11-20-2024 Sen. Natasha Marcus on H 10 voucher veto override

What purpose do you rise to speak on the um

motion

You have the floor

Thank you

Um I am going to talk about House Bill 10

because I know we've talked about it before but it's

a big issue

It's a lot of money

It affects a lot of families and passions are pretty

high so I think it needs to be said there's

also some new information that came out on in a

report um from ProPublica just this week so maybe you

haven't heard about it and I wanted to share some

of that as well

I'll start out by saying that House Bill 10 uh

in in my estimation is a massive and expensive and

reckless expansion of what the creators of the program like

to call opportunity scholarships also known as private school vouchers

um but I have to say opportunity for whom And

opportunity for what This ProPublica article that I mentioned that

just came out very recently um is is enlightening it's

disturbing and it talks about how so many of the

private schools that are now funded by this voucher program

that our legislatures funding and trying to expand today with

this be to override were created during the South's desegregation

era

And they were specifically created to cater to white parents

who wanted to avoid sending their children to racially diverse

schools

It reports that 39 schools in the North Carolina voucher

program today were established specifically for white children to avoid

desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s thus earning the moniker

segregation Academies

And it's not just their history

It is still their present

ProPublica concludes that they quote play an integral role in

perpetuating school segregation and in turn racial segregation in their

surrounding communities

Just two examples

There's a school in Northampton County

It was founded in the rural part of our state

in 1966

Half of its tuition today comes from revenue from the

state funded vouchers

99% of its students are white

In a county where only 40% of the population is

white

Second example in Beaufort County there's a school

This is a county where there's only 65% white population

but 98% white enrollment in this private school

And that percentage has gotten worse since they started taking

voucher money

20 of the 39 schools that are reported on here

Have 85% or higher white enrollment which is not even

close to the demographics of the areas where they are

located across our state and they are taking in just

these uh schools $20 million for just these 39 schools

just in the past 3 years alone

One other disturbing statistic that they shared is that the

share of black students who have received vouchers from our

state has gotten much worse since this program was started

in 2014

When this originally was proposed for our state half of

the students receiving vouchers were black

Do you know what the percentage is now 17%

So I am grateful that ProPublica got this information and

published it

I wanted to share it with you today because I

think it's very relevant when we consider whether this is

a bill we want to override the governor's veto on

and it's also important to note that North Carolina state

law does not require that this racial information about voucher

recipients be made public

So maybe you didn't know but now you know

Some other points about this that I think are worth

mentioning here not only are these schools a means of

perpetuating white flight from public schools but also many of

these schools not all of them but many of them

teach bad science

They teach male supremacy

They teach whitewashed history

I took time to look at the websites of some

of the schools that take this voucher money and rely

on it to keep to keep afloat to see what

they're teaching

One of them quote our basic textbook is the Bible

They teach that man came by direct creation of God

and not by evolution

That's a quote

They teach that abortion is murder no matter the circumstances

no matter the reasons

They state that same-sex relationships are akin to bestiality

And that men shall be the leaders not women

So some may say that those teachings are fine

you might agree with them and maybe be fine for

churches to preach that if that's what they believe but

I don't believe that the majority of North Carolina taxpayers

think that those are appropriate tenants of an education for

children that is funded even in part with public taxpayer

dollars

It's also problematic the way these schools exclude certain kids

and certain families the ones that they don't want

They exclude or expel kids with learning delays or disabilities

because they often don't have the time or the expertise

to educate those children they exclude or expel kids with

behavioral issues or kids whose families can't afford the cost

of lunch or transportation to and from school because of

course those expenses are covered by public schools they have

to be but not by these private schools

24 of the top 25 schools that take the most

money

From the voucher programs are based on Christianity

One is Muslim

And 3/4 of all voucher funded schools are religious schools

almost all Christian

I think many people agree with me that this feels

like a an overt violation of the American principle of

separation of church and state for us to use taxpayer

money to fund

Church-based schools

And Again I looked at some of what they espouse

based on that or what they require of their students

