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The CARDINAL Act establishes a new state program that provides an additional $1,000 to children born in North Carolina between 2025 and 2028 who receive federal contributions into a specific type of savings account known as a Trump Account. To fund this initiative, the bill redirects $192 million from the state's existing Opportunity Scholarship Grant Fund Reserve, which was originally set aside for the 2026-2027 school year. The legislation also modifies the priority order for awarding opportunity scholarships in 2026-2027, ensuring that students who received grants in the previous year are processed first if funds are insufficient to cover all applicants.
HB 1066, the Child Care Stabilization and Affordability Act, aims to address North Carolina's child care shortages by redirecting funds from the Opportunity Scholarship Program to support child care services. The bill reduces scholarship funding for private school vouchers, with the savings used to expand child care subsidies, stabilize existing programs, and improve early childhood educator pay and benefits. It also streamlines administrative rules for child care providers and clarifies regulations for religious programs. These changes directly affect families seeking child care subsidies, private school scholarship recipients, and child care providers across the state.
SB 439 imposes a moratorium on new Opportunity Scholarships starting in the 2025-2026 school year, requiring new applicants to have received a scholarship in the prior year. It reduces funding for the program by $83.46 million annually (recurring) and $28.46 million (nonrecurring) for 2025-2026, while redirecting $113.46 million (recurring) and $28.46 million (nonrecurring) to public schools for the same year. The bill phases out the scholarship program entirely by 2037-2038 as current recipients become ineligible, and limits future scholarship funding increases to match public school funding growth. This directly affects new private school scholarship applicants and redirects funds from the Opportunity Scholarship program to North Carolina public schools.
