Two Omaha Public Schools board members have regularly missed school board meetings

Two members of the Omaha Public Schools board have missed nearly a quarter of regular board meetings since the start of 2023. 

School board member Bri Full missed 17 of the 79 regular board meetings in that time frame and was absent during votes when the board approved the school district’s nearly $1 billion general fund budget in 2024 and finalized hiring the current superintendent. 

Board member Ricky Smith also missed 17 meetings during that time, though he said many of his absences were during extended hospitalizations and recovery from sepsis and acute kidney failure. Both members’ districts cover North Omaha.

In an interview, Full attributed her absences to personal and familial health issues, including a recent death in her family. 

The number of absences stands in stark contrast to the number of absences by other OPS board members and school board members in the Lincoln Public Schools, Westside Community Schools and Millard Public Schools. Most of those board members have missed fewer than 10 meetings in that time frame. 

Both state statute and Omaha school board policy say that if a board member misses four consecutive regular meetings, unless on account of sickness or as excused by the board, they will have vacated their position on the board. 

Yet the OPS Board of Education rarely votes not to excuse a member’s absence from regular board meetings — it has done so only twice out of 79 total board member absences at these meetings since January 2023. 

One was at a meeting on July 15, 2024, when the board did not excuse an absence by Full, who represents Subdistrict 2.

It was Full’s sixth absence from 13 regular meetings held that year and her fourth absence in a row at meetings held in June and July 2024. 

“Personally, I believe that’s a little bit excessive,” then-OPS Board President Spencer Head said during the July 15 meeting, in reference to Full’s absences. “We would like to see board members be more engaged, active and participate in the process.” 

At a March meeting that year where Full was absent, she missed a vote to approve the contract of OPS’ current superintendent, Matthew Ray, which passed 8-0. At a meeting in September of that year, Full also missed six votes related to district policy and finances, including the next fiscal year’s $962 million general fund budget.

She told a Flatwater reporter that she had left the September meeting early due to a family medical emergency.

Full attended regular meetings consistently for six months after the board did not excuse her absence from that July 15, 2024 meeting. She then missed six regular meetings in 2025 and has missed two out of 13 so far this year. 

Tamika Mease, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit North Omaha Community Partnership, said absence rates like these hinder progress and affect district representation — something communities like North Omaha can’t afford.

“We are already behind. We are already losing children (to violence),” Mease said. “To not have the body of, you know, the board there to represent every district within OPS, someone’s going to fall through the cracks. Needs are going to fall through the cracks, and we can’t afford that right now.”

Mease, whose son attends an OPS middle school, said she’s familiar with Full and her work but stressed the significance of having representatives who show up to meetings. “I don’t care who it is … by you not being there, by you not being the voice of the people that you represent, how is that good for us? Regardless of the reason why.”

According to OPS board policy, its board members are expected to “regularly attend all regularly scheduled board meetings, except for emergencies.” The nine-member board generally meets for regular meetings twice a month on Mondays. 

Nick Thielen, chair of the OPS board policy committee, said board members miss on average two to four meetings a year, often due to schedule conflicts or travel. 

It’s standard practice, he said, for the board to vote on whether a member’s absence from a meeting will be excused. But there’s no criteria defining the difference between an excused versus unexcused absence. 

“We don’t have a lot of mechanisms to enforce any particular board member behavior,” he said. “So while there’s an expectation that board members do come to board meetings on a regular basis, and workshop meetings, really the main mechanism with regards to absences is statutory.”

Smith, who represents Subdistrict 1, said that in September 2025, he was diagnosed with life-threatening sepsis while attending an education conference in California. He said he underwent surgery, had his spleen removed and spent a month recovering in a Los Angeles hospital. Smith continues to do occupational and physical therapy twice a week and is awaiting another surgery. He said he was hospitalized again a month ago for acute kidney failure. 

All of Smith’s absences during this time were excused by a vote of the board. On July 17, 2025, on a vote that split evenly, the board didn’t excuse an absence by Smith. 

Dorothy Mae Johnson, a North Omaha resident with two kids in OPS, said Smith has been a longstanding and stable presence in her community, with a proven track record of supporting his constituents. She said Smith used to be one of her supervisors at Urban League, a nonprofit civil rights and advocacy organization.

As elected officials, Johnson said, board members like Smith hold honored positions in her community. Beyond health issues, she said, their attendance at meetings should be mandatory.

“You put your name on the ballot, we want you to execute the job,” she said. “If the community gets out to the polls … we expect you to do the job for its full term.”

Smith said he has stayed engaged with the work of the board throughout his absences by reviewing board meeting recordings and agendas and through virtual meetings and communication with department heads, other board members and individual monthly meetings with Ray, the OPS superintendent.

