Homeschooling mom, Angie Eberspacher, is looking to succeed Kirk Penner on the Nebraska State Board of Education. Angie will take on the battle to criminalize teachers and librarians for the crimes of educating children and providing books to them. As a conservative Christian, advocating to take away the freedom of families to decide what their children can and cannot read is nothing new for Angie.
Angie Eberspacher has testified before the Nebraska Legislature about things that personally offend her, including librarians (page 30 of 183). This was her testimony in support of LB441, introduced in 2023, which was a bill to make it a crime for teachers or librarians to teach or provide any material that a person might consider obscene. Never mind that the definition of obscenity is a slippery slope – the idea of this bill was that anyone could complain about even a paragraph in a single book, and a teacher or librarian could be charged with a crime simply for teaching or providing said book.
Just remember, we’ve been here before – while Terri Cunningham-Swanson, Linda Vermooten (another person who should never be involved in education or with children), and their ilk were getting off on finding the sauciest passages they could in books and reading them out loud in public in an effort to shock people into banning books.
As a parent, here is your reminder that it is absolutely a guardian’s and/or parent’s right to request that their child be opted out of a class or an assignment. It is not the right of any Board of Education or any other parent or guardian to put blanket restrictions on all students and all families. It is not the right of any legislator to push for laws that turn our teachers and librarians into criminals for simply doing their jobs.
Angie Eberspacher also supports school vouchers which, as we know, takes tax dollars away from public schools. She wants the state to give tax dollars to homeschooling parents and private schools. If a parent decides not to put their child in public school, then not receiving tax dollars toward your child’s “education” (a term we use loosely when it comes to private schools and religious-based homeshoolers) is a choice they’ve made.
“Parent’s rights” and “school choice” are political dog whistles. As a parent, we already have rights. Here at Nebraska Meadowlark, we are parents, and we have also made decisions including homeschooling, opting our children out of certain classes or assignments, and speaking (respectfully and politely) to our kids’ administrators, teachers, and/or librarians about anything we would rather not have our children involved in. Furthermore, we have spoken to our own children about why we made the decisions we make on their behalf. That’s called parenting.
School choice is something we already have. We can choose public, private, charter, and homeschool. If we choose to homeschool, we bear the burden of ensuring that our child is ready to enter college or the workforce. If we choose private or charter school, then their curriculum is their curriculum. The great thing is that if we aren’t happy with the outcome of any of these options, we can make a different choice.
None of this is rocket science, folks. If you have children, then focus on doing what you feel is best for your children, and leave everyone else’s alone. Plain and simple.
If you wonder why promising young adults are leaving Nebraska, people like Angie Eberspacher, the list of people and organizations who have endorsed her, and the attitudes they have toward our educators, librarians, and LGBTQ kids are the reason why.
Voting to keep conservatives in office will ensure that Nebraska brain drain continues and the dumbing down of the state will have a much steeper hill to climb if we are ever going to reverse it.
Special thanks to DW for a number of the sources shared here today!
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