(Picture credit Alma Cerretta)
Education Audit will look behind the scenes at Nebraska’s public schools, from test scores, teaching standards, ideological bias, the rise of technology in education, how tax dollars are being used, and more. If you are involved in Nebraska’s education system and have information you believe would be relevant to our series, feel free to send a confidential tip to plainssentinel@protonmail.com
In February, Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) came under fire from state officials after a job listing for an LGBTQ+ Advocate position went viral online. Governor Jim Pillen, at the time, called the job position “woke garbage” and conservative leaders said it was an example of how the school system was focusing more on ideological groupthink than teaching kids the basics of reading, writing, and math.
LPS, for its part, said the position was important for “supporting student success” from minority groups. The position was part of a larger Youth Development Team funded by the federal government.
In March, LPS hired Alma Cerretta, a lesbian and former operations manager for the LGBTQ+ group OutNebraska, to its advocacy team. The district appears not to have advertised the hire publicly following the splashy news cycle the job listing elicited.
Long History of Left-Wing Activism
Cerretta has a long history of left-wing advocacy in her previous roles. This year, Cerretta testified against Senator Kathleen Kauth’s LB730, which would have required schools and state agencies to designate restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex.
During her testimony, she accused Kauth of wanting people to “flash their private parts” to use public restrooms. It was the third year in a row that Cerretta had testified against the bill.
In 2023, Cerretta testified as a small business owner of Mana Games Cafe in opposition to State Sen. Dave Murman’s proposed ban on drag queen performances for minors. “We’re the only sober space that is regularly hosting drag performances,” she said in a statement opposing the bill. “We are proud to hold an all-ages themed drag show that attracts young friends and old.”
She also opposed a bill that year to ban the use of cross-sex hormones for minors. Following the passage of Kauth’s “Let Them Grow Act,” Cerretta posted a photo of her wearing a shirt that accused Republicans of causing women and children to die.
Cerretta has not only weighed in on LGBT issues, though. She has also testified in support of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour and in opposition to the governor’s recent biennium budget. She was perhaps the most active small business owner in the state demanding a raise to the minimum wage – speaking at press conferences and having an op-ed published in the Omaha World-Herald pushing the increase.
Cerretta’s social media reveals less mainstream views, including a post during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation controversy where she stated “you kind of wish” men would be sexually assaulted to “teach them empathy.”
(Picture credit Alma Cerretta)
Cerretta’s social media also features praise of Luigi Mangione, the killer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson. A picture on Instagram shows her posing on July 4, 2025 with a Luigi Mangione shirt that reads, “But Daddy, I love him.”
(Picture credit Alma Cerretta)
Mangione pled guilty earlier this year to stalking and killing Thompson on the streets of New York City. He has since become a folk hero in some radical and socialist circles across the country.
Following a request for comment from The Plains Sentinel, Cerretta locked her social media accounts and updated her bios with “opinions and viewpoints stated here are solely my own.” She did not return comment.
The Plains Sentinel has asked LPS if they knew about the photo prior to hiring Cerretta and whether they supported her rhetoric — the district declined to answer both questions.
Advocates or Activists?
While the district’s All Means All Strategic Plan for 2024-2029 lists such goals as increased development for young students and better teacher retention, the main goals that made it into the district’s All Means All Action Plan were to reduce racial differentials in graduation rates, suspensions, honors enrollment, and staff. LPS said its white and Asian students enroll in honors courses and graduate at higher rates as well as get suspended at lower rates than other ethnic groups.
True to its action goals, the advocacy team, of which Cerretta is a part, lists roles of African American Student Advocates, Latinx/a/o/Hispanic Student Advocates, Native American Student Advocates, LGBTQ+ Student Advocates, Homeless Student Advocates, and Systems Transition Student Advocates — that is, those serving students in juvenile rehabilitation or long-term suspension.
Since the LGBTQ advocacy controversy in early 2026, the advocates had been delisted from the Youth Development Team’s page. LPS informed The Plains Sentinel that this was an inadvertent result of the district launching a new website in June, and has since re-listed the team members.
A subsequent investigation into current and past personnel found Cerretta’s left-wing activism is not a new phenomenon on the team tasked with “supporting student success, with the goal of helping all students reach their greatest potential.”
LPS’s Native American student advocate, Kriss Ross, a self-identified “white person,” has publicly lamented in 2024 that Lincoln Christian High School students voted for Trump, stated the Second Amendment only existed for purposes of slavery while calling for its abolition, and strongly insinuated the day after the 2020 election that Trump voters “really do love white supremacy.”
