By Laura Aka for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration
When Michael Matsuda, superintendent of the Anaheim Union High School District (AUHSD), was first approached about making Google Career Certificates training for in-demand tech jobs available to the students in his California school district, he immediately saw the potential value.
But, he says, to fully realize that value, the learning opportunities needed to be embedded into the schools' daily curricula.
"We made it clear that if we're going to embrace the Google certificates, we needed to integrate them into the classroom. This cannot be an afterschool program, or a Saturday school, because then it doesn't really affect the institution long-term."
Now three years into becoming the first high schools in the country to embed the certificate training into its curricula, AUHSD offers project management, data analytics, IT support, and IT automation in academic classes, reaching about one-thousand students at 10 district schools.
Not only are students getting valuable tech training, they are taking what they learn in the classroom and applying that to solving problems in their community. More on that part of the success story a little later in this story.
'You have to begin with the teachers'
"The Google Career Certificates provide training for folks to get the skills they need to move into high-growth, in-demand fields," explains Rob Magliaro, education lead with Grow with Google. "There are 2.4 million-plus open, entry-level jobs in these areas with a median starting salary at $76,000 per year."
"The certificates are focused on high school. That is where students really start to think about what fields they're going to move into and start to acquire the skills and early foundational knowledge they need to move into those fields. The certificates allow people to have multiple pathways into these jobs, and that is a huge focus right now."
The training for the students is a collaboration between the teachers and subject matter experts at Google, who deliver the content to the classrooms via video.
"[The students] really get an insight into what it's like both to work in a role, but then they have a number of exercises and projects throughout the program that actually gives them real hands-on experience in what it would be like to work in those types of jobs," explains Magliaro.
There is no requirement of prerequisite to take the training. "For K-12, it's really helpful because they don't need that prior experience, that prior knowledge. They can start from zero and over the course of the certificate [classes], gain the necessary toolbox that they need to apply for an entry-level job," he adds.
Matsuda explains about two dozen teachers are including the certificate curricula in their classrooms. "The teachers are owning it. You have to begin with the teachers and if they see the utility of it, then they're going to ensure that it's framed in the right way."
He says, "We are one of the designated community school districts in California. That means that schools become the hub of their communities in terms of providing traditional wraparound services like health, dental, and food, but also integrated projects."
Matsuda says the learning that results from the certificates program gives students the opportunity to spearhead projects to help the community. "The teachers are learning about problems in the community like food insecurity or mental health or access to housing. That's a perfect match to giving students skills in how to solve these problems."
Problem-Solving Community Issues
Matsuda offers an example of how the skills learning in the program are being applied to real-world problem-solving. "One of the big projects was the creation of an urban farm."
Matsuda says students used data analytics skills to study U.S. Census tracts. "Students are looking at Census data and defining food deserts. And they're realizing that many of them are [living] in food deserts."
The student-led Magnolia Agriscience Community Center (MACC) - located at Magnolia High School - is 2.5 acres and sells produce. MACC notes on its website, "We will strive to educate students, families, and the community about sustainable agricultural practices, nourishment, and community building."
Matsuda adds, "It's an actual working farm. But it's so much more because so many of our kids, in urban spaces, don't know where anything comes from. They don't know very much about nutrition and why that's important, especially for low-income kids. Low-income kids are very vulnerable to childhood diabetes and childhood obesity.
"Some of the kids are very advanced in terms of data analytics because then they start asking questions, 'Well, why is it in mostly low-income areas that you have dialysis clinics?' Through the Census tract data, they can see that. Then they start connecting dots. I think that's transformational for them."
Students earn community service hours by helping organize community dinners, harvesting, and promoting the MACC farm on social media.
"MACC is a beautiful space just to meditate and walk. That's the students, themselves, creating this project," says Matsuda.
'We've transformed traditional English classes'
Offered as part of various high school subjects, Matsuda points out the impact of the certificate program in senior English classes. "We're really, really excited and [students are] very excited about what they've learned through the project management class."
Robin Turner is an English teacher and "5 Cs" coach - collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, and compassion and kindness - at Magnolia High School.
"It's an area of focus that's embedded in every curriculum within the district," explains Turner. "My job is to help math teachers, science teachers, history teachers bring the 5 Cs into the classroom."
"There definitely is a connection between what we're doing with the project management [certificate] and with the 5 Cs. We try to get the kids employable at something beyond working in a backroom somewhere.
