Appeals court releases voucher money for hundreds of NC Students

by Matthew Burns, WRAL, September 19, 2014.

The state Court of Appeals on Friday released taxpayer money to hundreds of North Carolina families who had been awarded vouchers to send their children to private or religious schools.

Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood last month declared the Opportunity Scholarship program unconstitutional and ordered a halt to any disbursement of state funds under the program.

The appellate court left that order in place for anybody who was to receive money after Hobgood's Aug. 21 ruling, but the court said the 1,878 students who had already accepted vouchers they had won in an earlier lottery should receive the money, pending the outcome of an appeal in the case.

"Today’s historic decision allows nearly 2,000 students already enrolled in the Opportunity Scholarship program to continue to attend their new schools with confidence and security for this school year," Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, which backs vouchers, said in a statement. "We will continue to push for an expedited answer on the merits of the case, which we believe will ultimately be upheld as constitutional."

About 5,500 students applied for the annual grants of up to $4,200 per child, and the first $730,000 in tuition money for more than 360 students was about to be distributed to schools when Hobgood halted the transactions.

Hobgood ruled that the private schools can discriminate in their admissions and don't have the same curriculum and teacher certification standards as North Carolina's public schools. He also accused state lawmakers of trying to get around the constitutional guarantee of providing a sound education to low-income students by shifting them to private schools that aren't bound by that requirement.

http://www.wral.com/appeals-court-releases-school-voucher-money-for-hundreds-of-nc-students/13997846/