Veto override: Lawmakers expand funding for private school vouchers
The bill Gov. Cooper vetoed includes $463 million in funding for vouchers. Stock photo
Lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly voted last week to override Governor Roy Cooper’s veto and pass a mini budget bill that includes $463 million in funding for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program that provides voucher money for families with students attending private schools.
This allocation for private school vouchers comes at a time when many counties in Western North Carolina are still trying to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, and recovery funding from the state has fallen short of the real need.
“We’re going to need significant help from the state and federal government for Western North Carolina to recover, because the local governments there cannot do it all,” said Gov. Roy Cooper.
In addition to the millions for private school vouchers, House Bill 10 also includes $64 million for enrollment growth across the North Carolina Community College System and $95 million recurring funds for K-12 enrollment increases.
Last year, the General Assembly removed the income eligibility requirements, as well as the requirement that recipients must have previously attended public schools, for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program — a system that reimburses families with children attending private schools to help pay the cost of tuition and fees. (The vouchers cannot be used for homeschooling.) This led to some 70,000 new applications for private school vouchers for the current 2024-25 school year, a more than 100% increase over the 2023-24 school year.
The North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority was able to offer vouchers to 15,805 new students but still had about 55,000 on the waitlist. The bill passed last week provides enough funding to clear that waitlist at the cost of $463 million. It also increases the amount of funding the program will have in the future.
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The amount will increase each year from $625 million for the upcoming 2025-26 school year to $825 million for the 2032-33 school year. It will continue to be funded at that $825 million annual level thereafter.
The max scholarship award from the grant program is $7,468 for Tier 1 families, which occupy the lowest income bracket. This is 100% of the average per pupil allocation for state funds to public schools. However, not all private schools accept Opportunity Scholarship funds.
Cooper has repeatedly said the voucher system “disproportionately impacts rural North Carolina counties where access to private education is limited and public schools serve as the backbone of communities.”
According to data from the North Carolina Department of Administration, as of the 2024-25 school year, there are 881 private schools in the state that enroll a total of about 130,000 students. Of those, 308 are independent schools and 573 are religious schools.
Mecklenburg county alone is home to 96 private schools, and the Triangle — Wake, Durham and Orange counties — are home to another 139. Of those, 66 private schools in Mecklenburg County and 108 schools in the Triangle counties accept opportunity scholarships.
In Western North Carolina, Haywood County is home to five private schools that enroll 240 students, Jackson County has two private schools that enroll 186 students, Macon has two private schools that enroll 85 students and Swain County has two private schools that enroll 69 students.
In Mecklenburg County, private school students make up about 13% of the combined public/private K-12 population, while in Haywood County that percentage is 3.5%; in Jackson it is 5%; in Swain it is 3.4%; and in Macon it is just 1.87%.
These numbers do not account for students enrolled in Cherokee Central Schools on the Qualla Boundary.
This summer, the Jackson County Board of Education signed a resolution in opposition to expanding funding for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Program.
“We don’t believe that public school money should go to private sectors,” Jackson County Schools Superintendent Dana Ayers said at the time.
The resolution asked the General Assembly to prioritize public education by “substantially increasing teacher salaries to pay teachers as the professionals they are and to attract and retain qualified educators,” as well as “allocating significant funding for early childhood education, quality childcare and pre-K programs to ensure all children have access to a strong education foundation.”
“I 100% disagree with the General Assembly’s vote to provide that funding to the private school voucher program,” Jackson County School Board Chairman Wes Jamison told The Smoky Mountain News. “If someone is financially capable of sending their child to a private school then the taxpayers of North Carolina shouldn’t have to help fund it. North Carolina ranks 48th in the nation in per-student funding in public schools. This seems less about providing more options for school choice and more about starving public schools to the point where they are unable to perform.”
The bill originally passed the House in September, with WNC Reps. Mike Clampitt (R-Swain) and Karl Gillespie (R-Macon) voting in favor. Mark Pless (R-Haywood) was absent for the vote. Senator Kevin Corbin also voted in favor of the bill when it passed in the Senate.
However, Cooper vetoed the bill on Sept. 20, saying that “the bill takes public taxpayer dollars away from the public schools and gives it to private school vouchers that will be used by wealthy families.”
Then came the devastating floods in Western North Carolina caused by Hurricane Helene on Friday, Sept. 27, and local elected officials started looking to Raleigh for relief funding.
The General Assembly unanimously passed a wide-ranging $273 million storm relief act on Oct. 10 to fund recovery spending by state agencies. Then, on Oct. 24, it designated an additional $604 million in funding and resources for disaster recovery — far less than the $3.9 billion that Cooper had called for, and with little real help to businesses that couldn’t afford to take out more loans.
It is estimated that Hurricane Helene caused $53 billion in total damages, the most devastating storm in the state’s history.
On Nov. 18, school leaders from around WNC released statements urging elected officials to prioritize storm recovery instead of private school vouchers.
“Our legislators have an opportunity to help the many counties in Western North Carolina that were devastated and impacted by Hurricane Helene,” Macon County Schools Superintendent Josh Lynch said. “The opportunity resides in utilizing taxpayer dollars to benign the long and arduous task of recovery and rebuilding our western counties instead of using taxpayer dollars to fund private school vouchers for our most wealthy families. The urgent funding priority should be laser-focused on recovery measures and long-term rebuilding efforts to ensure that our western counties are supported and fully funded so that wide-spread recovery can begin now and in the years to come. This funding effort and prioritization of tax dollars will bolster our economy in the far west and will allow initial recovery steps to occur for those that were impacted the most.”
The third storm relief bill passed the North Carolina House and Senate on Nov. 19 and 20 and appropriated an additional $227 million. Representatives Mike Clampitt (R-Jackson), Karl Gillespie (R-Macon) and Mark pless (R-Haywood) all voted against the bill, the only Republicans to do so.
When The Smoky Mountain News reached Gov. Cooper to ask if the increase in private school voucher funding really comes at the expense of storm relief for Western North Carolina, Cooper was clear.
“Sure it does,” Cooper said. “With a finite amount of money, they have already obligated billions of dollars to tax relief for the wealthy and for private school vouchers for wealthy people, many of whom already have chosen to have their children in private schools. That’s going to reduce the money that’s available for people in Western North Carolina. I’ve asked them for $3.9 billion as a start, and we’ve seen very little of that in response. I think it’s important for all of us to pull together.”
When the legislature overrode the governor’s veto of House Bill 10 on Nov. 20 and allocated $463 million for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, North Carolina Association of Educators President Tamika Walker Kelley said the decision to spend “billions of taxpayer dollars to fund private school vouchers while public schools remain underfunded, while public educators are asked to do more with less, and as the western part of our state is still recovering from the devastation impact of Helene is irresponsible.”
“Fifteen days ago, the voters of North Carolina had a choice between investing more in our local public schools or supporting candidates who want to send taxpayer dollars to private schools through vouchers,” Kelley said. “The voters chose public schools. Yet today, the lame-duck State Legislature overturned the will of the people by spending more than $4 billion on private school vouchers.”
In the race for State Superintendent of Public Schools, Mo Green beat Michelle Morrow. In addition to several policy differences between the two candidates, Green was adamantly against using tax dollars to expand funding for the voucher system, while Morrow was an ardent supporter of the plan.