"It's important to note project management doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's connected to all of the infrastructure that has been built around our work - districtwide - with the 5 Cs and with creating opportunities for students to use their voice, exercise their agency, and try to create civic engagement throughout all curricula. All these things work together."
Turner says it's been easy to support the certificate programming since it was first introduced in the district. "I like the challenge of new things. We are in a time where education has to change. We have to evolve because it's a different society that we're dealing with."
"What's required of the workforce is so different. It used to be you go to college, get a degree - there's a job waiting for you. You're good to go. And that's just not the case anymore," adds Turner.
"We've totally transformed traditional English classes to think more outside-the-box," notes Matsuda. "Some of the English teachers are bringing in both fiction and nonfiction reading to learn about food deserts, food insecurity, the homelessness issue. Then the kids start really thinking, 'Well, what can I do about that?' And finding their own passion."
He continues, "When you hear about these kids wanting to problem-solve in the community, when they write about that, when they create these projects, and they have the skills through the certificates to actually implement something, you can imagine the teachers are so excited when they see that in the kids."
Inspiration for a New Teacher
Lesliy Franco is a newly-hired English teacher at Magnolia, after being a student teacher in Turner's classroom.
She's seen the students' enthusiasm first-hand. "I feel like that motivation to go forth with the project management certificate and their projects came from that idea of giving back to the community.
"When we were explaining to them, 'We want something lasting. We don't want you to just clean up a courtyard here at Magnolia. What can you do for your community that can last long - that practices those project management skills?' When they were really thinking about that, that's when they really started to get motivated."
Franco says although it wasn't that long ago that she completed high school, she didn't experience this type of learning opportunity.
"There wasn't collaboration in the classroom. Communication skills weren't necessarily emphasized. It was read a core novel, write a five-page essay, and that was it. [At Magnolia] it's still an English classroom. We're giving them English skills that they're going to need in life - reading and writing, speaking, listening skills - but also giving them lifelong soft skills.
"That light bulb lit up where I was like, 'I don't need to just teach a core novel and have them write paragraphs. How can we read a core novel and have some project that ties with the novel and the community? How can I bring parents into the classroom to see what their students are doing within the classroom and for the community?'"
"It's definitely expanded my viewpoint of what it could potentially be if we really try to go outside and be innovative and different," says Franco.
It's Not Just the Students who are Learning
AUHSD is not limiting the learning opportunities to its students. The project management certificate course has recently been offered to district parents. So far, about 120 parents are participating.
Matsuda explains, "A lot of these kids' parents are day laborers at Home Depot. They're cleaning the motels near the [Disney] resort. This is a game changer.
"We're offering Google certificates to a small cohort of parents. Some of the kids who have graduated from high school and have certificates have been brought back as paid interns. Most of [the parents] do not have a high school diploma, and so their children are coming back to help tutor them in these courses."
Matsuda says the parents are taking their classes on Coursera to allow them the ability to study on their own time. "I think it's pretty flexible. But it's not easy, right? I think it takes the average adult seven to nine months to finish the whole sequence of the certificate."
He acknowledges, "It's a scary thing to go back and reacquaint yourself with what school looks like. Even the technology of understanding how to navigate the course. But it's exciting."
'So much talent in front of us'
Regarding the impact of the Google Career Certificates on its students - beyond high school, Matsuda says, "We are in the position to track the kids, at least locally, when they go to the University of California, Irvine, Cal State Fullerton, and community colleges.
"Our students are better in terms of GPA and retention rates at the University of California than demography would predict. I'm talking about far better. We haven't quite connected it to the certificates, but I think we have enough now where we probably could do a study around that."
"What's in it for the teachers and for the community?" asks Matsuda. "It's the future. I think these students may not have seen themselves as leaders, or having a voice, or a stake in the system. Many of these kids, prior to this exposure, were not the kids that you would think of. They're not the kids scoring with high AP pass rates or high test scores. These are the kids that were marginal.
"That's where the teachers are truly amazed that there's so much talent in front of us that we have not tapped into."
Regarding that talent, Grow with Google's Magliaro says, "Employers are looking for students to be able to get their hands dirty and think about acquiring those types of skills. We partner with a consortium of over 150 employer partners who are thinking about these types of alternate experiences that could qualify someone or should indicate that someone is prepared for openings."
