A new academic school year is right around the corner (and I believe I just heard the inaudible groanings of countless students and not a few teachers). With any new school year, there are checklists for all the goodies needed for a successful year: backpack, lunch box, pencils, notebooks, planners, the list goes on and on.
At the Nebraska Catholic Conference, we also have our own back-to-school checklist, but it’s about our state’s education policy. Nebraska’s education policy covers all sorts of things, like curriculum and graduation requirements, teacher and administrator certification, school approval and accreditation, safety and health plans, athletics and activities guidelines, testing requirements, and data and accountability reporting.
This checklist isn’t quite as fun as buying new pencils and notebooks. But abiding by these regulatory measures are essential to running an approved or accredited school in the state of Nebraska.
There is, however, one item on this year’s back-to-school education policy checklist that I’m thrilled about: the Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC). You should also be thrilled about it.
The EFTC is a federal school choice program that was passed in the 2025 budget reconciliation act (also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill”). It will provide education choice funding to students across the country.
This will be accomplished by allowing individuals with federal income tax liability to make contributions of up to $1700 to a scholarship granting organization and receive a 100% federal income tax credit for those contributions. To use plain English, this will allow you to redirect up to $1700 of your federal income tax liability for education scholarships for kids, rather than having that money go to Uncle Sam in Washington, D.C., to be spent on who knows what.
Around 95% of all students in Nebraska—public school, home school, or private school—will qualify for the EFTC. These students can use education scholarship funds for education expenses like tuition and fees, academic tutoring, educational therapies (e.g., speech or behavioral therapy), books, supplies, uniforms, computer technology, transportation, or extended-day programs (like before- or after-school programs).
The EFTC promises to be a fundamentally transformational opportunity for nearly all students across Nebraska, but especially low- and middle-income families who attend or would like to attend Catholic schools. These scholarships will help them better afford tuition or to afford tuition for the first time in their life. In turn, this will help schools secure the financial means to better serve our students and make Catholic education even stronger than it is today.
The program will officially launch on January 1, 2027. Meanwhile, if you are connected with any of our diocesan parish or religious order private schools, you are probably already hearing about this program. But whether you are already hearing about it or not, you should connect with Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska (OSN) (www.NebraskaOpportunity.org) to learn more and be prepared to make a contribution on January 1.
OSN is the primary and preferred scholarship granting organization for all our Catholic schools, in addition to many other non-public schools, across the state of Nebraska.
OSN will help taxpayers through the process of making a financial contribution and receiving their federal income tax credit. They’ll help parents and students use those contributions for educational expenses, such as scholarships to pay for tuition at their Catholic school. They’ll also be working hard to spread the word so that every single person in Nebraska (and beyond) knows they can make a tax credit contribution to help kids in our state.
At the end of the day, these tax credit contributions won’t cost you, the taxpayer, any money. It’s basically redirecting a portion of your tax liability and keeping it in our backyard here in Nebraska to help our students with educational expenses. And, importantly, these contributions should be above and beyond the general charitable giving you already provide to our Catholic schools.
As Nebraskans grow in awareness of this program (and I hope you’ll help me in spreading the word!), we’ll be able to tick off the checkbox that we helped Nebraska’s students and Catholic schools to be stronger now and long into the future!
