LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Lincoln’s school district is promoting diversity in Nebraska’s education workforce by encouraging its minority students to consider a career in teaching.

Lincoln Public Schools Multicultural Administrator Thomas Christie hosted an annual workshop Friday for about 60 students of different races to learn about becoming educators.

Some students who have participated in past workshops now teach at the district, where more than 5 percent of educators are people of color, Christie said.

The district has hired more than 70 people of color in the past five years.

About 33 percent of the district’s students are racial or ethnic minorities.

Recruiting and hiring minorities is challenging because there aren’t many students of color pursuing education degrees, Christie said. Those who do are in high demand, he said.

Nebraska would need to hire seven times more African-American and Native-American educators and 11 times more Hispanic educators to reflect the state’s current student population, according to Matt Blomstedt, state education commissioner.

The state Education Department has joined nine other states in an initiative aiming to revise state policies to create a more diversified workforce by 2020.

Encouraging educators from other states to move to Nebraska is also difficult, Christie said.

In 1997, Lincoln Public Schools convinced Jai Burks to move from Louisiana to Lincoln, where he teaches instrumental music at Park Middle School. He’s one of 45 black educators in the district.

“I figured if I could be an educator, I could bring along people who didn’t have the advantages I did,” Burks said at the Friday workshop. “I could bring them along through music.”

North Star High School Principal Vann Price is the only principal of color in the district.

She told students at the workshop, “Ten years from now I want one of you to be a principal at LPS.”

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Police say an arrest warrant for second-degree murder has been issued in connection with a fatal shooting in Lincoln last month.

Lincoln Police said Monday that investigators are searching for the suspect but won’t name him until after he is arrested.

Last week, police also arrested two 17-year-olds as accessories in connection with the March 26 shooting death of 22-year-old Edgar Union Jr.

Police have said Union was shot after a fight between two groups of people that included gang members.

Union was the father of five girls, including triplets.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Seward man has been sent to prison for stealing from a youth basketball program.

Court records say 38-year-old Levi East was sentenced Friday to two to four years, with credit for one day already served in custody. He’d pleaded no contest to felony theft.

Lincoln police say in court records that East used credit and debit cards from the Cornhusker Shooting Stars program for nearly $96,000 in unauthorized personal purchases. He was working at the time for Lesoing’s Inc. as an office manager and as assistant director of the youth program.

NORFOLK, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a worker has died at a joist and decking plant in Norfolk.

The accident occurred around 7:40 a.m. Monday at the Vulcraft plant. Details have not been released.

Madison County Attorney Joe Smith identified the victim as 60-year-old John Gallop Jr., who lived in Hoskins. He’d worked there for 39 years.

The accident is being investigated.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday rejected the latest appeal from a man who pleaded guilty to killing his 4-year-old son but now says a discredited crime scene investigator planted evidence to frame him.

The court ruled that a Cass County judge was right to dismiss 40-year-old Ivan Henk’s post-conviction motion last year.

Henk had argued that former Douglas County CSI director Dave Kofoed planted blood evidence in a garbage bin to implicate him in the 2003 death of his son, Brendan Gonzalez. In 2010, Kofoed was convicted of evidence tampering in an unrelated murder case.

Henk argued in his post-conviction motion that without that blood evidence, he would not have admitted guilt in his son’s death and would not be serving a life sentence.

But the state Supreme Court ruled “there was ample evidence that Henk would have accepted the plea offer, regardless of the blood evidence from the dumpster.” An attorney for Henk did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the ruling Friday.

Henk pleaded guilty to first-degree murder days before his trial was to begin in October 2003 in the death of his son, avoiding a possible death sentence. The boy, who was last seen with Henk, vanished on Jan. 6, 2003. Despite an extensive, weeks-long search of the Sarpy County landfill, the little boy’s body was never found.

During a court hearing in April 2003, Henk shouted that he killed Brendan “because he was the anti-Christ. He had 666 on his forehead.” Court documents said Henk told investigators he killed the boy and threw his body in a Bellevue trash bin.

But in his appeal, Henk said that in deciding to plead guilty, he relied on DNA evidence that he now believes Kofoed planted. Henk argued that violated his right to a fair trial.

Kofoed spent nearly two years in prison for tampering with evidence in the 2008 slayings of Wayne and Sharmon Stock of rural Murdock. Kofoed claimed to have found the only physical evidence that tied two innocent men to the killings: a drop of one victim’s blood. He claimed the blood had been found in a car driven by one of the innocent men that had already been combed over by another forensic investigator.

A man and woman from Wisconsin eventually pleaded guilty to killing the couple. They’re serving life prison sentences.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s longest-serving inmate on death row says he should be pardoned because he thinks state officials are either too lazy or incompetent to execute him.

The Nebraska Board of Pardons will decide Tuesday whether to grant Carey Dean Moore, 60, a hearing to consider his clemency request.

“Apparently they do not want to execute me, even though I haven’t filed any appeals in over 10 years,” Moore wrote in his pardon application.

Moore was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1979 shooting deaths of two Omaha cab drivers.

Courts stayed Moore’s execution dates set in 2007 and 2011. Nebraska hasn’t executed an inmate in more than 20 years.

The Pardons Board only commuted two death sentences over the past six decades. The board requires consent from two of its three members, who are Gov. Pete Ricketts, Attorney General Doug Peterson and Secretary of State John Gale.

Both Ricketts and Peterson have supported the death penalty in the past.

Peterson requested an execution warrant from the Nebraska Supreme Court last week to carry out Moore’s execution. The warrant gives state officials a 60-day window to set a date and complete the execution.

It’s unclear when or if the state’s high court would issue the warrant.

State officials also notified Moore in January of the drugs they intend to use for lethal injection.

PLATTSMOUTH, Neb. (AP) — A 42-year-old Nebraska man has been convicted of helping his online girlfriend kill herself last summer.

Matthew Stubbendieck faces up to two years in prison when he’s sentenced on June 4.

Prosecutors say Stubbendieck did nothing to stop 38-year-old Alicia Wilemon-Sullivan of Orange City, Florida, from slashing her wrists in a wooded area near Weeping Water, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Omaha.

Authorities say Stubbendieck reported Wilemon-Sullivan had killed herself and led them to her body Aug. 5. Investigators say the couple arranged for Wilemon-Sullivan to fly to Nebraska from her home near Orlando to kill herself on Aug. 1.

Stubbendieck had said he believed Wilemon-Sullivan had stage-four cancer, but an autopsy found no cancerous masses or tumors. The autopsy did, however, find enough morphine in Wilemon-Sullivan’s system to cause death.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Police say two teens have been arrested in connection with a fatal shooting in Lincoln last month.

Two 17-year-olds were arrested Friday in the March 26 shooting death of 22-year-old Edgar Union Jr. One of the teens, a girl, has been charged with being an accessory to second-degree murder. The other teen, a boy, had not been charged by late Friday afternoon.

Police believe a fellow gang member of the girl’s shot Union after a fight between two groups. Police say the girl lied about being at the scene and telling police she left the scene alone. Police believe she drove the shooter and others away from the scene.

Police did not detail the boy’s alleged role in the shooting.