He adds, "One of the things that we've done with the certificates is we've worked with the American Council on Education to have them recommended for up to 15 college credits. It really is starting to tackle that multiple pathway opportunity for students."
Magliaro spotlights the AUHSD, "Anaheim [was]...our first really scaled K-12 partner. They've really gotten innovative on how they're equipping students. [AUHSD is] definitely a model that we point to when we're working with new school districts."
Turner says it's crucial that students leave high school with skills that make them employable. "Our superintendent will say that is the barometer of social justice - that if kids from communities like ours are able to exit high school and compete for good jobs, then we've achieved something. It's the whole game. It's why we're here."
He continues, "I became an English teacher 35 years ago to have an impact on students' lives similar to the one that my English teacher had on me. He opened the door possibility for me."
Turner shares, "I was not destined for college. I don't have anybody else in my family tree that's graduated from college. I was the first guy to do that, and I did that thanks to an English teacher I came across.
"That's been my motivation since day one as a teacher. And you can only stay true to that motivation if you're willing to take a look at the landscape into which these kids are emerging and adjust your teaching practices so that you're preparing them for that very landscape."
Laura Aka wrote this article for WorkingNation.
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Hoosiers are launching their boats to enjoy another season on the water. However, before jumping aboard, now is an ideal time to review safety plans and brush up on boating laws.
John Gano, master conservation officer for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, has spent summers patrolling popular recreational boating spots in Indiana for nearly 30 years. He spends most summer weekends on Geist and Morse Reservoirs and said it is imperative boaters know what is expected of them while out on their voyage.
"Certainly, the basic safety regulations, equipment for the boat, how to properly number your boat, moving violations that we look for that are unsafe," Gano outlined. "People that might be riding on the gunwale or the bow of the board in an unsafe position where they could come overboard and be run over."
Gano recommended before your first boat ride this season, run through a checklist to make certain your vessel is ready. He noted it is not necessary to memorize the boating manual and regulations but boat operators should be familiar with the rules.
For some Hoosiers, spending the day on the boat includes drinking alcohol. Gano pointed out it is important for boat drivers to remain sober for everyone's safety. Indiana law is the same whether you're behind the wheel of a car or boat: If your blood alcohol level is .08 or higher, you will be arrested. However, impaired driving is not the only reason for which boaters may be stopped.
"On those stops, we're going to obviously do inspections for safety gear like life jackets and things like that," Gano emphasized. "Sometimes, we determine other things about the boat itself that could be unsafe."
Indiana law requires a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket be available for everyone aboard. Boaters planning to tow passengers for tubing, water skiing or wakeboarding should put on their life jacket before jumping into the water. Failing to do so could easily mean the difference between a fun day or a tragic day on the lake.
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By Lane Wendell Fischer for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for The Daily Yonder-Public News Service Collaboration
State Republican leaders are cracking down on rural members of their own party who oppose universal school vouchers, which allow families to take a portion of their state’s education funding away from public schools to pay for their child’s private education.
Rural state legislators have been more likely to oppose school voucher laws because they worry the programs will weaken local public schools without ensuring educational investments for rural students.
Opposition to vouchers has been a rare point of agreement between rural Republicans and urban Democrats, who also tend to oppose vouchers.
But recently, the state leaders in the Republican Party have resorted to more aggressive tactics to force voucher legislation through to the governor’s desk, said Jennifer Berkshire, author of the forthcoming book called The Education Wars: The Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
“The biggest change that has happened over the last few years is a fairly successful effort to define school choice as a kind of litmus test for Republicans, the way that something like abortion has been historically,” Berkshire said.
Public schools provide more than just a high school diploma in rural areas, which frequently lack private alternatives. They are a large employer, serve as public gathering spaces for community events, and they inform the community’s next generation of workers, voters, and leaders.
Berkshire, who’s reported extensively on the politics of public schools, said that the voucher debate isn’t new, but it’s been heating up in the past few years. She said the Republican Party has been ramping up this fight for years now by degrading perceptions of public education, framing it as a welfare program and the source of radical indoctrination.
While rural voters and legislators haven’t been swayed by the quasi-populist rhetoric and continue to oppose private school vouchers, Republican Party leaders are spending millions of dollars to challenge rural Republican defectors.
