State, new HB10 shorting public schools on funding, Wake school board members say

A bill to drastically expand funding to private schools ignores current public school needs, Wake school board members said Tuesday. The bill, House Bill 10, also doesn’t provide enough funding for possible enrollment increases in the state’s public schools.

Wake County school board members have spoken out against private school voucher before and have included language opposing their expansion in their legislative agendas handed to lawmakers each year.

On Tuesday, school system officials noted that HB10 could affect the school system’s financial bottom line, although it’s just not clear yet how or by how much. One way would be if students left to attend a private school, reducing the number of students a school is funded to educate and potentially prompting in-school reorganization.

House Bill 10 has passed by legislative chambers and sits on Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk, awaiting action. Cooper is opposed to voucher expansion and could veto the bill, sign it into law or allow it to become law without his signature.

House Bill 10 would increase funding for Opportunity Scholarships by $248 million this school year — funding that could go toward either current public school students or current private school students. The Opportunity Scholarships program is a general voucher program that doesn’t have academic requirements but cuts a check to a private school for every student who applies for the voucher and is accepted or enrolled in the private school. About 54,000 students are on a waitlist to receive one.

Public schools losing money could end up shifting the cost of provide more fixed-cost services on local taxpayers, rather than the state, Board Member Tyler Swanson said.

“It’s laughable that that’s what the choose to do,” Swanson said, referring to lawmakers. “There was no raises for teachers [in the bill] but yet here we are.”

Other board members echoed Swanson, arguing that the state doesn’t provide high enough wages for employees, causing the county to fund higher wages that still aren’t high enough. The district has struggled with significant vacancies among bus drivers.

Board Member Cheryl Caulfield said she doesn’t oppose families having the choice to send their child to a private school. She said the impact of the lost money is mitigated a bit by schools not having to serve the student who leaves.

“I don’t like the fact that the money is going there I don’t like the fact that families are going to other alternatives,” she said. But the school system should be focused on making improvements.

“What I hear form families is that they may not be getting what they need rom our public schools,” Caulfield said.

Board Chairman Chris Heagarty said the Opportunity Scholarship expansion is a “missed opportunity” for the state to improve public schools, noting that many rural families won’t be able to benefit because no private schools are in their area. And many other families may not be able to get into a private school, because they don’t have to accept everyone.

“If we wanted, if there’ an argument to be made in assigning other with choice, with school choice, it could be done fairly,” Heagarty said. Instead, “Not only is it bad for us here in Wake County, it’s bad statewide.”

He also noted that the school board’s focus on staffing issues has meant the board has neglected many capital needs, like regular maintenance of all of its heating, ventilation and air conditioning units. Those have malfunctioned several times this school year, leading to schools dismissing early on hot days.

During public comment, several parents expressed their opposition to vouchers expansion, saying it was a “robbery” of public schools. One parent said she favored school choice because her oldest child wasn’t succeeding in his assigned public school.

The Opportunity Scholarship program can affect public school funding because public schools are funded for every student enrolled.

And that funding system has changed a bit this school year. Schools are now funded based on their enrollment last school year — a change that allows shrinking systems to maintain services while they plan for cuts later one but a change that also means growing systems don’t get any more money. Instead, the state now maintains a contingency reserve to help those systems.

Previously, schools were funded based on either their enrollment projection or their last year enrollment, and then funding was adjusted mid-year based on the average enrollment throughout the school year’s second month.

House Bill 10 provides $95 million toward the new contingency reserve, but Terri Kimzey, Wake’s senior budget department director, said state officials originally estimated they needed $200 million in that reserve. They’ve since been finding anywhere in the department’s budget that can be cut to help fill out that reserve, Kimzey said. But given that the school year has already begun, Kimzey said the funding is already late.

Department spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to questions about the projections sent by WRAL News on Tuesday night.

Projections could also get complicated based on uncertainty over how many students would leave the school system if they received a voucher under the House Bill 10 expansion. State officials haven’t released data on where the 54,000 applicants still waiting for a voucher currently go to school, including whether they are already enrolled in a private school. The North Carolina State Educational Assistance Authority doesn’t track whether they are already private school students.

But Wake County has more private school students than most. About 10% of school-aged children are enrolled in private schools in Wake County, according to system estimates. Statewide, about 7% of school-aged children attend a private school.

If the voucher expansion becomes law and enrollment dropped in any Wake school because students leave the school to attend a private school, the school would lose money.

If enrollment rose at any school, the school will need to wait to see if the state has enough money in its contingency reserve to provide more funding for it.

“We don’t know the specific impact on our system yet,” Kimzey said.

The Office of State Budget and Management released estimates last week of the possible impact on local school funding from the voucher expansion, ball parking a $11.6 million loss during the 2025-26 school year for the Wake school system, on top of a $1.9 million expected loss under current voucher funding. But it wasn’t based on state data on who has applied for a voucher, because that data isn’t available. It’s based on the percentage of voucher applicants in other states who moved from a public to a private school, once their voucher programs became open to all students, as North Carolina’s became this year.