When she learned that Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek was coming to Greensboro to speak at a local rotary club in March, Democratic state Rep. Tracy Clark seized the opportunity to catch up with him.
“It was important to build rapport and show up for him when he came to my community and hear him out,” Clark said.
Clark hoped to gauge Boliek’s receptiveness to auditing the Opportunity Scholarship program, which GOP lawmakers expanded through their 2023 budget. The scholarships provide an at least partially subsidized private school option to all families, regardless of income. The program now serves nearly 107,000 students, costing about $587 million a year.
Public school advocates say the program’s expansion is coming at the expense of already under-resourced schools. A recent report found that only about 1 in 9 Opportunity Scholarship recipients previously attended public schools.
GOP leaders and school choice advocates say parents deserve a meaningful choice in how their children are educated. But there has been some disagreement among their ranks about whether to reinstitute a family income cap on scholarship eligibility.
Boliek encouraged Clark after the March event to follow up with him to set up a meeting. The two met up again in Raleigh last week, along with a pair of public school advocates.
Clark said Boliek informed them that his office was pursuing an audit of the Opportunity Scholarship program and hoping to complete its review by the end of October.
Boliek confirmed that to The Assembly, saying the goal is to release a report to the public sometime in the fall.
“One of the things that we want to look at are new tranches of money from a risk analysis, and the Opportunity Scholarship does fit within that,” Boliek said in an interview. “We certainly would like to be able to have an audit completed of the Opportunity Scholarship [program] in due course. When that is actually going to happen will depend on the amount of work that is required and the schedule of the professional team.”