Just last month in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott targeted Republican members of the state house who opposed his school choice initiative using out-of-state cash from billionaire donors and super PACs. Six members were defeated in the March 5 primary and four more were forced into runoffs.
In response, grassroots campaigns against aggressive pro-voucher efforts are popping up, like Reclaim Idaho. The organization, co-founded by Idaho resident Luke Mayville, mobilized a group of teachers, administrators, families, students, and others to oppose vouchers.
“A critical factor has been the outpouring of phone calls, emails, and public testimony from Idahoans across the state,” Mayville said. “Public comment and testimony has made it very clear that the school-voucher agenda is not the will of the people.”
What’s a School Voucher?
School voucher programs have taken different forms in different states, to maneuver around restrictive state constitutions and resistant citizens.
In traditional school voucher programs, when a family chooses to send their child to a private school, the state government directly awards the private schools with taxpayers funds to cover at least part of the cost of the student’s education.
This practice was found unconstitutional in states like Colorado, where the state’s Supreme Court ruled that one district’s voucher program violated separation of church and state because it funneled public funds to religious schools.
A new voucher program, commonly called an Educational Savings Account (ESA), has become a popular and successful route that Republicans have taken to advance their school choice agenda.
Unlike traditional vouchers that directly award public funds to private schools, ESAs deposit taxpayer funds into savings accounts that families can use to pay for various educational purposes including tuition at private and religious schools.
In states where resistance to voucher programs has been more robust, Republicans are also experimenting with tax credit programs that provide tax relief to businesses or individuals who donate to organizations that give educational scholarships to students attending private schools.
Another important term in the school-voucher debate is “universal.”
Historically, school vouchers were limited to students in need — like students who are disabled or come from low-income homes — so they could gain access to particular services that their local public school may not provide.
That changed in 2021 and 2022, when West Virginia and Arizona became the first two states to enact universal school choice, allowing any family, regardless of their socioeconomic status, to gain access to taxpayer dollars to cover private school tuition.
Since then, nine other states have joined in adopting universal voucher programs, and more are considering similar programs.
Welfare for the Wealthy?
Proponents of school choice say that voucher programs will help resolve educational inequities across the country for students, especially for students in need.
“In any area, some number of families may decide that the assigned neighborhood school is not working for their students,” said Andy Smarick, who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank committed to policy research in areas like school choice. “School choice enables those families to access other options.”
Smarick acknowledged that there are specific challenges that make school voucher programs less popular in rural areas, like lack of access to private schools and higher risks of public school consolidation or closure.
“To date at least, more densely populated areas have benefited more from school choice programs,” he said.
Jonathan E. Collins, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University, says that school voucher programs may only deepen the social and economic inequalities they claim to fix, and could ultimately harm the country’s public education system.
If state education budgets begin to move toward supporting private schools through vouchers, public schools could see a decrease in state funding. This is exacerbated when universal voucher programs are passed that would provide state funds to students from wealthy families who were already paying for private school tuition.
Rural communities may face a disproportionate amount of economic stress, as voucher money is even less likely to trickle down to rural families who lack access to private schools, Collins said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
Another of the key demographic that school choice advocates claim vouchers will help are low-income families in the southern Black Belt region.
“Policy makers have been trying to build a multi-racial coalition around school voucher programs,” Collins said. “They are championing the idea that Black families should support vouchers as a way to create educational equality for Black youth.”
The messaging that voucher programs create a more equal, integrated education system contradicts another front of the voucher campaign: the public school culture wars.
If you want to get families to turn their backs on public schools in support of school vouchers, you’ve got to convince them that the schools have taken a turn for the worse, said Jack Schneider, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
“You have to convince them that something is fundamentally rotten at their core and that it has happened quickly and covertly,” he said. “Otherwise you’re telling people that they’re stupid and they haven’t seen what’s happening right under their noses.”
This political technique tries to suggest that public schools prevent parents from getting involved in their child’s education. This provides rhetoric for the parents’ rights movement, who say “they want to be able to control what their children are exposed to in schools,” Collins said. “To have the right to keep their kids from being indoctrinated into critical race theory and the politics of gender.”
In reality, public schools best help prepare the next generation of political participants in American democracy by teaching students how to interact with people from different homes, with different cultural values and experiences, Collins said.
“If there’s a continued siphon of kids away from our public schools systems, which has been our best way of getting people to interact across backgrounds,” Collins said. “Then what do we have left?”
