If you spent an hour scrolling social media or listening to cable news, you could come away believing public schools are failing. Public education has become a convenient target in our national politics, and the loudest voices rarely spend time in an actual school building. I spend time in ours every week, and I want to share what I see.
Last weekend I attended the RTM Education Conference with district leaders from across the country. The conversations confirmed something I already believed: when sound practices and quality resources are paired with excellent people, students get the best possible opportunity to succeed, whatever their individual needs happen to be. No single piece does it alone. It’s the collaboration between them that matters.
Let me give you three examples of what that looks like in Columbus.
First, we are no longer asking every student to fit one mold. This year we opened the Non-Traditional Learning and Support Center by repurposing existing space. It houses Pathways, an intensive intervention program for students in grades 5-10 who need academic, behavioral, or social-emotional support beyond what a traditional classroom can provide; Compass Academy, an alternative pathway to a high school diploma for juniors and seniors; and our Rule 17 program for students who have been reassigned. Years ago, many of these students would have slipped through the cracks or simply left. Today they have a building, a staff, and a plan built around them.
Second, we are investing in the fundamentals. Every K-4 teacher in the district is being trained this year in advanced literacy instruction through the Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant. That’s not a pilot in one building or a workshop for a few volunteers. It’s every teacher of our youngest readers, learning the same research-based practices, so a child’s reading future doesn’t depend on which classroom door they walk through. We’ve set a district-wide goal to raise the share of students meeting grade-level readiness.
Third, we still believe in the whole child. Our students have physical education. They have music, art, and band. They have FCCLA, FBLA, Tri-M, JAG, Art Club, athletics, an After School Program, and more. Walk through our Trunk or Treat lot last week and you saw those student organizations standing alongside the hospital, the bank, the police and fire departments, handing out candy to more than 1,000 kids. That’s a community and a school system that still see those programs as essential.
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That last point deserves emphasis, because it is not true everywhere. Across the country, districts are making painful decisions as federal pandemic relief has run out and enrollment declines. One Iowa district eliminated its orchestra program, its middle school Family Consumer Science program, and full-time elementary PE and music positions to close a budget gap. Districts in Oregon, California, and North Dakota are scaling back or debating cuts to music programs for the coming year, and at least one large district has stopped funding competition travel for academic teams. Writers who follow arts education are warning that the loss of those federal dollars will fall hardest on rural and high-poverty schools. There are children in this country who will go through elementary school without a music teacher or a gym class. In Columbus, that is not the case, and it isn’t by accident. It reflects choices made by this Board, this staff, and this community over many years.
We are not perfect. We have students who still need more support. We have some buildings and programs that are near capacity. We have things we can and will do better, and I’d rather hear about them from you than pretend they don’t exist. But acknowledging room to improve is not the same as accepting the narrative that public schools are broken. Our students are learning to read, to build, to perform, to compete, to lead, and to look after one another. That’s what I see every week, and it’s worth saying out loud.
Thank you for supporting Columbus Public Schools.
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A record Trunk or Treat with over 1,000 school-age children, giving back to the community with a safe and fun event. Huge thank you to our sponsors (who either had a trunk or provided support to purchase treats):
- FCCLA
- After School Program
- Kramer Daycare
- Columbus Community Hospital
- FBLA
- Dustin McBride
- Vandenberg Electric & Communication LLC
- Pinnacle Bank
- CHS Art Club
- Fire Department
- Tri-M Honors Society
- Rosa Ramirez
- CPS Elementary Principals
- Columbus Police Department
- American Family Insurance
- Life Net 1-3
- Karen Grabowski
- ServiceMaster by Shevlin
Also thank you to Cherie VanDyke, Chris Miya, and Nicole Anderson for their work behind the scenes to organize the event for Columbus Public Schools.
This year’s Trunk or Treat drew a record number of children, more than 1,000 school-age kids in a single evening, and it’s a reminder of what makes Columbus special: our schools and our community aren’t separate things. When a daycare, a hospital, a bank, an electrician, our police and fire departments, and our own student organizations all show up in the same parking lot to hand out candy, that’s not a school event with community guests. That’s one community taking care of its kids together. At Columbus Public Schools, we believe that the stronger the connection between our classrooms and the people who live and work around them, the better our students do, in school and in life. A record crowd went home safe and smiling because of that partnership.
Thank you for being part of it.
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Walk into any of our buildings and you’ll find teachers teaching. You’ll also find staff whose job is to make sure a student is actually in a position to learn: school counselors, school social workers, licensed mental health practitioners, and attendance interventionists. People occasionally ask why a school district employs them. The short answer is that a child who is hungry, anxious, grieving, or simply not showing up cannot be taught around those problems. Someone has to address them, and the most reliable place to reach a child is at school.
Our social workers connect families to housing, food, medical, and financial resources, and they are often the bridge between a classroom teacher and a home in crisis. Our licensed mental health practitioners provide counseling inside the school day, which matters enormously in a community where a family may otherwise wait months for an outside appointment or lack transportation to get there. Our attendance interventionists do the unglamorous work of finding out why a student has missed twelve days by October and then finding the actual cause or barrier to attending school.
The research supports this. A 2024 study of students in a large district found that participation in school-based mental health services was associated with fewer suspensions and higher math scores, with attendance and discipline improving in step with how much service a student received. A separate analysis of more than 14,000 students who used school-based health support found their declining attendance leveled off after their first visit, with the strongest turnaround among students seen for mental health needs. The most rigorous long-term study, covering 19 years of data, found that school-based services increased students’ use of mental health care and reduced self-reported suicide attempts, with weaker evidence on suspensions and no measurable effect on average attendance. The honest summary is that these services get kids help they may not otherwise be able to get, and in many settings, that shows up in behavior and achievement.
Attendance is also a state priority, not just ours. Last year nearly 68,000 Nebraska students, about 22 percent, were chronically absent, and the State Board of Education has committed to cutting that rate in half by 2030. Reduction in chronic absenteeism is a scored indicator in AQuESTT, the state’s school accountability system, and schools that hit their yearly reduction targets can earn a classification adjustment. In other words, a student who misses 10 percent of the year affects not only his own learning but how the state evaluates his school. Our attendance interventionists are directly tied to that report card.
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We are not alone in this approach. Fremont Public Schools employs master’s-level social workers who serve every student within a multi-tiered system of support, and smaller northeast Nebraska districts, including Wayne, Pender, and Emerson-Hubbard, have placed full-time therapists in their buildings so students don’t have to leave school, or drive an hour, for care. Lincoln, Omaha, and Millard have long employed school social workers and licensed practitioners as well.
None of this takes anything away from our school counselors, who are excellent and who remain the first line of support for most students. But a counselor serving several hundred students cannot also be a therapist, a family caseworker, and the person knocking on doors when a child stops coming to school. Each of these roles requires different training, different licensure, and different hours in the day. By adding social workers, licensed mental health practitioners, and attendance interventionists alongside our counselors, we’ve built a team where each person does what they are trained to do, students are matched to the right level of help, and no single adult is stretched past the point of being effective. That is what makes the overall support model work.
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