Republicans strike deal on funding school vouchers, plan votes starting Monday

Republican leaders in the North Carolina House and Senate have a deal to fully fund private school vouchers and other priorities and plan to vote starting Monday, chamber leaders announced Friday morning.

The deal would fully fund the private school vouchers, known as Opportunity Scholarships, and eliminate the waitlist of more than 50,000 students, which grew after after lawmakers last year removed the income cap on family eligibility and allowed all current private school students to be eligible.

The budget agreement adds $463.5 million for the program to cover 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Opportunity Scholarships are checks of up to about $7,500 that any family in the state can now get to send their child to a private school. Voucher amounts are less for higher-income families. It doesn’t have academic requirements.

"Families across North Carolina made it clear that they want a greater say in their child’s education," said Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham. "Whether you’re a single parent, a young family, or in a military household, educational freedom should be attainable for all."

The agreement includes a bill that requires local sheriffs to cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, increases funding for public schools and community colleges. It includes money for Medicaid and rural broadband.

"This mini-budget agreement will fund our K-12 and community college enrollment growth, clear the Opportunity Scholarship waitlist to expand school choice to all NC families, will increase funding to keep our Medicaid system fully funded, and will authorize new rural broadband expansion across the state," said House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, in a statement.

The Senate is set to vote Monday, and the House is scheduled to vote Wednesday.

The House and Senate, both led by Republican super majorities, were unable to reach a budget agreement earlier in the year despite broad consensus on many of the items.

The deal does not include money for additional teacher raises, which the House insisted upon earlier in the year. The two-year budget that covers this year included teacher raises, but the House sought to increase it.

In total, the deal spends more than $1.1 billion.

In addition to the $463.5 million for vouchers and $24.7 million for vouchers for students with disabilities, the agreements includes $64 million for community college enrollment growth, $95 million for K-12 enrollment increases, $377 million for Medicaid, $55.1 million for infrastructure improvements in Chatham County, $150 million for transportation improvements at the Randolph County megasite.

The legislature originally allocated $293.5 million for the private school vouchers for 2024-25. It adds $248 million to the program for this year, bringing the one-year total to more than $540 million.

Democrats, led by Gov. Roy Cooper, have argued that the state should instead be spending the money on the state's public schools.

"Our public schools are struggling to hire teachers, bus drivers and other critical staff,” Cooper said Thursday, noting thousands of teacher vacancies across the state. "That is a problem we can easily solve, but the Republicans who control the purse strings refuse to do it."

Cooper noted that a public school loses money for every student who leaves to enroll at another school, including a private school.

"Instead of finally giving public school teachers the raises they deserve or tackling the child care crisis, Republicans are returning from their lavish vacations to drain hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from public schools to give it to private school vouchers for the wealthiest people," he said in a statement released to WRAL News on Friday.

Democratic lawmakers said private schools aren’t held accountable for their academics, unlike public schools, and argued the money for the vouchers lacks any of the same oversight as money for public schools. A leading teachers' group in the state launched a digital ad campaign, hoping to convince lawmakers to vote against the voucher plan.

“While the majority of North Carolinians believe in the value of our public schools, state lawmakers are planning to undermine those schools with a massive expansion of taxpayer-funded private school vouchers,” said Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Associated Educators, in a statement. “Their plan is dangerously irresponsible for the financial health of our state government and threatens the future of local school budgets statewide.”

Cooperation with ICE

In 2018, Democratic sheriffs swept the races in all of the state's biggest counties for the first time in years with many of them campaigning explicitly on a promise of non-cooperation with ICE amid the politically polarizing immigration policies of then-President Donald Trump.

The debate largely centers around what should happen when someone suspected of being in the country illegally is arrested and taken to a local county jail, which in North Carolina are run by sheriffs.

ICE can send the sheriffs what are called "detention requests" – a request for the sheriff to continue holding suspected undocumented immigrants in jail even after they're ordered to be released. People can be released from jail because their charges were dismissed, they made bail or they had been given a jail sentence but finished serving their sentence.

Some sheriffs who oppose those ICE detainers say there are troubling constitutional issues with the concept of holding someone in jail after they should've been let go, particularly since the vast majority of people in jail have not been convicted of anything. Other sheriffs who oppose the ICE detainers say it's important to do so to build trust with local Hispanic residents, and that if they don't have that trust, it's harder to solve crimes because people won't work with law enforcement.

"We are also reinforcing the rule of law currently ignored by the Biden-Harris administration by requiring sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, strengthening our public safety and protecting our communities,” said Moore, who is running for the U.S. House in November.