North Carolina Families Win With Passage of Universal Education Choice Eligibility

And North Carolina makes nine. After a transformative year in which lawmakers in more than a dozen states either created new learning options for children in K-12 schools or expanded existing opportunities, North Carolina officials adopted a budget that includes a provision making their state the ninth in the U.S. that empowers all families with the ability to choose how and where their children learn.

Tar Heel legislators expanded the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Program to allow every child in North Carolina—some 1.4 million students—to apply for a private-school scholarship. Scholarship award amounts will be staggered based on family income, with students from low-income families receiving the largest amounts: Students eligible for federal school meals will receive vouchers worth the full portion of the child’s state funding from the state education formula, and the awards continue along a sliding scale for children from middle- and upper-income families.

Notably, families have other private-school scholarship opportunities that can be combined with the Opportunity Scholarships. Children with special needs can apply for education savings accounts, which allow parents to customize their student’s education by purchasing textbooks, paying for education therapy and more. Under the Opportunity Scholarship’s new provisions, a child with special needs who was using an ESA but did not qualify for a scholarship will be able to access both.