographic "subdistricts." Go here if you want to find your subdistrict number, based on where you live. If you can't quite tell from the map, call the District office at 531-299-0220, and they will tell you.

This page shows you the nine School Board members and their subdistrict numbers. In the fall elections next year, Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8 are up for re-election. Then, two years after that, we will elect members in Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Members serve a four-year term, and half are re-elected every two years.

Even though you have "your" Board member, based on where you live, a smart OPS principal told me, "If ALL NINE Board members are voting on what happens to MY child, then all nine are MY Board member."

Many times a politician may make an unpopular vote, but by the time the next election rolls around, that vote is long forgotten. The pathways vote, however, will not be forgotten at the next election. If pathways is approved by the Board in September, you -- parents, students, teachers, and counselors -- will be actively struggling, daily, to deal with its effects, and you'll remember to vote, all right.

Keep in mind, though, that if your Board member casts a vote AGAINST pathways, it's up to you to remember that; re-elect them!

If you are a numbers nerd, you can go here and here to see the vote counts in the last School Board elections. You'll see that it just doesn't take that many votes to reverse an election for School Board, sometimes as few as a couple hundred. Unhappy teachers could take care of that all by themselves. Teachers may fear reprisals if they talk, but the ballot box is still secret.

Even someone who ran unopposed can easily lose, because of 1) the tide of angry parents, and 2) only about one-third of eligible voters vote in these elections. If that percentage goes up just 10 percent, it can overwhelm a previously-safe seat on the Board.

YOU CAN CALL YOUR SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER, TOO.

The following table gives the nine School Board members, and the phone numbers they want you to use. It also gives email addresses, in case you wish to email your Board member individually.

Or, click here to send one email to the entire School Board  The Board recommends including your name and address in your email.

Re-listing of the links in this document:

Video tour of Metro's Automotive Technology facility

Metro's Career Academy offerings -- scroll down one page

The "audit" of our public high schools

Map of Omaha, to find your subdistrict number

The nine School Board members

Results of the 2018 School Board elections, districts 2,4,6,8

Results of the 2020 School Board Elections, districts 1,3,5,7,9