Tim Lambert

So I have a question. Last night, in the wee hours — almost like when everyone was sleeping and no one was watching — the NC House of Representatives gave approval to a proposed $30 billion budget. A few things caught my eye — like why are they voting to basically dismantle the NCHSAA when the schools affected, at least as far as I can tell, don't want that. But this one stuck out to me, too: North Carolina spends more than $130 million annually for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which currently serves mostly lower income and some middle-income families, providing applicants with a voucher to pay private school tuition. Under this new law, the state would spend more than $500 million annually by the end of the decade to expand the program. The maximum scholarship amount would go from around $6,000 today to $7,213 and now families already paying to send kids to private schools would be eligible to apply. The first 50 percent of funds would be reserved for lowest-income families and higher income families could receive no more than $3,246. Taking that money out of public school education will hurt, I think, and with teachers getting what I believe are too small of a raise in this budget, it just made me wonder: couldn't we leave the scholarship program alone and use that extra money to give bigger raises to teachers?