RALEIGH (January 17, 2024) – State legislators like to shovel public dollars to private schools at the same time they short public schools.
In the long-running Leandro case on state support for public schools, a judge ruled last April that the 2021-23 state budget fell $677.8 million short of the plan for PreK-12 education spending to which parties in the lawsuit agreed.1
Similarly, after legislators adopted a new budget for 2023-25 in September, analysts agreed the new budget falls far short of the plan.2 And a new Republican majority on the NC Supreme Court plans to hear more arguments in the case next month.3
In the same budget, legislators adopted an audacious plan to increase vouchers for students to attend private schools more than fivefold, to $520 million a year by 2032-33.
They also removed income limits on eligibility. So even a student who already attends private school without government help can now qualify to receive state tax dollars to pay for it.
“One of the issues that we need to keep paramount in our mind as we discuss public education in North Carolina is how it’s funded,” former Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Brad Wilson says in the accompanying video.
“We need to be very careful about the evolution of … the taking of public money and giving it to private schools. Particularly in the context of the constitutional mandate that is being interpreted through the Leandro case and the recognition that we are deficient in funding our public schools,” Wilson says.
“Nothing wrong with funding schools in general if you are meeting your primary and first obligation to meet the needs of our public education system,” he says.
“But right now, we have a funding mechanism that is taking money from the public schools and giving it to the private schools without addressing that disparity.”
1 https://www.wral.com/story/judge-nc-s-unfunded-education-mandates-total-677-8m/20819047/.
2 https://www.ncforum.org/2023/public-school-forum-of-north-carolina-2023-conference-budget-analysis/.
3 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article283389133.html.
Dennis Herman says
Thanks, Brad. We need to educate everyone on how our public schools are hurting as they have funding taken away for the benefit of private schools.