When Governor Cooper vetoed House Bill 10, he was trying to keep another half a billion dollars this year from going to vouchers.
Vouchers would hurt rural county school systems most. In the late spring of 2023, 19 superintendents whose systems reside in 17 eastern rural counties wrote a letter asking that vouchers not be expanded.
That power of that letter and intent of it remain now. And look what happened with many rural schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
Now add to that what happened this past week.
Multiple efforts that supported giving parents public funds to spend on private or alternative schools fared poorly in the 2024 election.
Voters rejected separate proposals in Colorado and Kentucky aiming to add language supporting school choice, an issue that has divided parents and school staffers across the nation for years, to their states’ constitutions.
And voters in Nebraska chose to repeal a $10 million school voucher program passed by its state legislature earlier this year, which aimed to help private school families with state funding.
Two of those states went red in the national races; however, as it has happened in the past, when vouchers are actually put on the ballot, they are defeated.
Even in deep-red Texas, vouchers have been stopped from expanding. From the Association of Texas Professional Educators:
There is a reason that vouchers have never been placed on the ballot in NC. With a supermajority in the NCGA for much of the past few years and an intentional opaqueness placed on the voucher system to keep people from realizing its overall failures, what was seen on the national stage this past week may open more eyes.
Furthermore, there might not be a more tangible issue that can unite rural and urban voters alike despite political parties in helping strengthen the public school system.
