Educational Service Unit #1 is one of 17 ESU’s statewide that provides services to Nebraska children through local school districts. ESU #1 serves children throughout K-12 schools in Cedar, Dakota, Dixon, Knox, Thurston, and Wayne counties in northeast Nebraska.
ESU #1 is headquartered in Wakefield and provides a variety of special education, staff development, technology and media services to 23 school districts in its six-county area. Educational Service Units were created by the Unicameral in 1965 and were initially independent. They were later placed under the jurisdiction of the Nebraska Department of Education. Historically, the purpose of the ESU has been to provide services that individual school districts could not economically or efficiently provide for themselves.