I got an extension on my taxes this year, meaning I wrote checks to the US Treasury and the NC Department of Revenue earlier this month. No one, including me, enjoys fulfilling this obligation of citizenship, but at the same time, I want to drive on safe roads, have a law enforcement officer respond if I need one, and send my grandchildren to excellent schools with well-qualified and adequately compensated teachers.
Good luck on that last one.
North Carolina public schools, meaning those who attend them and those who work in them, are increasingly endangered by declining per-student funding from the North Carolina General Assembly. It seems intent on privatizing public education as we have traditionally known it. As the cost of everything rises, legislators have not funded public schools at levels that support the excellence of neither students nor teachers.
Instead, legislators have sent more and more hard-earned public dollars that people like you and me pay in during tax season to private schools. Some of them exclude certain children, perhaps including some dear to you and to me. This is tax money that coulda, shoulda, woulda have gone to North Carolina’s public school students that is instead landing in the coffers of private schools as vouchers.
All of this is happening under the attractive and innocuous banner of “Opportunity Scholarships,” though they are certainly not opportunities for all. We are not talking about peanuts here. As of earlier this month, the News and Observer reports that nearly 100,000 students are receiving these vouchers, an increase of 204 percent from 2 years ago and a 23 percent increase in the last year.
Businesses would jump for joy with such numbers, but taxpayers should not.
What began as a relatively modest idea for students from lower-income households to attend a private school that might suit their needs has ballooned into a program with no income limits. Everyone from poor families to the children of tech CEOs is eligible, and thousands of families are taking the legislature up on its generosity with our tax dollars.
With growing numbers come growing costs. Two years ago, North Carolina awarded a handsome $186.2 million in vouchers, and the state is on target to award almost $560 million by the end of this school year. Astonishing, with no limits in sight.
So where are all these tax dollars going?
Public Schools First, whose focus is on just what its name says, reports that the highest awards have gone to North Raleigh Christian Academy, which has received over $3 million so far this year and is expected to surpass the impressive $4.3 million it received last year. Many voucher-receiving schools report a religious affiliation, though not always a Christian one. Some schools have reportedly raised their tuition now that vouchers no longer have income limits and encourage families to apply for them. Cha-ching!
Public schools are just that—public. They welcome all students, the best that families have to send them. Private schools do not. They pick and choose students for reasons we will never know and reject some as well. North Raleigh Christian Academy, for example, welcomes state tax dollars but not students with non-Christian parents or students with IQs of 90 or less, according to the school handbook as reported by the News and Observer.
Having doled out so much tax revenue, what is the General Assembly up to now? Not much to provide for North Carolina’s future needs. State law requires legislators to enact a budget by June 30, but the current crowd has delayed with no budget in sight.
So, what is happening? Another round of gerrymandering of Congressional seats at a further stack of the elective deck.
The lesson here?
Elections have consequences.