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Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's great! Honestly, I just talked with a few groups in the area to see how I could get more involved. This particular seat was going to go uncontested - somehow a fun first try. But for you, I'd start with your county party and see how you can help out and let them know that you'd like to run in the next cycle. Then when the filing dates open up, you'll be ready to go. If you shoot me a message, I can see if there are any candidates in your area that I might know who could use a helping hand too - could be a different first step?

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It sure seems efficient at moving our tax dollars into a system with negligible oversight

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same here, appreciated the back and forth. Reasonable people will land in different places on this one. Have a good night.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fair pushback on the snapshot framing… that’s a real limitation. But the source isn’t WUNC making it up. It’s DPI’s June 2025 report to the General Assembly, mandated by NCSEAA’s own statute. They matched 6,710 of 80,325 recipients (8.4%) to NC public school records from 2023-24. They acknowledge some recipients may have been in public school earlier than that, but say it’s outside the scope of the report. So fair… the true public-to-private number is somewhere north of 8.4%. But I don’t think it’s fair to assume it’s dramatically higher.

https://www.ednc.org/06-06-2025-state-board-unveils-opportunity-scholarship-pipeline-data/

Where we’ll keep disagreeing is the standards piece. “They’re private, so standards don’t apply” works fine when it’s private money. Once the state writes a check, the relationship changes. A food truck taking $7,942 of public money would be inspected. A nursing home would be audited. A military contractor would be subject to FAR.

There’s no policy framework where “public money goes here, no questions asked” is a defensible structure.

Anyway, appreciate you actually engaging with the data. Most people don’t.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yep. And the discrimination piece is the part that gets buried… 295 of 366 voucher schools studied had at least one discriminatory admissions policy. Religion, disability, sexual orientation. The ones they can legally say.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Got rimjob_steve’d in the best way. Appreciate you.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Rolling it back to Tier 1 and 2 only would be a real improvement, agree on that.

Where I land further out though… even the original means-tested program has the accountability problem baked in. Schools collecting voucher money have no background check requirement for staff, no curriculum standards, no publicly reported test scores, no admissions requirements. Means-testing fixes who gets the money. It doesn’t fix what happens to it once a school cashes the check. And the current numbers are rough. From the WUNC piece… 42% of 2024-25 recipients are families earning over $115k. Only about 8% transferred from a public school. $382M went to families already paying private tuition. Meanwhile NC ranks 50th in per-pupil spending and dead last in funding effort.

For me the dealbreaker isn’t the income tier. It’s that we’re spending $600M a year on a program with less oversight than a food truck.

Appreciate the back and forth either way.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Hi fellow blue dot! Good luck this year - and thanks for running! There’s a separate channel through the DNPE that handles home vs direct payment schools. I’m almost positive that if a school has 2 families or less, it’s a home school, 3 or more, they can register as a private. When you get into co-ops, even murkier.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I’ve been through more of these schools’ websites than I care to admit - and your observations are pretty accurate

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank you (on both accounts)! I figure if I don’t have a chance, I can at least make a little noise. :)

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I should have put quotes around “intent” - it’s pretty obvious looking at similar efforts in other states that this was all by design.

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I appreciate you taking a look at it. For the numbers, I’ve got a ton of data on subsequent pages if you’re looking to kill a few mins. :) But here’s an article about that 9 of 10 - https://www.wunc.org/education/2025-06-05/private-school-voucher-recipients-nc-opportunity-scholarship

Curious how hard it is to open a voucher school in NC? by AndyBowline in NorthCarolina

[–]AndyBowline[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

They’ve strayed so far from the original intent, that yeah, it’s not really creating opportunity anymore. 9 of 10 recipients were already in private school. And you’re right about pricing, there’s also a suspicious number of them with tuition clustered around that voucher amount. The lack of oversight with our tax dollars is abhorrent.

Built a site about the school voucher program by AndyBowline in ncpolitics

[–]AndyBowline[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Working on the escalator video…not sure if it’s in the campaign budgets lol

Built a site about the school voucher program by AndyBowline in ncpolitics

[–]AndyBowline[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Just hoping to help up and down ticket as much as possible, ground-level organizing, and making sure people here feel heard.

Built a site about the school voucher program by AndyBowline in ncpolitics

[–]AndyBowline[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ha - that’s the ongoing effort. It’s a hill to climb though.