The folks who are pushing hardest for school vouchers, conservative elites, are also the ones who have the most to gain, said Schneider, who also pointed out that the top users of vouchers are families whose children were not in the public education system, and who are using these vouchers to reimburse themselves for private school tuition that they were already paying.
“The irony here is a bitter one,” he said. “So much of the rhetoric in the Republican Party of the past five to 10 years has been about anti-elitism and the ordinary, forgotten Americans … But the push against public education is chiefly rooted in market thinking and is very much about the best interests of elites who don’t understand why they have to be financially on the hook for paying for the education of other people’s children.”
The Cash Register for Politics
Advocates of school vouchers say that voucher programs provide families with more control over their child’s educational experience, that families should be afforded transparency in knowing what their child is taught and the power to choose.
In 2019, Robert Asen, a professor in the communication arts department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, interviewed rural public school advocates in Wisconsin about the concerns they had with school voucher programs that had recently been enacted in the state.
He found that many rural advocates felt their state government wasn’t being transparent with how school voucher programs were being funded and how the programs would impact the funding their local public schools would receive.
“People in rural communities tend to like their public schools,” Collins said. “Drumming up political support for this type of program is not a selling point if you’re a rural Republican legislator.”
That was until leaders in the Republican Party and billionaire donors started to challenge rural Republicans who defected from the party’s all-or-nothing stance on universal school vouchers.
Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall, a popular rural legislator, faced big money blowback for halting a school voucher bill in 2022.
Residents of Sulphur, which, with a population of 5,000, is the largest town in McCall’s district, received a wave of political mailers and TV ads attacking the representative. The money for this political blitz came from Club for Growth, a conservative PAC located in Washington, D.C..
Unlike the representatives from Iowa and Texas, McCall’s constituents continued to support their representative.
“We felt like we had school choice in rural Oklahoma already,” said Matt Holder, superintendent of Sulphur Public Schools, in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
The Sulphur school district already operated on a system of open enrollment that didn’t pose any financial concerns, Holder explained. That system allows students who live outside of district to transfer in. Many other districts and states across the country also offer some form of open public enrollment.
Last year, the Oklahoma legislature enacted a universal school choice program that will award tax credits to families who pay for private school tuition.
Unlike traditional school vouchers that take money out of the pot for education in Oklahoma, this program seemed to be more palatable because the money is coming from elsewhere, Holder said.
As an additional compromise, the state increased the education budget by more than $500 million.
“They put more money into public education funding than they have ever before,” Holder said.
But while the school tax credit program, which reduces the state’s revenue, will persist for the foreseeable future, there’s no guarantee that the state will continue to allocate unprecedented amounts of money for public education.
“It’s too soon to tell what, if any, ramifications there might be from that,” Holder said.
Republicans in other states have been less compromising. Pro-voucher hardliners, backed by big money, have successfully replaced rural Republicans in primary races in states like Iowa and Texas.
“School privatization is really a top-down model of policy change,” said Asen, the Wisconsin professor who studied rural attitudes toward school vouchers. “These changes are driven by a small group of lobbyists and financial backers against large-scale public opinion.”
“It’s like a cash register for politics,” Collins said. “There’s big money in it. There’s big money in terms of the donors who are getting behind candidates who support it, especially in the Republican Party.”
The Persistence of Rural Resistance
While some school choice advocates say that rural residents are becoming more supportive of voucher programs, numerous rural grassroots organizations have begun advocating against such policies in light of the aggressive voucher movement in the Republican Party.
In Wisconsin, rural advocates told Asen that they rejected the idea that education is a commodity.
“They wanted to emphasize the important roles that public schools played in these rural towns,” Asen. “Public schools weren’t just a place where kids go to learn, they were a place where the community came together to establish a common identity and civic sensibility.”
To many rural families, education isn’t a consumer good. It’s a public good. Students aren’t just consumers. They are community members. They are citizens. They are community members.
Jess Piper is a retired rural public school teacher from Missouri who made a run for state office in 2022 as a Democrat.
After losing the general election, she decided to found Blue Missouri, an organization that seeks to increase political competition by raising money for down ballot Democrats who don’t receive party funding.
Education funding remains a top priority of Piper’s work. Missouri ranks 50th nationally in teacher pay and 49th in educational funding.
