According to an NC private school voucher marketer, “All it takes is a fire and health inspection.”
North Carolina’s General Assembly just opened the floodgates on what was already the least regulated private school voucher program in the country.
Exposing fraud
Public education advocate and school finance expert Kris Nordstrom released research in June 2023 showing 62 private schools who claimed more vouchers than students actually enrolled.
Charlotte education reporter Ann Doss Helms followed up on Nordstrom’s revelations by searching for one such school in her area after investigative work involving 4 potential addresses and “phone tag with the headmistress.”
She eventually found and photographed the ‘Teaching Achieving Students Academy’ private school below that has collected $400,000 in taxpayer funded vouchers.
In 2022-23 the ‘school’ above received $126,444 in taxpayer funded private school vouchers while subleasing space from another voucher receiving private school: Charlotte Leadership Academy which received $280,175 that same year. It sounds like a property pyramid scheme subsidized by NC taxpayers.
None of this was uncovered by state oversight. And it’s no wonder, since those tasked with setting guardrails and leading oversight support so-called “school choice” without regard for fiscal and academic responsibility.
There’s too much drooling at the prospect of getting their hands in the state education budget cookie jar by setting up their own ragtag ‘schools.’
Fulfilling promises to donors, not families
The Republican-led NC General Assembly voted a few days ago to vastly increase the amount of state taxpayer money allocated to vouchers over time despite consistently running a surplus for lack of interest in the “Opportunity Scholarship” voucher program.
This includes future funding commitments beyond the budget years – a promise not made to public school funding.
NCGA slow walks restoration of pre-Great Recession public school funding levels while expanding vouchers and corporate tax cuts.
The amount of voucher $ given to the phantom school in one year is about the same amount of money that the Republican-led NCGA has denied EVERY PUBLIC SCHOOL CLASSROOM over the last 12 years.
The data on the graph above only goes up to the 2021-22 school year because the NC Department of Public Instruction financial data for the past 2022-23 school year has not yet been updated.
While drastically expanding the voucher reserve fund used by only several thousand students, NCGA chamber leaders reject the court-ordered Leandro mandate requiring the NCGA to add at least $5.6 billion in new public education funding by 2028 to live up to its constitutional duty to provide a “sound, basic education” to over 1 million public school students in NC.
Since opening private school vouchers to families of all income levels, including those who have never attended public schools, watch them gaslight future data with supposed “growth in demand” for private schools once these folks cash in on newly available taxpayer money for what they once paid themselves.
The state sits on billions of dollars in “rainy day” funds built by shortchanging public school students. It slashes taxes for out-of-state corporations on the false claims of budget “surpluses” built by denying kids in our state the public education support they’re legally owed.
If you’re unfamiliar with NC’s Leandro case, catch up with this documentary from WRAL here.
As you watch, notice NC Senate leader Phil Berger’s deliberate placement of his “charter champion” certificate for his interview. Charters are a grift similar to private school vouchers, but with a bit more regulation and plausible deniability.
In addition to failing to uphold promises to public school students, the NCGA further hurts students by failing to uphold past promises to public school staff.
Despite “raise” claims over the last decade, new teacher pay power has been frozen and veteran teacher pay power has been slashed. I’ve lost over $84,148 to this teacher pay penalty and with Derek Scott (RIP friend) co-created NCTeacherTax.com to cut through the “record raise” noise.
This is why schools can’t recruit and retain staff. It’s not the kids that are the problem – it’s the adults in power who fail to support them.
It saves the state a lot of money in the short term when experienced teachers leave classrooms but hurts our state and students in the long term.
Coming soon
In 2019, NC announced at a private dinner that by 2030 their vision is a “blended” learning model in which students learn independently on screens. I know because I was there (thank you Sam) and walked away with concerns:
“Personalized learning” is another jargon phrase that translates to “school on a screen” and despite a change in state superintendents since that dinner, it’s still a popular phrase among the current State Superintendent who was the leader of a university on a screen prior to her election.
Despite parents, students, and teachers recognizing that these software programs don’t replace the personalized learning offered by an experienced teacher with a small class size, donor money talks and these programs continue to be pushed to fulfill that vision for public schools by 2030.
Since parents, students and teachers got a heavy dose of this model during the pandemic, selling school on a screen isn’t as easy as it was in 2019.
Once the pandemic hit, those in favor of privatizing education have formed astroturf groups accusing teachers of “indoctrinating” or “grooming” students. The idea is to undermine communities’ faith in public school teachers to sell the community on private vouchers and school on a screen for those who remain. (who needs those teachers anyway?)
Time is running out
Kids like mine and yours deserve commitment by state lawmakers to properly invest in our community’s public schools. Over the last decade, Republican leadership has shown time and again they will not and have doubled down on privatization with the most recent budget.
We can see it already with staff vacancies, large class sizes and increase in software programs. School repair and construction needs are billions of dollars behind as the state sits on money that could help – if they wanted to.
Particularly alarming is the change in architectural design for the rare new schools that are built. Despite school safety concerns, they have open-concept classroom hallways united by classrooms with giant glass fold-up doors.
The design paves the way for a transition to the 2030 vision of mass public education production via a screen with more child minders than qualified teachers. Gotta pay for those state tax cuts somehow.
They’re not hiding their vision of what they really mean by “school choice”: unregulated privatized schools as a grift, or warehoused school on a screen for public school students who remain.
We’re desperately running out of time to prevent this from coming to fruition by 2030.
The most important thing you can do right now is to help your friends, family & neighbors understand the fact pattern & what’s at stake.
The most important thing to do November 2024 is to ensure you and your network vote for folks who share your vision and priorities for high quality public schools for all students in our state.
Our kids can’t wait.
educatEDpolicy 