Nebraska Public School Advantage News

Nebraska Public School Advantage News

Dog Days on the Farm: Summer programming bustles at Gifford Farm in Bellevue

Dog Days on the Farm: Summer programming bustles at Gifford Farm in Bellevue

July 16, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren It’s mid-July, the dog days of summer, and memories are being made on every acre of Gifford Farm. A bright morning sun peaks through some passing clouds as the Little Farmers campers, an energetic pack of four to six-year-olds, transport baby chicks from an incubator to the nursery, where they’re met by the older Farm Camp kids. In a barn across the farm, a group of campers from...Read More

Igniting Global Education: Service unit leaders from Nebraska spend 12 days in Seoul and Singapore

Igniting Global Education: Service unit leaders from Nebraska spend 12 days in Seoul and Singapore

June 17, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren “It was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime educational experience, but it doesn’t have to be once-in-a-lifetime.” Between the two of them, Drs. Larianne Polk and Dan Schnoes have over seven combined decades of experience in the world of education. Over the course of their careers, the two have done and seen it all. Chopsticks training, though? That was a new one. Ahead of a 12-day...Read More

A Very Sensory Summer: NCECBVI’s Camp Sense-ational visits Kiewit Luminarium, Omaha staples

A Very Sensory Summer: NCECBVI’s Camp Sense-ational visits Kiewit Luminarium, Omaha staples

June 9, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren There’s a handful of premium Omaha field trip destinations within a couple miles of the city’s downtown skyline, and the Nebraska Center for the Education of Children who are Blind or Visually Impaired’s Camp Sense-ational hit for a trifecta in late May. The Omaha Children’s Museum, where the campers spent the first day of camp, and The Henry Doorly Zoo, where they spent the...Read More

A Banner Day at the Ballpark: Prairie Queen celebrates Special Olympics Banner School status at Werner Park

A Banner Day at the Ballpark: Prairie Queen celebrates Special Olympics Banner School status at Werner Park

May 28, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren It was a cloudy, rainy Friday morning in Sarpy County when the Prairie Queen Mustangs walked out of their elementary school and began their march towards Werner Park. They traveled in droves, nearly 500 students on their way to receive the prestigious National Special Olympics Banner. By the time they reached the minor league ballpark on the other side of Lincoln Road, where...Read More

Sewing the Seeds of Time: How quilting became the craze at Minden High, and the teacher behind it

Sewing the Seeds of Time: How quilting became the craze at Minden High, and the teacher behind it

May 21, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren Every quilt has a story, as does every quilter. Fashion was Pam Johnson’s first love. A country girl who grew up cooking, gardening and taking care of the house, she figured that’s what she’d pursue after graduating from Campbell High School in 1981. “As I started checking into that, I found out that to be a fashion designer, I was going to have to move to the city someplace,”...Read More

The Kids on Campus: Islander freshmen flock to the state’s flagship university for a day

The Kids on Campus: Islander freshmen flock to the state’s flagship university for a day

May 13, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren The schoolbuses from Grand Island rolled down R Street and parked in front of the main entrance to the Nebraska Union. They kept coming, one after another, unloading hundreds of high school freshmen who were about to get a firsthand look at the state’s flagship university. On the Union’s iconic front steps, several UNL student tour guides clad in the school’s signature scarlet-...Read More

Mr Friend, Mr. Freeman: The 60-year story of an Omaha principal with a fascinating past

Mr Friend, Mr. Freeman: The 60-year story of an Omaha principal with a fascinating past

May 7, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren I can close my eyes and make 30 years disappear. It's Field Day at Prairie Wind Elementary in northwest Omaha, late spring of '96. For us kindergarten kids, this was the Super Bowl. We dreamed of eternal glory at the potato sack race finish line and of the everlasting fame that would come with winning the baseball long toss. It was a hot day, by May's standards, and the hallway...Read More

Building Support, Changing Lives: Nebraska’s ASD Network and 23 years of impact

Building Support, Changing Lives: Nebraska’s ASD Network and 23 years of impact

April 15, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren Numbers can not only help paint a picture, they can also tell a story. The story of the Nebraska Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Network begins back in 2002, when the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) set out to further support local school districts, Educational Service Units (ESUs), and parents/caregivers of children, birth-21yrs, with autism or related characteristics...Read More

35 Years of Innovation: Sights and Sounds from the ESU 10 Regional Science Olympiad

35 Years of Innovation: Sights and Sounds from the ESU 10 Regional Science Olympiad

April 7, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren More than 650 of Nebraska’s best and brightest student scientists put their innovation to the test at the ESU 10 Regional Science Olympiad, an event that has been growing since its inception in 1990. The olympiad, which turned UNK’s Cushing Fieldhouse into one giant science lab on March 18th, drew students from as far as Burwell, Ogallala and even Omaha. Throughout the day, they...Read More

Twenty-Five Packs, One Purpose: A Friday morning frenzy with the Whippet Families

Twenty-Five Packs, One Purpose: A Friday morning frenzy with the Whippet Families

April 3, 2025
By Tyler Dahlgren Assistant principal Ed Rowse stood near the baseline in Minden’s gymnasium Friday morning, holding a microphone in his left hand and gesturing towards six high school students with his right. While Rowse introduced the leadership from FBLA, FCCLA and FFA, his CL Jones Middle School students sat in the bleachers and did a commendable job at listening. But when Rowse handed the...Read More

Pages