and what they reject as a student based on that

um you have to have one schools talks about how

you have to have a letter of recommendation from your

pastor for your child and each student

Must be a born again Christian professing a personal relationship

with Christ

They exclude kids with gay parents

They don't even recognize the marriage of those kids' parents

and they exclude kids who challenge their religious teaching or

articles of faith

So all those kind of kids they can't use these

vouchers

But they are welcome at public school

And those public schools are underfunded and consistently degraded and

scorned by this body which is supposed to represent all

the families of North Carolina and care that all kids

Get their sound basic education as guaranteed by the North

Carolina State Constitution

And it's also problematic that to cover up the questionable

quality of the education that some of these schools provide

and the basis that I find offensive on which um

many of these schools will exclude children and families

The the General Assembly continues to allow them to remain

largely unregulated and unaccountable

And they're not ensuring that there is a quality education

where the kids are learning the basics and are prepared

for college in the 21st century

Public schools boy do we collect a lot of data

there right We require that teachers be licensed we test

the kids every other day it feels like that has

to be made public

We give the schools a letter grade based on how

they

Do we hold teachers accountable and set their the amount

of their salary based on how the kids are performing

so many checks so much data all of it public

private schools nope almost no rules teachers don't have to

be certified there's no required curriculum

There's very little data collected and even less data that's

made public

There's no letter grades for the schools

Some some are rated based on third party sites that

decide to do this work for parents if they want

to know what kind of a school they might be

sending their kid to but many of these schools that

take voucher money aren't even on those third party sites

Parents are going in blind

And this body doesn't seem to care about whether these

kids are getting a good education with the money that

we are funding

There's also very little money to track or very little

oversight to track the money that goes to these schools

we've talked before about how some have accepted many more

vouchers than they have enrolled students at any given time

Some been caught embezzling pretty big amounts of money

One of which was the top the #1 voucher recipient

in the state at one point when it was um

found there was a major embezzlement happening there and then

this this bill that we're talking about today is gonna

balloon the program and the cost of it

It could have addressed some of these oversight problems but

it doesn't

There's no changes whatsoever to what we expect private schools

to do in return for all this money that we're

getting ready to send them

And let's be clear we cannot afford this

Please remember your usual inclination toward fiscal responsibility

Don't set it aside

In order to fund this bill

This is a budget busting expense that more than doubles

the already significant voucher program in North Carolina

The Office of State Budget and Management has forecasted a

budget shortfall in the near future due to the tax

cuts we've already passed and the impacts of earlier expansion

of the voucher program and the Helene funding that we

need to that we should be focused on

Rural counties stand to lose a lot here

There's a lot of reporting in this ProPublica about that

and how damaging this will be to rural counties

In 2014 this program cost 20 or $14 million

It seemed like a lot of money then

At that point there were 1200 low income students who

got a voucher

That was 2014

But boy that camel's nose got under the tent

And that was the start of this major disruption to

our once lauded public school education

North Carolina was the education state

We were doing things right

We were the model in the Southeast

Do you remember This is a huge expansion now over

the past 10 years

House Bill 10 is gonna cost us an extra $463

million just this year

That's almost half a billion dollars

It's gonna cost a total of $625 million next year

for next school year

And between now and 20 I'm sorry 2031 the vouchers

are gonna cost about $5 billion

Maybe more

Mr

President Yes sir thank you Mr

President

Uh point of order please sir

The senator has far exceeded the time allowed for debate

on a motion

I would ask that she please uh either conclude or

stop the debate

Senator Marcus are you ready to wrap up I'll wrap

up

I'll jump to my final point

Which is please remember this is not a bill about

helping low income families or even about school choice

This is about expanding the program to the wealthiest families

in our state

Nearly one quarter of the people that stand to benefit

make more than $259,000 a year for a family of

four

That's who this bill's helping at the expense of all

the other things that we need to be spending money

on

It is just gravy on an already fully loaded dinner

plate of choices and it costs us nearly half a

billion dollars this year

And 5 billion more over the next 7 years

I hope you'll join me in voting to uphold the

governor's veto of this terrible terrible bill