Hello there. FFP Editor Matthew Hansen here, reporting for newsletter duty from my hometown of Red Cloud. I’m here for one of my favorite events of the summer, the annual Willa Cather conference weekend. Shameless hometown plug if you’re searching for a summer road trip: The Cather Foundation does amazing tours, the brand-new Hotel Garber looks fabulous on main street, you can hike a never-plowed prairie and then go to the wine bar.
Three FFP stories this week, each one of them a star in its own right. Let’s quit monkeying around and get down to business, shall we?
What about Teddy? In Nebraska, you can usually transfer your kid to a nearby public school using a process called option enrollment.
Unless your kid has disabilities. Then, the school’s answer, like the answer Angela Gleason got for her son Teddy, is often some version of: Nope.
There are serious underlying reasons for this, serious issues with special education teacher shortages and funding issues.
But, wow: Bellevue Public Schools didn’t deny a single student who opted into its school district during the 2023-24 school year … except for students who have special needs. Bellevue denied 30 of those students. A less dramatic version of this is happening in our cities, suburbs and small towns.
A bipartisan group of state senators is trying to bar the practice, which one called “discrimination, plain and simple.”
A really good and important story from FFP’s Jeremy Turley, working in partnership with reporter Lauren Wagner of The 74, a nonprofit newsroom that covers education.
Feed me: I went to Afghanistan to cover the war there in 2005, and fell in love with both its people — who have faced an unimaginable amount of horror — and its food. So it was very cool to watch as one of our correspondents, Nasrin Nawa, an Afghan native and accomplished global journalist, embarked on a story about Afghan food in Nebraska.
It’s about that food. It’s about the different generations who have fled different wars to make it and serve it in homes, grocery stores, restaurants. But it’s also about how it connects people like longtime UNO leader Tom Gouttierre and his wife Marylu to the family of Zuhra and Lutfullah Safi — how sharing a meal can bring us closer.
Come for that story, stay for descriptions of some of Afghanistan’s most delicious dishes.
We did this one in partnership with Omaha Magazine, which ran it as part of their summer food issue.
Buskin’ and baskin’: It is hard not to like Parfait, both the delicious dessert and the soulful, playful and joyful Omaha cover band. I have enjoyed them while walking through the Farmers Market. I have seen them at events. I have wondered who the heck these dudes were and what made them tick … and this week, our correspondent Erin Grace told us, as we published her lovely story on the men behind the groove.
These last three stories are good reminders that we at Flatwater Free Press are committed to both investigative journalism and Nebraska stories that can bind us all together, no matter where we come from or where we live. It’s fun to be able to share both types of stories with you this week from my hometown.
Last call: We’re holding a “journalism on stage” event at the Westside Community Center (3534 S. 108th St. in Omaha) on June 12. This one, an FFP partnership with the Omaha Community Foundation, is focused on mental health — our struggles and our successes, our strained system and how to build a better future.
Sign up here to RSVP and be part of the this conversation.
We will soon announce new listening sessions and other journalism on stage events in York, Hastings and elsewhere.
Questions wanted: Some of our best story ideas come from readers, and they typically start with a burning question that just cries out for an answer. Have a question that our reporters need to look into? Complete this form or reach our newsroom at [email protected].
Sincerely,
—Matthew Hansen, Executive Editor
Here’s what we’re into this week: News from around Nebraska
Every week we like to share great Nebraska journalism, no matter who made it. Here’s what caught our eye this week:
- Masked ICE agents in tactical gear entered a packed west Omaha brunch spot and tackled and detained a waiter, startling diners and frustrating Omaha’s incoming mayor, former deputy police chief John Ewing, who said this is “not the way we want to do law enforcement.”
Stories by the Omaha World-Herald’s Marjie Ducey and WOWT Channel 6.
(You may need OWH subscriber info to access OWH story.) - State Auditor Mike Foley’s office has found evidence of financial misconduct in eight different local governments, a “disturbing uptick” of fraud, he announced this week. Story by 10/11 News Now.
- This probably wasn’t what PETA had in mind. Their campaign to publicize the treatment of pigs hit the Sandhills community of Valentine this week, and local residents responded by flocking to the local BBQ restaurant in record numbers, leading to the BBQ joint’s best-ever day of sales. Story by News Channel Nebraska’s Casey Wonnenberg.
- This New York Times story has no particular connection to Nebraska, but I’m adding it here because it helped this Nebraskan understand why increasing the national deficit matters.
- Nebraska will soon ban transgender students from girls’ sports, after a bill passed by the Legislature was signed into law by Gov. Jim Pillen this week. Story by the Associated Press, appearing here in News Channel Nebraska.
- Will real property tax reform come to Nebraska? There’s a new group working on it, reports the Nebraska Examiner’s Zach Wendling.
- Two men with Nebraska ties are among a small group of people, all convicted of violent crimes, now entangled in the Trump administration’s efforts to get “third countries” to take immigrants, reports Peter Breen at the Lincoln Journal Star. The New York Times pieced together how the men ended up in legal limbo in Djibouti.
(May need LJS subscriber info to access that story.) - Solitary confinement continues to be used on Nebraska children and teenagers, reports Livia Ziskey of the Nebraska News Service. It may violate state law. The story, which is part of the UNL journalism school project, “Nebraska Behind Bars,” appears here in Nebraska Public Media.
- Here’s a first: We’re gonna end this week’s newsletter with a poem. It’s 99 words long, it’s written by Nebraska poet Todd Robinson and I haven’t stopped thinking about it all week.
