Rural North Carolina’s public schools will suffer because of the state Legislature’s decision this week to spend more tax dollars extending private school vouchers to an additional 55,000 students, Gov. Roy Cooper said this week.
“The Legislature wants to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the public schools and give it to private school vouchers, even for the wealthiest North Carolinians,” Cooper said Wednesday during a phone interview with The Daily Advance. “That’s going to be devastating for education across the board.”
Cooper was referring to the Republican-led General Assembly’s approval this week to add up to $625 million in new funding this year to support Opportunity Scholarships, otherwise known as school vouchers.
Cooper, who is reaching out to media outlets in rural areas of the state, said he wants residents, particularly those in rural North Carolina, to understand the potential downsides of the state spending even more money for families to send their children to private schools that accept vouchers. That’s because 28 rural North Carolina counties have one or no private school participating in the voucher program.