It’s been about two months since a private school in Charlotte with 300 students announced it would not continue to operate in the fall. Some parents told the Charlotte Observer they weren’t surprised Northside Christian Academy closed and questioned the school’s spending.
The Observer’s Rebecca Noel wrote about it, and she joins me now.
Marshall Terry: First, can you give me a little background about Northside Christian Academy?
Rebecca Noel: So, Northside Christian Academy is K-12 and was originally opened in 1961. So it's been around a while, and it's attached to Northside Baptist Church. It's been kind of a high school basketball powerhouse for a number of years. The boys’ team won the Independent Schools State Championship in 2023, and in April, their former basketball coach Byron Dinkins was named among The Charlotte Observer’s top Charlotte high school basketball coaches of the last 40 years. And many students came to the school because of the basketball program. But rather abruptly, in May, the school announced that it was permanently closing due to low enrollment.
Terry: So, you write that a flashpoint leading up to the school’s announcement that it was closing occurred back in January at a basketball game. What happened exactly?
Noel: Right. So there was a fight that broke out at a boys’ basketball game between Northside Christian and Hickory Grove [Christian School]. The Athletic Conference itself suspended each team for one game as a result. However, the pastor at Northside Christian, Michael Landrum, was acting as the head of school at the time, since that position was vacant. And parents say that he decided to end the rest of the boys' and girls' basketball team seasons as a result of that incident and that one student was expelled.
So, parents of some of the basketball players said this was just, kind of, the straw that broke the camel's back. They had reported feeling like the school didn't really support the team. The basketball coach this year, Edward Cooke, said he felt like his players were targeted with discipline for very minor things. He basically said the feeling among the team was that there was hostility between the administration and themselves.
So when this happened and the season was abruptly ended, many of these players decided to withdraw from the school. And the school itself was small, as you mentioned. It only had about 300 students, so no doubt this incident contributed to the low enrollment issues that the school ultimately cited for its reason for closing.
Terry: And you report that some parents say they weren’t surprised and have questioned the school’s finances. What are they saying about that?
Noel: Yes. So I talked to around four parents. And actually every single one of them mentioned they had suspicions that the pastor, Michael Landrum, was using some school funds to operate the church, Northside Baptist Church. So these are, of course, still just allegations at this point. But they basically cited that the school, which charges around $12,000 in tuition per student, didn't have heat in the winter. The air conditioning didn't work properly. However, at the adjoining church, they had working facilities.
Parents, you know, raised questions of where is our money going. This was also a big deal because the school received a significant amount of money from the state over the last two years through the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which is basically North Carolina's brand of school vouchers. So parents were also wondering if taxpayer funds intended for the school were potentially being used to operate the church.
Terry: I want to get to that in just a moment, but I do want to point out also that it wasn't just parents questioning the school finances, it was also employees — like the basketball coach, right?
Noel: That's right. So a teacher I spoke with said that same thing, as well as Edward Cooke, the basketball coach. He said there was no heat in the school's gym, and that the school didn't buy championship rings for the players when they won the state championship in 2023 because they said they didn't have the money to do so. And so he said he had those suspicions as well.
Terry: Let's talk about the role of the state's Opportunity Scholarship vouchers, public money that subsidizes private schools. Northside Christian received almost a $1 million over the past two years, you report. Did the school not have to say how it was spending the money?
Noel: In North Carolina, private schools that receive Opportunity Scholarship dollars are not actually required to report to the state exactly how that money is being spent. The law says that Opportunity Scholarships are intended to be used for "tuition and associated fees.” But schools themselves don't need to turn in any kind of account of specifically how each dollar is being spent. State law dictates that these funds are meant to be used for educational purposes, but the law that created Opportunity Scholarships in 2013 doesn't really define a clear definition of what is an educational purpose, technically. So there's a lot of wiggle room there, for schools that receive this funding.
Terry: What’s been the response from school administration to these questions from parents and staff, and also your reporting?
Noel: Pastor Michael Landrum told me that the school, preschool and church all operate out of one ministry budget, is what he calls it, and that is approved annually by Northside members. But when I pressed him for more information, he actually declined to answer further questions. School staff and parents have said that school has been a bit evasive since announcing that it was closing. They haven't been able to get a ton of answers to their questions.
Terry: The state legislature is dramatically expanding these Opportunity Vouchers in the coming years. Does this preview a bigger issue we'll see going forward about how private schools spend public money?
Noel: Yeah. So Opportunity Scholarships, more broadly school vouchers in general, have been a really hot topic both in North Carolina and around the country, largely because there are a lot of questions about accountability for schools that receive taxpayer funding.
So proponents of the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship program have said that there is accountability, by virtue of the fact that parents who are dissatisfied with their child's private school or suspect that something shady is going on have the option to pull their kids out. So, basically, that parents, as customers, keep schools accountable. And they say that giving parents, who are dissatisfied with the public education options in their area, the option to send their kids to private school just allows them more freedom in their child's educational experience.
On the other side, opponents of voucher expansion say that public school systems have accountability in place enforced by the state. So they have to follow a very strict set of rules, report their outcomes, their budgets. They have to educate every student that walks in the door. They're pulled into laws like the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which private schools are not.
CMS' Board of Education actually asked the North Carolina General Assembly to require that schools receiving public funding have to abide by the same set of regulations and accountability constraints that public schools do. However, so far the General Assembly has not made that change, and at this point, there's no indication that it is going to in the near future.
I think with nearly $500 million more a year being put into this program, questions about how to hold schools that receive public funding accountable are only going to intensify and we're going to see more of this.
