Vanishing vouchers and abandoned public schools

Tears are being shed over the legislature’s failure to appropriate additional funding for private school vouchers. One Charlotte mom complained, “We voted them in with the promise they’d give a free education to all, and it hasn’t happened.”

Dear Charlotte mom: You are wrong. Every child in North Carolina has the opportunity for a free education in traditional public schools. Your child is not being punished. In fact, those being punished are the children in traditional schools — punished because our General Assembly has taken money that should go to public K-12 districts in order to give money to private schools.

I honestly doubt the majority of legislators ran on a platform of giving more millions to private schools, but it would be nice to know the names of those who did make this a priority. There are public school boosters in their districts who’d likely help punish them.

That said, it was widely anticipated that legislators would increase the amount of voucher appropriations in this short session. But the session adjourned without budget writers appropriating any more than was approved in 2023.

“Opportunity Scholarships” were initiated to offer low-income families a voucher to attend a private school. It was always just a thinly disguised vehicle for school choice and has been steadily expanded with increased appropriations and drastically lowered thresholds to qualify.

The 2023 session of the legislature removed all income caps for qualification. A student from a low-income family can now receive $7,468 in voucher funding, while a student from the highest income level only gets $3,360.

The average private school tuition price tag is $9,056 for elementary schools and $10,066 for high schools, so even low-income families will still have to come up with additional tuition money.

After those 2023 changes were made, the floodgates burst with a record 71,956 new applications for the scholarship. The State Education Assistance Authority says it only has enough money to issue 15,805 scholarships, and priority must be given to the lowest income applications.

The solution? More funding. Before the short session started, we heard that as much as $248 million in additional funding would be approved for next year, increasing the total outlay to private schools to $500 million.

Lawmakers faced a perfect storm of opposition. Across the state, educators, education advocates, columnists, media outlets and parents raised a big-time ruckus, accusing lawmakers of dismantling traditional public education. Noise levels grew exponentially louder when it was revealed that 88.2% of existing voucher funds were directed to religious schools, a fact that worried many because of potential separation of church and state issues. Even if the proposed increase was fully funded, some parents weren’t going to be happy.

In late May, the Senate approved the increased private school voucher funding by passing a stand-alone bill that would increase vouchers by $463 million over the next two years. The House was more circumspect. Speaker Tim Moore said he thought the voucher increases should be included as part of the state budget, not a stand-alone bill. The House then proposed increasing vouchers, but also increasing funding for traditional public schools, especially teacher pay.

The Senate disagreed. Was this additional funding for traditional public schools and teacher pay what Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger was defining as “pork?”

Unable to compromise, the legislature decided to make everyone on all sides of education unhappy by adjourning and going home, albeit with promises to perhaps reconvene later this fall. Of course, this won’t appease those parents who must decide where their child attends school in mid-August.

Money wasn’t the issue. There’s evidence the surplus the state has experienced in recent years may be slowing, but for now, billions in surplus money is available. And it’s a pretty safe bet that whatever solution lawmakers come up with on vouchers, Gov. Roy Cooper would veto it. The veto override vote might be one many lawmakers would like to avoid, especially prior to elections.

There are so many things wrong with this entire discussion. For starters, using public money for private enterprises. We now rank 48th in per-pupil expenditures and want to give millions more to private schools.

Some who like to point out public schools’ failures don’t talk about private school accountability, primarily because they can’t. We’re abandoning the traditional public school system, never perfect but once a source of pride in our state. There are racial and economic overtones, along with the violation of our constitutional promise to make a sound basic education available to every child in our state. And you can bet all 170 legislators have worries about hearing from disgruntled voters in November.

But the one thing we have failed to hear is how we can fix our current public schools. That’s one conversation on which our leaders are eager to pass.

Tom Campbell is a North Carolina Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame member and a columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com .

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