Private school voucher bill could soon become law. Which NC families will it help?
By T. Keung Hui
Published November 18, 2024
Thousands of North Carolina families who made too much money to qualify for private school vouchers before are poised to get an Opportunity Scholarship for the first time. Republican lawmakers plan to approve an additional $463.5 million in voucher funding this week over Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. The funding would clear a wait list of more than 52,000 families — the majority of whom would not have been eligible before the program’s income limits were removed. The veto override vote on House Bill 10 is expected on Tuesday. The legislation also includes a provision requiring North Carolina sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
North Carolina’s veto-override vote will come two weeks after voters in Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska rejected ballot measures that would have instituted or expanded private school choice options in their states.
GOP lawmakers are expected to move on a number of bills before they lose their legislative supermajority for veto overrides in January.
“Hurricane Helene was the most devastating storm ever to hit our state, causing $53 billion in damages,” Cooper said Thursday on a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Republican legislators should prioritize western North Carolina recovery, not private school vouchers for the wealthy.”
But Mike Long, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, said the highest-income families are the ones who pay the most into the tax system.
They have just as much of a right to have their taxpayer dollars used to fund their children’s education, he said. “This is not a program for the wealthy,” Long said in an interview. “It’s a program for North Carolina to reform the education system so the money follows the child instead of the system.”
HOW MANY FAMILIES ARE STILL ELIGIBLE?
This year, a record total of nearly 72,000 new families applied for an Opportunity Scholarship under the revised eligibility rules. Applicants were grouped into four tiers with Tier 1 being those earning the least amount of money.
Demand was so high that the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority (NCSEAA) only had enough money to fund all the Tier 1 applicants and a small number of Tier 2 applicants.
Only Tier 1 and Tier 2 families would have been eligible for an Opportunity Scholarship before this year. A family in Tier 1 is getting a scholarship of $7,468 this year to cover tuition costs.
Around 70% of the families on the wait list are in Tier 3 or Tier 4. Those two tiers include a family of four making more than $115,440 a year.
A Tier 4 family would get $3,360 per child. Under House Bill 10, families on the wait list who were enrolled in a private school on Oct. 1 will be eligible to get a voucher. The NCSEAA did not immediately answer a request from The News & Observer on how many of the wait list families met the Oct. 1 attendance requirement.
Another uncertainty is how many of the eligible families on the wait list had already been attending private schools before this fall.
“There’s not a lot of doubt a lot of these families were already in private schools,” Long said. “But these are taxpayers too.”
FAMILIES HOPING FOR VOUCHER FUNDING
The wait for voucher funding has been hardest on Tier 2 families. A family of four in Tier 2 makes between $57,720 and $115,440 a year. Some parents like Laura Page took the gamble of enrolling their children in a private school while waiting on lawmakers to fully fund the wait list. Page enrolled her daughter at Gaston Christian School in Gastonia, where she’s also a teacher.
“All I can do is pray,” Page said in a video for Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. “I can’t do anything to change it. There’s not really anything I can do but pray and hope that the right decision will be made.” Rachel Brady, a Tier 2 parent from Wake Forest, also enrolled her children in a private school this fall while hoping House Bill 10 would become law. But Brady said waiting wasn’t an option for some wait list families. “A lot of families had to make hard decisions,” Brady said in an interview “Some said, ‘I can’t make the choice because I don’t have the resources’. For those families it’s certainly a shame, but they can reapply.”
Brady organized a group of wait list families who rallied outside the Legislative Building in July. “We’re not counting it a win yet, but we’re hopeful,” Brady said. “It means so much to thousands of families across the state.”
SOME SAY FUND HELENE RELIEF, NOT VOUCHERS
Public Schools First NC is among the groups that are urging lawmakers to let Cooper’s veto stand. State lawmakers said as part of last year’s budget that they intend to reinvest in public schools any savings from families leaving public schools to use an Opportunity Scholarship.
But Heather Koons, a spokesperson for Public Schools First NC, said that pledge is questionable because lawmakers also removed the requirement that the NCSEAA report annually on the number of Opportunity Scholarship students who have left public schools. “We believe public dollars belong in public schools to serve all students,” Koons said in an interview.
“This year, accountability for the vouchers became even less stringent “We believe it’s a poor use of tax dollars to go into an unaccountable system, especially when teachers are paid less than in our surrounding states and our schools have been underfunded for years.”
Like Cooper, the group says the new voucher money would be better spent on Helene relief.
“We hope that legislators in the western part of the state would use that money to rebuild their community and public schools,” Koons said But Brady said lawmakers can help western North Carolina recover from Helene while also expanding school choice.
“Gov. Cooper would find any reason he can to take away choice in schooling,” Brady said. “Stop playing politics with a national disaster. That is partisan speak. This bill is solving a problem for families.”