“The work still happens just because I’m not at a meeting on a Monday,” Smith said. “We work every single day on board initiatives, so it’s more than just showing up in that seat on a Monday … My constituents always have access to me, and that won’t change regardless of the illness. Regardless of board attendance, I’ll be able to continue to support and give to my community.”

At a board meeting on July 13, Smith thanked his community and fellow board members for their continued hard work and support throughout his recovery. Smith was appointed to the board in 2018 and elected to full terms in 2020 and 2024.

Full, who has been on the board since January 2023, told Flatwater she had been “diagnosed with a condition which has been treated and mostly under control for the past year or so.” She said she was mostly bedridden for several months before her health issues improved. From now on, she said, she plans to attend as many meetings as her schedule allows.

Accountability of board member attendance often comes down to the members themselves, said Verjeana McCotter-Jacobs, executive director and CEO of the National School Boards Association. This can make attendance issues tough to tackle if a board has no written legal rule to turn to, she said.

Concerns should arise, she said, when there is a pattern of absences. Vital decisions made at these meetings impact school budgets, families and the success of students, McCotter-Jacobs said. “A lost vote could be the difference between a superintendent or not, a reading program or not, a contract … or not,” she said. “You can’t make those decisions if you’re not there.”

When the same board members are consistently missing meetings, that could also mean a loss of representation for a subdistrict, she said. That may be especially true, she said, in disadvantaged neighborhoods where residents are sometimes otherwise ignored. “Who’s going to carry the concerns and the advocacy on behalf of those people who oftentimes don’t have a voice?”

Since January 2023, the OPS board has voted on more than 130 action items at its regular board meetings, a majority of which have passed unanimously, according to board meeting minutes. Of those votes, Full has missed more than 30 and Smith has missed nearly 30. OPS board member Nancy Kratky has missed about 25 votes and 10 meetings in that time, while the rest of the board members have missed fewer than 15.

Full said that despite the missed meetings, she still talks frequently with administrators and board members on important agenda items like budget issues or the district’s new strategic plan. She also attends small group meetings, individual meetings with the OPS superintendent and reviews meeting recordings and minutes, she said. 

She said she doesn’t think her absences have impacted her role on the board. “If I wasn’t there, I was still doing my due diligence to get my questions answered for my community,” she said. 

Thielen said board members can still provide input and pose questions on agenda items if absent from meetings, but they can vote on action items only when present. 

“That’s the only place where we are publicly and transparently having conversations about the things that are going on in the district,” Thielen said, “and that’s through having the full representation of the board to make those decisions.”

Head, who served on the OPS board from January 2021 to January 2025, the last two years as president, said consistent attendance “should be the absolute bare minimum,” he said. Head missed five regular meetings during his four years on the board. 

“You were elected by the people in your subdistrict to be there to represent (them),” Head said. “If you’re absent, you’re doing them a significant disservice by, you know, not letting their voice be heard on policies that are ultimately going to impact them.”

Thielen and Jane Erdenberger, the current OPS board president, both said the board generally votes to excuse a member’s absence at regular meetings as long as that individual has let someone on the board know they won’t attend. Thielen has missed seven regular meetings since the start of 2023, while Erdenberger has missed three. All their missed meetings have been excused by the board.

Erdenberger said when board members are absent from a meeting, they still have multiple avenues to engage with district business, including through superintendent and board officers’ notes, meeting recordings, agendas and “frankly, being able to pick up the phone at any time to ask questions.”

Board members can also connect with their constituents and fellow board members at workshops, town halls and small group meetings, Erdenberger said. The newest OPS Strategic Plan for 2026 to 2030 was developed in part after board members attended such events, including a series of community town halls led individually by board members in October and November of 2025. Full led one of those town halls.

When asked if board members who consistently miss meetings could maintain the same level of  engagement as members who attend regularly, Erdenberger said, “I think the answer has to be no. But it’s hard to quantify at what point your absences are impeding your ability to engage, and honestly, I don’t think anybody comes even close to whatever that theoretical number is.”

Marcia Herring, director of board leadership at the Nebraska Association of School Boards, said that taking an individual board member’s circumstances into account is crucial when evaluating their attendance records. But elected officials’ attendance at meetings is also crucial, she said. People want their district represented in the votes conducted by board members at such meetings. Board members also cannot vote or be counted present if they attend meetings virtually.

“The uniqueness of a public board of education, and what I think is so rich about the opportunity to serve is that when you bring (multiple) individuals to the table, they each bring a different dynamic,” Herring said. “And so it’s important that they have that opportunity to be able to cast that vote, whether it’s in favor of or against. But it’s that collective body working for the sole purpose of providing a quality education in that school district.”