NC religious schools with anti-LGBTQ policies receive top opportunity scholarship dollars

In 2017, Elizabeth Meininger, a police officer in Fayetteville, went to enroll her two young children at Berean Baptist Academy, a local private school.

Elizabeth and her wife, Kate, liked Berean’s curriculum and felt its small class sizes could challenge their daughter and son, who seemed to be overlooked in their large county school system.

The Meiningers’ combined income qualified them for North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarships, a $4,200 public voucher they could put toward covering private school tuition. With the voucher, Berean was affordable -- less than half the price of a non-religious private option like Fayetteville Academy.

Yet soon after Elizabeth and Kate started Berean’s application process, the school informed them it wouldn’t accept their children. According to Elizabeth, school officials said Berean only accepted Christian families and the Meiningers couldn’t be Christian if they were gay.

This denial didn’t shock Elizabeth. She’d graduated from Northwood Temple Academy, another Fayetteville-area religious school with similar policies, and understood private schools possessed more autonomy to teach who they wished. Unlike public schools, they can deny admissions or expel students based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Elizabeth, however, was surprised to discover that every year Berean took in hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars through the voucher program.

“If you’re running a private school, you have the right to choose who you want in your school,” she said. “But some of these schools are getting money from the state and still able to discriminate, and it's kind of wonky. You don't get to get the benefits and then get to make the rules about the benefits.”

Among the eight schools that received the most Opportunity Scholarship money last year, at least six have explicit policies against students or parents who are homosexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming.

North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program has grown in popularity every year since its inception, fueled by parents’ desires for educational alternatives and, this summer, the pandemic. Supporters of the program trumpet the agency it gives low-income families to find schools that best fit their children’s interests and needs.

As the program grows, debates around its existence persist, down to terminology: Supports tend to refer to opportunity scholarships while opponents often call the public assistance vouchers. Central to many criticisms of the program are the anti-LGBTQ policies at some of the top participating schools.

In July, Elizabeth, Kate and a group of fellow parents joined the North Carolina Association of Educators in a lawsuit against the state voucher program for, among other reasons, funding “schools that discriminate against students and parents based on who they love of the gender they know themselves to be.” They filed the lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court and await the state to respond. 

While a legal challenge to the program failed five years ago, the plaintiffs hope this lawsuit can be different.

Voucher expansion

In 2013, North Carolina enacted its Opportunity Scholarship Program, eligible to parents whose incomes were below 133% of the free or reduced-lunch threshold. Opponents soon challenged the program in the case Hart v. State, arguing public funds entering private schools defied the state constitution.

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of the program, stating in 2015 that parents could use taxpayer assistance to send their children to private schools. In his majority opinion, then-Chief Justice Mark Martin found no part of the voucher program was “plainly and clearly prohibited by the constitution.”

There are around 750 private schools in North Carolina, about 66% of which are religiously affiliated. These schools teach a range of beliefs on religion, sexuality and gender and have disparate admissions policies based on identity and faith. A few of the schools are Jewish or Islamic, while the vast majority are Christian.

Many schools support evolution and teach that the earth is billions of years old. Others, including some top opportunity scholarship recipients, use a curriculum that teaches the earth was created in six days, much more recently, by God. 

A little more than 60% of private schools enrolled at least one student through the Opportunity Scholarship Program last year. For the 2020-21 school year, applications have come from every county in the state.

Most years, the county with the most voucher recipients is Cumberland. Due to Fort Bragg, the large county has a sizable military population and the state allows children whose parents are on full-time duty to join the program at later ages. Typically, new students must enter the scholarship program in kindergarten or first grade.

Since 2014, the scholarship program has expanded ten-fold, from 1,216 recipients its first year to 12,284 last year. For the 2019-2020 school year, the program doled out $48 million in scholarships. 

This summer, as parents searched for in-person schooling amid COVID-19, the number of new applications spiked.  

“It appears that the pandemic has significantly impacted the number of applications,” said Kathryn Marker, director of grants, training, and outreach at the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, which oversees the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

As of August 10, Marker said approximately 900 more students had applied for scholarships this year than last, and the application window remains open through the end of August.

On Wednesday, Gov. Roy Cooper proposed a budget that would reduce funding for future opportunity scholarships. The Governor has sought in defund the voucher program in previous budgets and has raised questions about the program's accountability in the past. 

More:Pandemic pods and private schools: NC parents scramble for solutions as school year nears

Biblical Morality Policies

Most of the schools topping last year’s list of Opportunity Scholarship recipients post explicit anti-LGBTQ admissions policies on their websites.

