School choice is a program that allows taxpayers to apply for publicly funded scholarships for private schools. It began as a program to delay the effects of school desegregation on privileged white students. 

Modern school choice began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the goal of providing disadvantaged students with the same education that affluent students receive in private schools. While this may seem like a righteous cause, it simply widens the gap between public and private education funding. 

There are now 34 states, along with the District of Columbia, that have School Choice programs. North Carolina is one of them. In 2023, the NC legislature voted to continuously expand the program. In the 25-26 school year, over 600 million tax dollars are being funnelled into private schools. If this legislation remains unchanged, by 2034, over 9 billion in public school funds will have been spent on private schools. 

The 2023 policy change also eliminated the income cap. Previously, the program was limited to families whose income was 55,587, 133% of the federal free lunch cutoff. Now the program is universal. Great right? Wrong. After this change, only 8.4% of participants were students who had previously gone to a public school.

This program is no longer used to improve the quality of underprivileged students’ education. It is now simply funneling money out of our education into the pockets of private schools. At least some are getting an education out of the money, right? Wrong again. The legislators who are trying to do their duty to oversee government programs don’t really have access to the whole of the program since private schools aren’t subject to government oversight, but they can have government money. 

There have been multiple instances where the program has been defrauded. A private school in Smithfield had 149 voucher recipients. 149 isn’t a big number, but when compared to the total enrollment of the school, weirdly enough, it does sound large. Why? Because the school was receiving 77 more vouchers than it had students.

If the government wanted to provide disadvantaged students with high-quality education, it could fund the public school system and build it into a program that rivals private education. Instead, it decided to put a Band-Aid on the issue. If the North Carolina legislature were well-versed in Taylor Swift, they would know that “Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes”. North Carolina needs to stop bleeding the public school system dry and fix the issue properly.

Jack Watson, junior editor

It makes my day better when my hair isn’t a mess when I wake up.