Floor Speech: Chasing Fool’s Gold on Vouchers

Below is part of an email I wrote to constituents on September 9, 2024. Please sign up for updates like this here and thank you for your support! – Sen. Graig Meyer

This week, the N.C. Senate approved an additional $463 million for taxpayer funded private school “vouchers.”

I made floor arguments that the majority of taxpayers do not want their dollars to pay for rich kids to go to private school at the expense of a strong public school system (watch the whole thing on YouTube).

This expansion of the voucher program would go primarily to those who don’t need the help: 23% of the families make more than $259,000; 72% make more than $115,000.

Out of the top 200 schools receiving voucher funds, only 42% are accredited, only 8.5% report any kind of outcome data, and only 2% require teachers to be licensed. There’s so little oversight of these schools that they don’t even have to require criminal background checks for staff.

Republicans ran this bill now so that they can campaign on their voucher scam. Votes like the one today are the reason why we must break the supermajority this year. The costs are enormous for Orange, Person and Caswell counties. These numbers include data compiled by Carolina Forward that shows the loss to our public schools:

Orange County

Total Voucher Applicants: 841

Estimated Voucher cost: $3,689,200

Estimated loss to Orange County public schools next year: Loss of $1.1 million

Person County

Total Applicants: 169

Estimated Voucher cost: $853,200

Estimated loss to Person County public schools next year: Loss of $710,602

Caswell County

Total Applicants: 88

Estimated Voucher cost: $430,000

Estimated loss to Caswell County schools next year: $143,717 

With the money spent on this year’s voucher expansion we could have:

-Given teachers a 3.5% raise.

-Hired 575 counselors, social workers, or nurses

-Hired 700 teachers assistants to help kids learn to read

-Added 37,000 pre-k spaces 

As most of you know, my background as a public school social worker never leaves me. When I was working in our public schools, I loved the cheesy saying “Every child is a diamond in the rough just waiting to be polished.”  

Every child deserves a top flight education. And all of us deserve schools that foster our shared values and collective prosperity.  When it comes to helping those goals, this voucher scam is fool’s gold.

Democrats need to unite against this radical agenda.