“The state only covers 32% of any school’s budget and the rest comes from local taxes,” she said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “If you live in a rural community, that’s going to be tough.”
Part of Piper’s work involves going door to door in her community to speak with her neighbors about policy issues like school funding.
She says that supporting public schools is a bipartisan issue in rural communities, that rural Democrats and Republicans don’t always think in line with the larger party.
“I’ve never knocked on a door where someone said, ‘Gee, I wish there was a private school I could send my kid to,’” Piper said.
Piper says she’s up against a big pile of money from folks like Rex Sinquefield, Betsy DeVos, Leonard Leo, and the Herzog Foundation.
“They have no reason. They have no data. They have nothing to prove that vouchers are better,” she said. “They only have lies, rhetoric, and a s***-ton of money.”
In March, after agreeing to increasing public education funding and teacher salaries, Missouri lawmakers passed a sprawling education bill that expands the tax-credit scholarship program to all counties in the state and increases the income cap used to determine eligibility for the program.
In rural Idaho, similar efforts have been led by Reclaim Idaho. The organization originated as a small-scale, short-term campaign to keep funding intact for a local school district in North Idaho.
But after seeing local success, the organization launched statewide, focusing on protecting public schools, public lands, and healthcare for working families. An initial success of the organization was securing a $410 million increase in state education funding.
When it comes to school vouchers, there is very little bottom-up interest for school choice in Idaho, organization co-founder Luke Mayville wrote in an email to the Daily Yonder.
“Idahoans generally believe in public education and value their local public schools, especially tiny towns and rural communities,” Mayville said. “The problem is that national special-interest groups have decided Idaho is an easy target for their agenda.”
Mayville says that vouchers would transfer wealth out of rural Idaho communities to provide “new entitlements” for affluent suburban families.
Mayville credits the success of the organizations anti-voucher efforts to a coalition of teachers, administrators, families, students, and citizens who contributed to an outpouring of phone calls, emails, and public testimony.
“Public comment and testimony has made it very clear that the school-voucher agenda is not the will of the people,” he said.
Lane Wendell Fischer wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.
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Legislation to boost private school voucher funding in North Carolina is raising concerns among educators, particularly in rural areas. Educators say when private schools get vouchers, that's money public schools won't receive.
House Bill 823 aims to allocate about $500 million of additional taxpayer money over the next two years for the state's Opportunity Scholarships.
Deanne Meadows, Columbus County School District superintendent, has personally witnessed the consequences of underfunded public schools.
"We have closed or consolidated from 18 school facilities down to 12. And we did that because we had a lot of schools that were very small, and we could not accommodate the cost of those smaller schools," she explained.
She said parents should have the freedom to decide which school their child attends, but emphasized that it is crucial to ensure public schools receive full funding before allocating funds for vouchers. According to Meadows, when a student transfers to a private school with a voucher, the funds allocated to that student go with them, which might impact the number of teachers, nurses and essential services available in public schools.
She added if a student decides to transfer back to a public school midyear, the previously allotted funds do not return. Supporters of the private-school voucher expansion argue that the additional funds would help clear a waiting list of about 55,000 students.
Another major concern highlighted by Meadows is the lack of accountability faced by private schools when compared with public schools. Public schools have to meet specific requirements for their teachers and testing, among other things. She also pointed out that public schools have to meet the needs of all students, which isn't a requirement at private schools.
"Charter schools, private schools, home schools, they don't have to serve anybody," she said. "They can serve whoever they choose to serve, but we serve every kid that comes through our door."
Research from Public Schools First NC has raised additional concerns about discriminatory policies in private schools. These policies allow private schools to turn away students based on such factors as religion, LGBTQ+ status, and disabilities.
Meadows also worries about the long-term economic impact on the district, particularly for vulnerable students.
"They've got to have an education in order to be able to be successful in their future. And when we start taking away from public education, we are taking away the chance for those kids to be able to be successful and productive and be able to come out of a poverty situation, " she explained.
In light of these concerns, Democratic legislators have introduced H.B. 993 to restrict future expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship program. The proposed legislation, and a companion bill the Senate, aim to limit the program to current voucher recipients starting from the 2024-2025 school year. The bill also seeks to phase out funding for the scholarship after the 2035-2036 school year.
If passed, the legislation would also require private schools benefiting from the Opportunity Scholarship to adhere to state testing requirements for students from the third grade through high school.
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