Ross also had a 2021 post stating “The only reason people celebrate ‘Christopher Columbus Day’ and never ‘Adolph Hitler Day’ is because Columbus massacred non-europeans.”
An LPS secretary who was previously identified as a student advocate in the youth transition wing, Sherri Johnson, posted a video that called Governor Jim Pillen a “Christian Nationalist bigot” who “made millions of dollars by poisoning people.”
The social media profile of district-identified LPS African American Student Advocate LaFaya Helmstadter includes such messages as “Genocidal Columbus can go f*** himself,” instructions for non-black people to not celebrate Juneteenth, and praise for Kamala Harris’ October 2025 comment on the Trump Administration: “These motherf***ers are crazy.”
Other highlights include reposts of a “happy 4th or whatever” message featuring Jill Scott’s rendition of the national anthem that accused the United States of hating black children as well as a recent TikTok video alleging prominent suicides were “lynchings.”
Helmstadter, during an LPS-sponsored Black History Month event earlier this year, urged the district to give back its land “stolen” from Native Americans.
“With that being said. The land on which we stand should be returned to the indigenous people, or they should be fairly compensated for their loss of language, culture, religion, and autonomy,” she said.
LPS Superintendent John Skretta was in attendance at the event and defended Helmstadter’s “comprehensive land acknowledgement.”
‘Implicit Bias’ to Blame?
In response to an inquiry from The Plains Sentinel as to whether such a public leftward skew was of concern to the district, LPS Communications responded:
“Lincoln Board of Education policy and federal and state law specifically prohibit discrimination or harassment based on a person’s race, color, religion, political affiliation, national origin, sex, disability, age, marital status, military or veteran status, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical condition, sexual orientation or gender identification in any education program or activity, including in hiring and employment.”
The district’s action plan explicitly states it wants to make its staff less white, noting that 93.5% of its staff was white in 2022. The district outlined action steps that included expanding recruitment of racially and ethnically diverse persons as well as examining the interview process for implicit bias and cultural insensitivity. Whether it shares the same concern with respect to political affiliation is unclear.
LPS’s focus on the ethnic makeup of staff and students comes as the district’s test scores have lagged. The latest available data from the 2024-2025 school year shows the district significantly underperforming its peers in all English, math, and science proficiency, and only exceeding the state average in 11th-grade math.
Rebranding DEI
But even absent the ideological slant, LPS’s present form of targeted advocacy may walk a thin line on legality. Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and senior legal fellow for Defending Education, noted that the explicit offering of support for only certain groups of students raised equal protection concerns.
“The minute you start hiring individuals for protected classes of individuals based on their immutable characteristics or identities, you really sort of call into question the Constitution’s promise of equal protection for every American student,” she told The Plains Sentinel.
This is doubly the case when federal funding is involved. While the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice and Department of Education have generally focused efforts opposing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) practices in universities – Perry mentioned the cases of Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley – the administration has also worked to curb DEI in K-12 schools even as local districts work to bypass the efforts.
“There’s a certain doubling down of the efforts of government administration, bureaucrats, people who are using DEI initiatives but they’re simply rebranding to something else,” she said, citing examples such as “Office of Belonging” and “Office of Universal Citizenship.”
In LPS’s case, the student advocates are a designated part of the Youth Development Team under the supervision of the district’s executive director of Multicultural Education and Partnerships. As recently as October 2024, that was the department of “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.”
The Youth Development Team is paid for by money from the U.S. Department of Education, with money given to the district from its Title IV-A program.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, Nebraska received over $6.7 million in funds in fiscal year 2025 under Title IV-A, titled “Student Support and Academic Enrichment Program.” The goal of the program is to “improve school conditions for student learning,” provide “access to a well-rounded education,” and facilitate the “effective use of technology to improve the academic achievement and digital literacy of all students.”
LPS and Omaha Public Schools (OPS) received $879,690 and $1,869,503, respectively, under the program. Most school districts in Nebraska receive only $10,000 under the program.
“It’s interesting to me that a public school system in America’s heartland seems to be so out of touch with what most Americans want, which is simply an equal seat at the table and their federal taxpayer dollars not to be used in a way that advantages one group of individuals over another,” Perry said about the program.
She added that LPS’s advocacy team could become a target of the Trump administration.
“When you go to the hard nuts and bolts of where a dollar is being spent to hire an individual, to promote an individual, to staff an office — that is a much easier hook for the Department of Education.”
The Plains Sentinel has contacted the U.S. Department of Education for comment.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.
— Lewis Thune is a writing fellow with The Plains Sentinel.