Carolina Journal’s Barry Smith reports on the status of the Opportunity Scholarship program, where Big Education supporters in North Carolina are using the legal system to obstruct low-income parents from having the educational choice that wealthier parents already enjoy.
Parents of nearly 1,900 students who had been awarded Opportunity Scholarships that were ruled unconstitutional last month by Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood are sending their children to private schools anyway.
They’re hoping that an appeals court will put Hobgood’s order on ice while the legal wrangling over North Carolina’s fledgling private school voucher program goes through the appeals process.
“There have been many private schools saying we’re going to keep them regardless,” said Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, which supports educational choice, who also said he believes that opponents of the voucher program strategically calculated the timing of their legal efforts to try to disrupt the program. “We’ll just try to make it work.”
Hobgood’s ruling came just days before most traditional public schools in the state opened up for the 2014-15 school year. Some private schools had already started.
Weep for the children not being served by a traditional public school classroom, and who could be trapped with nowhere to turn, thanks to progressives’ view that the system trumps all.
