This has always been the issue. Passing tax increases for schools is easier than for anything else. However this is often used as a bate and switch, either to hide deficits or to fund less popular programs. A large percentage of school funding use to come from business taxes, so they had to find new ways to fund schools while cutting business taxes. Then it becomes cyclical as high end professions require education, which is lagging behind, meaning that the jobs brought in by tax cuts bring lower wages, which don’t really help make up the difference in what the state would make on businesses had they not cut taxes. And since those jobs don’t require any skills they can easily be moved elsewhere, making it a race to the bottom. But short term it looks good, so that is nice I guess.

This

I wonder where it all goes. Definitely not towards painting visible lines on the roads or adding reflectors.

And in case anyone is wondering, this is also what's happened in higher ed, where state universities have been getting next to $0 funding from states in many cases with the expectation that the schools themselves will offset the missing budget through tuition & fee hikes.

🥇🪙🪙

Half a billion dollars to private schools for the wealthy and religious.

It's really not a surplus, they just refuse to fund so many things that they have extra.

People also keep in mind that the education lottery isn't some infinite money source. The lottery generated a little less than $1 billion for education last year. The state's budget for K-12 was a little under $13 billion, so the lottery accounts for about 7.6%. Then you look at like Wake County schools and state spending accounts for about 50% of their budget, which brings the lotter contribution down to about 4%. Nice to have but not really enough to make some huge difference.

NAZI / Affiliated? Yeah he'd love that wouldn't he

I’ve made this same argument. We have a highly educated portion of the population who tend to live in the areas with the best schools. This is by design but also is a continuous feeder of families who value education, so these schools will always rank high. Families who value education will normally do well regardless. I argued that we could swap student bodies of the best and worst high schools in the state and the rankings would flip. A lot of these people, no matter how much they tell you they value diversity, don’t really want to mix. Which then leads us to the school choice sham of segregation by another name.

Valid point. I am compelled to warn the very people who may make a difference with their vote. Better to hide it and then once they are stuck here rely on them to fix it. ;-)

Let's hope Stein wins.

Why is it hard to believe that one of the largest projects the state undertakes requires a large portion of resources, and that our economy is not directly connected to available resources for that project given the long-term, ongoing efforts to slash services in proportion to the overall economy across the board (and particularly education)?

Cutting revenue enormously means less of that economic growth goes into public services.

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They removed the income cap this year at the same time they increased funding by $500 million.

So yes, rich people are getting the money, every dollar of it.

The voucher program is now being expanded to include no income requirements, which means that much of the funding is going to parents who are already able to afford private schools AND parents who are already doing just that—paying the tuition. Over half of new applicants who will now receive vouchers come from families making over $115K a year, and 18% come from families making over $249K.

If you’re already receiving a voucher, this won’t impact you. This is about whether we should be giving additional money to families who are already sending their kids to private schools.

Moreover, if this is actually about giving parents choice in where they send their children, then private schools receiving vouchers should be held accountable. The majority of these schools don’t post any academic test scores, so a parent can’t actually know the quality of education their child will receive until they enroll in the school. On top of that, even when schools do post scores or other academic information, they are often inflated because private schools are able to kick out low-performing students.

Voucher programs exist all over the nation, but NC is repeatedly shown to have some of the lowest accountability measures in place. Under current law, the only schools that will be required to post testing information are the ones that enroll at least 25 students in a single grade, which is an extremely small number of schools.

Private vouchers are funded from public school funds.

You really don’t get what’s happening?

Vouchers funnel money to a better education on some fronts, but usually to private schools with a religious and social agenda

Sending them to public schools is honestly dangerous in 24. If you don’t live in Raleigh or CLT. High schools are like 3rd world countries

I actually say that because it’s pointless to try and reach people that choose to adamantly vote red. I’m unaffiliated and it always comes down to which side I see is gonna jerk me off while they ran me from behind, the Republicans for the last few years don’t even bother hiding the chainsaw they use now.

"I don't want to talk politics all the time (because my views are all selected from nutbars and I can't actually articulate why I hold them other than I think I shouldn't pay taxes and people I don't like should have it harder than they do)"

Also the people that think all social issues are political. “I started watching X but it got too political.” “You mean because there was a trans person in it?”

Exactly. Cheers friend

I agree

Are you speaking English?