NC GOP lawmakers let down disabled students by funding private school vouchers | Opinion

When the North Carolina legislature, led by a Republican super majority, overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto and gave nearly half-a-billion dollars for private school tuition in the form of vouchers, GOP lawmakers let down more than just our state’s public schools that could better use those funds to serve more children. The law significantly fails disabled students across the state.

I am a pediatrician in North Carolina caring for many children with disabilities who require school accommodations. More than 200,000 children in our state are disabled, and many require additional support in school.

I work closely with families trying to access the services that their children are entitled to through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The act requires public schools to create individualized education plans to meet the needs of students with disabilities, whether physical disabilities like cerebral palsy or intellectual disabilities including dyslexia or other learning differences.

Due to a lack of state funding for public schools and a major shortage of special education teachers as well as support staff, including one-on-one aides or nurses, reading specialists and others, many of these individualized plans cannot be implemented fully.

I have seen everything from children with complex medical needs being sent home from school because their individualized plans require nursing support that isn’t available that day, to children with dyslexia not having access to a reading specialist because of an unfilled position.

The money allocated to private-school vouchers should have gone to filling positions needed to take care of disabled students where the vast majority get their education — North Carolina public schools.

North Carolina is in the bottom 10 states in the nation for starting teacher pay, according to the National Education Association, which negatively affects the hiring of special education teachers.

Republican legislators should have been wise enough to put the roughly $463 million they gave to private-schools vouchers toward funding public education, training for special education as well as raising teacher salaries, which would reduce turnover and fill vacancies.

Instead, GOP lawmakers, with the support of only three Democrats, handed taxpayer dollars to private schools, which aren’t held to the same federal standards of providing accommodations to students with disabilities as public schools.

While private schools are prohibited by federal law from discriminating against children with disabilities, those same schools are not required to pay for disability accommodations. Payment for those accommodations can already come from taxpayer funds through a provision in IDEA that requires public school systems to seek out children with disabilities, even those enrolled in private schools, to ensure they get needed services for their education.

In addition, IDEA says that students enrolled in private institutions by their parents do not have the same legal rights to special education services as students enrolled in public schools. Private religious schools, which vouchers cover, are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, including wheelchair accessibility.

All this means, one thing — the vast majority of children with disabilities are best served by well-funded public schools that have the money to fulfill federal requirements.

By taking money away from public schools and giving it to private schools, North Carolina Republicans are creating a system in which more children with disabilities won’t have access to the accommodations that they are legally entitled to.

The lawmakers who voted for vouchers should know private-school funding with public money is not popular with voters. Across the country, ballot measures to publicly pay for private schools failed in 2024.

That’s why all our Republican legislators and Democratic Reps. Carla Cunningham, Michael Wray and Shelly Willingham waited until after the election to overturn Gov. Cooper’s veto. They knew it would be unpopular with voters and may cost them.

As a pediatrician, I know what children need to thrive. We need elected leaders at all levels of government to prioritize children with disabilities. They can do that by funding public education, not private schools.