|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In late July, the General Assembly’s Republican majority raced to pass a bill that would commit North Carolina to participating in the federal school voucher program authorized by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
The state was poised to be the first to opt in to the program—a long-time goal of the school privatization movement—until Democratic Gov. Josh Stein hit the brakes. On August 6, he vetoed House Bill 87.
In a statement this week, Stein said he supported school choice, but, “Cutting public education funding by billions of dollars while providing billions in tax giveaways to wealthy parents already sending their kids to private schools is the wrong choice.”
However, Stein went on to say he intends to eventually opt into the federal program—with the aim of using it to benefit public school students instead.
At the heart of the federal program, set to take effect in 2027, is a tax credit worth up to $1,700. Every dollar a taxpayer donates under the program’s terms is one dollar less they owe to the IRS, making the tax credit unusually generous.
The donations must go to a nonprofit that a participating state has designated as a “scholarship-granting organization.”
Those nonprofits will dole out the money to students eligible to enroll in public primary or secondary school. That could potentially include students already enrolled in private schools or taught at home.
To qualify, a family’s income can be no more than three times the area’s median. In some North Carolina counties, that’s nearly $300,000.
The scholarship could be spent on a wide variety of education-related expenses, including private school tuition and tutoring. There’s no prohibition on stacking a federal voucher with one received under a state program.
But exactly how the program will work—and precisely who it will benefit—will depend heavily on federal and state rules, which have yet to be drawn up.
The U.S. Treasury Department is expected to write the federal rules, according to reporting by The Hechinger Report, a publication focused on education.
North Carolina’s House Bill 87 provided a glimpse at how state Republicans would like the federal program to work here.
The bill gave responsibility for designating what qualifies as a scholarship-granting organization to the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, which administers the state’s school voucher programs, the Opportunity Scholarship and Education Savings Accounts.
Lawmakers specifically allowed the money to go toward “home school expenses.”
The federal legislation does not specify how states opt in. So while state Republicans could still override Stein’s veto with the help of Reps. Carla Cunningham and Shelly Willingham (the two Democrats who supported the bill’s initial passage), it’s not clear that would be the final word.
Carli Brosseau is a reporter at The Assembly. She joined us from The News & Observer, where she was an investigative reporter. Her work has been honored by the Online News Association and Investigative Reporters and Editors, and published by ProPublica and The New York Times.