What more would your child’s classroom have if the NC General Assembly had not deprived each NC classroom of nearly $100,000 since the Class of 2024 entered kindergarten?
For the last few years on this blog I’ve calculated a Class of 20XX “student tax” to measure the state financial support denied to the current graduating class. Here’s this year’s report for the Class of 2024:
Despite the false narrative promoted by legislative leaders and others who seek to take jabs at public schools, North Carolina’s public schools are not swimming in cash. When adjusted for inflation for accurate purchasing power across time, and the number of public school students, the state’s funding power has ebbed and flowed like the tide…and is going out again.
The pre-Great Recession 2007-08 school year is the baseline year I use for these calculations. State school funding power did not reach that mark again until 2020 – years after our economy recovered from the Great Recession. Instead of restoring school funding support to our state’s children, the state chose to slash taxes on corporations and high income earners.
Instead of maintaining funding power for NC’s children at the pre-Great Recession level re-achieved in 2020, the tide is going back out again as the NC General Assembly chooses to divest from public school students and instead invest in private school vouchers.
One of the top priorities among legislative leaders during this short session is “fully funding” North Carolina’s private school voucher program. The Senate voted to add an additional $248 million to ensure all private school families requesting a voucher can receive one – a windfall for the most unaccountable private school voucher system in the country. This nearly doubles the original funding budgeted from $293.5 million to $541.5 million.
To reset a path to “fully funding” North Carolina’s public school students, the General Assembly could give NC public school districts 1-time funding of $4,966 per graduating senior. Instead they’re set to send multi-year funding of $4,480 per year to families making over $200,000 to supplement their private school tuition.
It would cost the state less to “fully restore” multi-year public school funding shortfalls denied to the Class of 2024 than it would to offer one-year funding to private school parents. I’ll show my work below:
Grade 11 ADM from NC Statistical Online Profile year 2023 x Class of 2024 “public school student tax”
101,880 x $4,966 = $505.9 million
Cost of 1 year of private school vouchers for all families asking: $541.5 million
$505.9 million < $541.5 million
public school families < private school families
Legislative leaders own this inequality if they expand the voucher program while neglecting the public schools they’re constitutionally mandated to support.
I teach high school seniors and my two children are public school students, so the funding gap isn’t just an accounting figure. It’s my students’ and children’s livelihoods.
You can find your NCGA representatives here to tell them to close the public school funding gap before sending hundreds of millions of dollars more to private schools.
educatEDpolicy 
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