Berean took in $855,877 in vouchers last year, the second highest amount in the state. According to its school policy, students and families' sexual orientation and gender identity “can factor in admission decisions and continued enrollment in the academy.”

Liberty Christian Academy in Onslow County received $651,641 in Opportunity Scholarships in 2019-20, the third-most in the state. The school lists “participating in, supporting, or condoning sexual immorality, homosexual activist, bisexual activity” as qualifications for denying or removing students.

Elizabeth Meininger’s high school, Northwood Temple Academy, took in the state's seventh-largest amount of Opportunity Scholarship money in 2019-20, at close to $500,000. On its website, the school cites biblical passages to support its policies allowing the rejection of families based on sexuality and gender.

All three schools either declined or did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story, as did Trinity Christian School of Fayetteville and Fayetteville Christian School, which were respectively the first and fourth largest recipients of vouchers money in North Carolina last year.

Several smaller schools across the state also express policies and beliefs against LGBTQ individuals. 

Proponents of the Opportunity Scholarship Program often defend the program on the principle of parental choice. They contend low-income parents, like their wealthier counterparts, should be able to choose beyond limited public options when selecting schools that offer children more academic rigor and an overall better fit.

“This is the reason families and students are flocking to the program - because it supports people and children, not buildings,” said Mike Long, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina.  

Janet Nunn, a Charlotte resident who lost her valet job during the pandemic, said opportunity scholarships afford her granddaughter, Nariah, a stronger education at a local private school. Nunn said she’d never send Nariah to a school that denied admissions to LGBTQ families.

“I don't discriminate against that community,” she said. “So why should I put her in a school that discriminates against that community?”

Still, Nunn seeks to intervene in the opportunity scholarship lawsuit on behalf of the voucher program. For while she sees anti-LGBTQ admissions policies as discriminatory, she believes parents should ultimately decide where their children attend, regardless of such policies.  

Critics of the current voucher program say the policies of participating private schools need to be considered.

“I should have the right to see my tax dollars not go to an institution that labels me as an abomination,” said Craig White, who is bisexual and works as the supportive schools coordinator at the Asheville-based Campaign for Southern Equality.

White argued these teachings can be psychologically damaging to both students who are out and those still harboring their true selves from the public. He added that it’s his belief that practices hurt non-LGBTQ students, too.  

“It’s indoctrinating these young people into this discriminatory mindset that really does not prepare them to be productive members of the diverse society of 21st century North Carolina,” White said.

More:Some NC teachers concerned about returning to classrooms

W. Asheville conservative religious school gets third of Buncombe's opportunity scholarships

Legal foundation and future

The lawyers who challenged the Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2015 and lost have tried again this summer with a different legal argument.

Instead of making the broader claim that public funding of private schools violates the state constitution, the new lawsuit takes specific aim at the religious requirements of certain private schools enrolling students through vouchers. Each of the seven plaintiffs is a parent who claims their children will be denied access to schools based on their beliefs. Of the plaintiffs, three - including the Meiningers – are gay or lesbian.

Religion is a protected class in the state constitution, and Paul Smith, a partner at the North Carolina-based firm Patterson Harkavy, which represents the plaintiffs, said the program constitutes religious discrimination by denying families who do not adhere to certain beliefs around religion and LGBTQ acceptance.

“No child should be excluded from publicly funded educational opportunities because of their faith of their sexual orientation,” Smith stated in an email. “And no child receiving a taxpayer-funded education should fear that if they stay true to their religious beliefs or sexual orientation, their school could discipline them, ridicule them, or expel them.”

The Meiningers and other plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the Opportunity Scholarship Program unconstitutional and end payments through the current program.

Yet defenders of the program say nothing has changed in the past five years to make courts rule differently on the voucher program.

“It’s still not unconstitutional,” said Tim Keller, a lawyer who heads the Educational Choice Team at the Institute for Justice, a firm focused on promoting Libertarian ideals that defended the voucher program from its initial legal challenge in the mid-2010s and is working with Janet Nunn to intervene in the current lawsuit. “Nothing has changed with the program itself and the underlining way it operates or the way parents choose schools.” 

Keller argued the state shouldn’t take away private schools’ options, but instead “lean into” the voucher program to ensure all families have ample educational alternatives, no matter their religion or who they love.

More:Homeschooling in NC had momentum before pandemic. Will more families start this year?

Brian Gordon is the education and social issues reporter for the USA Today Network in North Carolina. You can reach him at bgordon@citizentimes.com or on Twitter @briansamuel92.

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