July 30, 2026
Amy Schmidtke, the Buffett Institute's director of educational practice, originally wrote this guest blog about the work of the Superintendents' Early Childhood Plan, for the AASA, the School Superintendents Association. It is the first in a series of three blogs. Read the excerpt below, and then read it in full on the AASA site.
Eleven superintendents. One vote. Zero dissents.
That is how the Superintendents’ Early Childhood Plan began in June 2014, when the superintendents of every district in Douglas and Sarpy Counties in Nebraska sat down together and agreed to do something they had never done before: build an early childhood strategy as one Omaha-area region rather than as 11 separate school systems.
More than a decade later, the plan still includes all 11 districts and reaches thousands of children each year.
It is my privilege to lead that initiative today. But I did not build the trust that made it possible. That work started over a decade ago, and the how matters as much as the what.