Historic Omaha

to be one of the premier zoos in North
America. It also positions itself as an
educational facility, attracting classes of
students from around the Midwest, adding
clout to the belief that Omaha has one of the
most successful school systems in the country.
The teaching of the Three R’s hasn’t always
been easy, hampered sometimes by budget
cuts, aging facilities, teacher shortages, social
demands, and legislative restrictions.
In Fall 1976, as the result of a ruling by
the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the
Omaha Public Schools began busing its
students. The Omaha School Board worked
closely with the Court to devise a plan. They
enlisted the help of the local media and
an interracial committee, The Concerned
Citizens for Omaha, to help prepare Omahans
for the transition. There was a vocal outcry
from some citizens, and white enrollment
in the public schools dropped, but the feared
mass flight to private and suburban school
districts never really occurred.
While private schools may not have grown
as dramatically as busing opponents
predicted, by the early 1980s, several small
Christian schools were operating in Douglas
County. Conflict soon arose between the
schools and state educators, with the
fundamentalists objecting to the government’s
interference in their curriculum. In 1984, the
Nebraska Legislature adopted a compromise
bill allowing Christian schools to operate
without state certification, but only if they
provided the state with specific information
about their curriculum and their teachers.
The following year there were more
changes in education in Douglas County
and the state. Legislative Bill 662 mandated
that all school districts offering kindergarten
through eighth grade must merge or affiliate
with districts offering a high school by
September 1989. The bill also requested a
one-cent increase in the state sales tax rate
to help support schools and set an average
statewide limit of forty-five percent as the
amount of local property tax that could
be used for public schools. Ten years
later, in 1999, Omaha successfully passed
a $254-million school bond issue that would
renovate schools in the older, eastern part of
the district. It also ended twenty-three years
of forced busing for integration and returned
students to their neighborhood schools.
While most of the educational debate in
Douglas County concerned elementary and
high schools, higher education in the county
was not free from controversy. Douglas
County now boasted three universities—the
University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO),
University of Nebraska Medical Center
(UNMC) and Creighton University. There were
also several colleges in the county, including
The College of St. Mary, Grace University
(previously Grace College), Metropolitan
Community College, and Nebraska College of
Business as well as two colleges specializing in
medical training—Clarkson College and
Nebraska Methodist College.
Controversy emerged when Omaha lost a
couple of large corporations to other cities at
least partially due to the lack of potential
employees trained in the high-tech area. In
1995, more than one hundred business leaders
from Omaha signed a letter to University of
Nebraska President Dennis L. Smith saying his
plan to improve engineering education in
Omaha was not sufficient. In response, the
University of Nebraska System regents
instituted a plan to create an Omaha Institute
for Information Science and Technology.
Creighton University also announced that it
would increase its offerings in information
technology and engineering courses. In 1996,
UNO created the College of Information
Science and Technology, and, with generous
assistance from the business community, it
opened the Peter Kiewit Institute on the site of
the former Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack in 1999.
Douglas County now contained one of the
finest schools of information science and
technology in the region.
The Peter Kiewit Institute was not the only
educational institution drawing national
attention to Douglas County. Creighton
University finished first in its category in the
Midwest region for several years in U.S. News
and World Report’s rankings of universities and
was touted as one of the “Best Buys in
American Colleges.”
UNO’s recent role as a focus for national
attention came from an unexpected source.
HISTORIC OMAHA
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