LINCOLN — An uneasy compromise that became the Education Committee package bill died on the Nebraska statehouse floor Wednesday, in part because the quest to infuse more religion into public schools failed. A cross-section of committee members tried to get a group of loosely related education proposals out of committee and onto the floor for a month.

The combined bill was viewed as a bipartisan deal involving several groups, including the conservative chair of the committee and the state’s largest teachers union, to marry a proposal that would allow K-12 students to be excused during the school day for off-site religious instruction and coursework to a bill from State Sen. Ashlei Spivey of Omaha that would help schools find more long-term substitutes so teachers could take paid time off around significant life events. Some who backed the deal have said that parents can already sign out their kids for any reason and that they do not see it as a state endorsement of religion. Other lawmakers have expressed that it would open the door for other religious-themed bills.

The floor debate was like many of the tense executive sessions on the package. The deal blew up on the floor after State Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha successfully removed Central City’s State Sen. Loren Lippincott’s Legislative Bill 550, a release time proposal, killing the whole package. While the original deal is dead – lawmakers involved in negotiations let lawmakers skip over the bill. Their aim: to bring back a cleaner version of LB 306 — mainly some clean-up language sought by State Sen. Dave Murman of Glenvil to address change terms and provisions in state law relating to higher education in the session’s final days while giving lawmakers an opportunity to attach their proposals to it individually and let the full Legislature vote on each.

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