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Casey Emmendorfer at Noble Academy in Greensboro on Thursday.
Casey Emmendorfer at Noble Academy in Greensboro on Thursday.
Casey Emmendorfer said when she got the email that her daughter Elayna had received an Opportunity Scholarship award, she was extremely excited.
So excited that she went into her MyPortal account through the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority and accepted the offer.
“I was like, ‘You’re offering me money,'” Emmendorfer said.
Elayna had been on the waitlist for nearly 10 months and her award of an Opportunity Scholarship comes after the state Legislature voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of House Bill 10, which allocated $463 million toward the program to clear the backlog.
On Dec. 3, the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority made Opportunity Scholarship award offers to Elayna and more than 54,000 other students for the 2024-2025 school year.
The parents of those students have until 5 p.m. Friday to accept or decline any award offers.
Elayna, a sixth-grader, currently attends private school at The Piedmont School in High Point and will be receiving a $2,240 opportunity scholarship starting in January to attend the Noble Academy in Greensboro.
With a son already attending the Noble Academy, Emmendorfer said having both her children attend the same school will save her roughly five hours a week of travel time.
While her son isn’t receiving an opportunity scholarship he does receive other grants from the state, and Emmendorfer said the combination of grant funding and voucher money will help ease financial strain on her family.
“It’s just almost $5,000 more that doesn’t have to come out of our pocket,” Emmendorfer said. “It just takes a lot of the stress off.”
Elayna and the other children who received offers on Dec. 3 were initially waitlisted after applying for an Opportunity Scholarship voucher in February.
The waitlist, created after Republican legislators removed previous income thresholds from the program in 2023, led to a record number of applications, with approximately 72,000 being submitted by the March 1 deadline. Under the new rules, established families with children already in private school could now apply for Opportunity Scholarship Vouchers.
In April, Tier one families, those with the most financial need, were awarded scholarships through the program first, and then a few families in Tier 2 were awarded scholarships in May, resulting in 15,805 new students being offered vouchers.
This left the roughly 54,000 applications waitlisted, and the General Assembly attempted to pass legislation in September to further fund the program and clear the back log.
But days after House Bill 10 passed in September, Gov. Cooper vetoed the bill which among many things included additional funding for the Opportunity Scholarship Voucher program.
Then roughly two months later on Nov. 20 the legislature voted to override Gov. Coopers veto and 463 million was allocated to the Opportunity Scholarship Voucher program to clear the backlog.
Gov. Cooper and other Democrats in the state have been vocal opponents of expanding the Opportunity Scholarship Voucher program, with the primary criticism being it takes money that could be used to address public school needs and puts it toward private education.
Brian Jodice, the President of nonprofit Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, said many Democrats have put forward a false dichotomy on the issue of increasing funding for private schools.
He said it’s possible for the state to adequately fund both public and private education, citing that H.B. 10, which provided the $463 million for private school expansion, also included an additional $95 million in recurring enrollment growth funds for public schools.
“I view this as an investment in students in our state,” Jodice said. “I think, unfortunately, we’ve gotten into a lot of this-or-that kind of argument. I believe we can do both in North Carolina.”
Jodice argued that since funding for public schools is the top line item in the state budget, more money won’t necessarily fix the problems facing public schools, and deeper reform is needed.
“I think it takes some reform, and I think it takes hard questions about ‘Are we using the dollars we have to ultimately prioritize back towards the students?'” Jodice said.
Jodice also addressed criticism about the income thresholds being removed from the Opportunity Scholarship program and families with children already attending private schools being able to apply.
“We’ve heard the argument, you know, ‘You’re subsidizing private education for people who have already paid for it,'” Jodice said. “I could make the point that those families have been subsidizing public education, which they’re not using anymore. These are tax-paying families who are paying into a system they are no longer using.”
Emmendorfer said public school is not always the right fit for a child, especially children with disabilities like autism and dyslexia.
“I wanted both of them to go to schools that were very experienced in working with children that have learning differences, and there’s not a whole lot of school like that,” Emmendorfer said of her children.
Emmendorfer added that public schools do their best to accommodate children with learning disabilities but often doesn’t have the manpower or resources to do so.
“For some kids that have learning differences, it’s really important to get them into schools like The Piedmont School or Noble Academy where the classes are a lot smaller, the teachers have specialized training and can devote the time to the kids that they need to succeed and to learn,” Emmendorfer said.
Emmendorfer’s family is a Tier 3 family under the program, but since her daughter is switching schools mid-year from The Piedmont School to the Noble Academy, she will only be awarded half of the total money she’s eligible for receiving a $2,240 scholarship for the next semester.
Despite not receiving the full award this year, Emmendorfer said it would be difficult to send both of her children to the Noble academy without the aid.
“It would be pretty challenging,” Emmendorfer said. “I mean, could we do it? Yes, but it certainly makes the brunt of that financial burden a lot less.”
camdyn.bruce@greensboro.com
336-373-7094
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Casey Emmendorfer at Noble Academy in Greensboro on Thursday.
Casey Emmendorfer at Noble Academy in Greensboro on Thursday.
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