NBCT teacher Justin Parmenter has been reviewing the religious schools that now receive public funding and frequently posts his findings on Twitter (X is banned here).

He posted some of the horrifying stories on his blog, Notes from the Chalkboard.

Taxpayers in North Carolina should be outraged to learn where their dollars are going.

He writes:

A Union County pastor is under fire for saying from the pulpit that he would not convict a rapist if his victim were wearing shorts. And if you’re a taxpayer in North Carolina, you are funding his organization….

Under the leadership of Bobby Leonard, Bible Tabernacle Church opened a private school called Tabernacle Christian School in 1972. This school receives public tax dollars via the Opportunity Scholarship school voucher program which was created by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2014.

Tabernacle Christian School has received voucher dollars every school year since 2014-15 for a grand total of $3,649,766 in public taxpayer funds (that data available here). 

In the past two years alone, Bobby Leonard’s organization has received nearly $2,000,000 ($902,315 in 2023-24 and $923,328 in 2022-23).

In 2023 North Carolina’s state legislature achieved a veto-proof supermajority by flipping a legislator, then tripled funding for school vouchers, the vast majority of which to go private religious schools. By 2031 more than half a billion dollars a year in public funding will be going to these organizations…

I would venture to say that the vast majority of North Carolinians would prefer NOT to have their hard-earned tax dollars subsidizing institutions that espouse hateful and violent philosophies like Bobby Leonard’s.

Unfortunately, private schools are legally permitted to discriminate against students based on factors like religious beliefs and sexual orientation, even when they’re receiving public funding.

And discriminate they do.

This voucher-receiving school in Fayetteville, NC specifically bans “Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, non Messianic Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists” and refers to homosexuality as “deviate [sic] and perverted.”

Please open the link and see how well compensated these religious schools are by North Carolina’s taxpayers.