Omaha Public Schools board recommends keeping suspension policy for youngest students

OMAHA, Neb. —

Omaha Public Schools will not begin suspending its youngest students despite a recent change in state law that would allow them to.

That’s the recommendation of the Omaha Public School board’s policy committee.

It marks a complete about-face in the attitude on this issue at Omaha Public Schools in just three years.

In 2023, Nebraska lawmakers passed legislation that banned schools from suspending students in second grade and younger, unless they bring a weapon to school.

State Sen. Terrell McKinney’s bill forced Omaha Public Schools to change its policy.

But after debate in the unicameral this year, the law was changed to allow second graders and younger to be suspended for violent behavior capable of causing physical harm, too.

The chair of the OPS board policy committee, Nick Thielen, said the law hasn’t meant students aren’t removed from the classroom — just that they’re not sent home.

“What the law did is said you can’t send them home. And so what we’ve what we really had to adjust was not the situations where they were removed from the classroom, but when they can’t go home, what are we going to do with those students. And we do have more physical spaces now. They’re in better shape. We do have more strategies and training that we have for teachers and administrators to help them de-escalate those students,” said Nick Thielen, OPS board Subdistrict 3.

The idea is that students are harmed in the long term when they’re removed from school, and that it’s better to discipline in school.

A core argument of McKinney’s 2023 bill was that suspensions at an early age mean an increased chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.

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