(The Center Square) – Appropriation of enough money to erase a waiting list of about 55,000 for school choice is expected to be voted on soon by the full North Carolina Senate.
The second-year budget adjustment is not expected to gain the signature of Gov. Roy Cooper, who has stated his opposition to the program many times over. Republicans have three-fifths majorities in each chamber to override a veto.
Known as Opportunity Scholarships, record-breaking demand and a budget surplus led to the approval from the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
House Bill 823 would provide $248 million to fund this year’s waiting list and $215 million for scholarships in future years.
The voucher program has been criticized in the past because available funds were unspent at the end of the fiscal year, but now the situation is the opposite, explained State Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover.
“Now we’ve got 55,000 families that are kind of on pins and needles wanting to know if their child is going to be able to attend the school of their choice come the fall,” Lee told the Appropriations Committee.
The bill immediately drew criticism from state Sen. Natasha Marcus, D-Mecklenburg, who described the scholarships as “welfare” for wealthy people.
“I have a lot of problems with this bill and one of them is the urgency to help the very wealthiest families pay the tuition for their children to go to private schools with taxpayer money when we know the majority of those wealthiest families are already sending their children to those private schools with their own money that they can afford,” she told Lee.
More than 70% of the households on the list earn more than $115,000, Marcus said. Twenty-three percent earn more than $260,000 a year, she added.
Lee countered that two wage earners each making $55,000 a year can no longer be considered wealthy.
Marcus pointed out, however, there are no families on the waiting list in the lowest income bracket of up to $57,000.
“Those are the families that were meant to benefit from this Opportunity Scholarship program,” she said. “Those have been fully funded.”
The money for families on the waiting list would be better spent on other priorities such as pre-kindergarten programs and child-care subsidy grants, she said.
State Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, said the Opportunity Scholarship program has already been approved by the Legislature, and the only question is the amount of funding.
“We just didn’t anticipate basically the interest in the program and how many more people would apply for it than anticipated,” he said. “This is nothing more than funding the policy we have already passed.”
The senator said he is “perplexed” that paying for a child’s education would be called welfare.
“We’re in North Carolina,” he said. “We have a constitutional right to a free education. If you want to amend the constitution and say that right only applies to poor people or if you make a certain amount of money you no longer have an education, you have a right to put that bill forward.”
He asked what it would be called if the funds were spent on early childhood education or other programs.
“I guess that’s not falling into the new definition of welfare,” he said.
