School Choice?

Wake up, everyone. It's time for The Steve Noble Show, where biblical Christianity meets the everyday issues of life, in your home, at work, and even in politics. Steve is an ordinary man who believes in an extraordinary God, and on his show there's plenty of grace and lots of truth, but no sacred cows. Call Steve now at 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. Or check him out online at TheSteveNobleShow.com. And now, here's your host, Steve Noble. Hey, good evening, good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon, good afternoon. This is Matthew Winslow. I am all for The Steve Noble Show today.

Thank you for tuning in. I got something fun today. I've got both my kids here with me today, Delaney Winslow and Hudson Winslow.

My son's 15, my daughter's 19. So Steve asked to step in while he's at the Homeschoolers' Association, and thought we'd have a little fun. The first half of the show, I've got Representative Destin Hall here. He is our rules chair.

He's been involved in politics for quite a while, does a spectacular job, and so he's agreed to be on the first half of the show. And we're going to talk about school choice. Delaney and Hudson are here. I have, I think I really messed up, honestly. I think I gave them permission to ask me any question they want, unsolicited from me with their mother's approval. I haven't seen the questions, even though I've asked for a sneak peek. And so the second half of the show is going to be nothing but them asking me questions about my personal life, being a dad, and politics, and you know, whatever else they came up with.

My wife, she grinned when I asked her how they were, so I'm looking forward to it. So, hey Josh, if you're ready, let's bring up Destin Hall. All right, what's up? Destin, you there, bud?

I'm here. Hey, Representative Destin Hall. Thanks for being on the show with us today. Thanks for having me, man, and I'm going to have to stick around and listen to you answer the questions later on for the kids. You know, as I walked out the door, I told my wife, I said, you know, I didn't know, today may be the day my wife and kids ruin my political career, so we'll see what happens. Hey, thanks for being on the show.

Hey, Destin, tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been in politics? What your role is as the Rules Chair, and then we'll get into our favorite subject here lately is school choice.

Sure. Well, again, thank you for having me on. I serve in the State House of Force with my good friend, Representative Matthew Winflow, who does a great job for his district. I'm in my fourth term right now. I chair the Rules Committee. I've done that for the past couple of terms, and the Rules Committee essentially looks at every bill that comes through the House, and we vet those bills. We send them out to committee.

When they come back from committee, they come back to rules. We look at them again, see how they've changed, work with the Speaker's Office closely to figure out what the best bills are to put on the floor. And then when we're on the floor, I deal with a lot of the rules-related issues, the procedural issues in passing legislation.

We negotiate with the Senate a lot on certain bills that they want to hear and bills that we want to hear. And so that's my legislative job and my other full-time job. I'm a lawyer in Caldwell County. I've got an office in Lenoir, and I have three law partners there. I've been practicing for, I guess, just about 10 years there now. And so when they let me out of Raleigh, I go do my other job at home. Yeah, it's funny you say that. When you do your other job at home, is it sometimes, I don't know, when we're talking with each other, it's a Friday afternoon or a Saturday, and you're down in Raleigh trying to get called for it there if you can go back to your district and do your real job. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

If nobody's in the General Assembly for the money, that's for sure the salary is just under $14,000 a year. But it's a labor of love. It's an honor to get to serve folks who you know, especially for me, my hometown.

I'm from here in Caldwell County, and it's just been an incredible honor to get to serve there now in my fourth term. Well, let's jump right into it. So we got an opportunity to work on two very controversial bills in the same week.

That was a lot of fun. We're not going to talk about our pro-life bill. That one's been all over the place here lately, but we're going to talk about House Bill 823, Choose Your School and Choose Your Future. We passed that one through the House last week, and it's over in the Senate. Just give us some broad strokes on what that bill does.

Okay, so it's a bill that I'm really excited about, and frankly, a lot of folks across the state are excited about. We understand all kids are different, families are different, and we think that families ought to be able to choose where their kids go to school. And a few years ago, we in the legislature started this process of what's called opportunity scholarships, and it started off as a really limited program that only applied to a few people.

It didn't have a huge amount of funding, but it was sort of a pilot program in many ways. And it lets kids and their parents apply for scholarships from the state that they can then use to attend some private school of their choosing. The amount of the scholarships are really equivalent or tied to the amount that the state would pay anyway for that child, because of course, in North Carolina, the way we fund schools is based upon the number of students in a given district, and so for every student they get, they get roughly an amount of money for each one of those.

And that figure's usually somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 or so. So that money that the state is already spending on that child to attend a traditional public school in their district, if the parents of that child think it's best for them, they can apply for this opportunity scholarship, and they can then take those funds and send their kid to a school that fits their child better. The way that the bill works is it would apply this to everybody in the state, literally any resident of the state who wants to apply for the program, they can. There's a sliding scale for income, but it makes it eligible for everyone in the state, and it gives every parent in the state the ability to choose where their kid goes to school and what works best for their child.

Now, I'll follow up a little bit. You know, Steve, he does some homeschooling on his own. He teaches some homeschool classes and a big homeschool following. Does it apply to homeschool kids? Well, so it can.

It depends on the way that they have things set up. I mean, there's criteria for being an eligible entity to receive the scholarships, and so there are co-ops, as I understand them, that set up and can be eligible entities. But I'll tell you this, you know, our goal is to give parents the maximum ability to make the choice for their child because parents know what's best for their child. It's not the government's role to come in and decide what is best for their child in this cookie-cutter way of saying just because you were born and you live in a given area, you have to go to school there, no matter if that school's failing or not. And look, we've got a lot of great traditional public schools across North Carolina, but we've also got some that have not done as well.

And a child should not be forced to attend a school that's not right for them just because of where they were born at and where they live in. All right. Well, we're going to pause right there at this, and we're moving into the break, and then we're going to be right back here in about seven minutes. This is the Steve Noble show.

All right. This is Matthew Winslow filling in for the Steve Noble show. Steve is not here today. He's over at a homeschool conference. So he asked us to fill in today.

Something fun, I brought in both my kids, my young adults, my 19-year-old daughter Delaney, and my 15-year-old son. And the second half of the show, we are going to talk about whatever they want to talk about. I gave them permission to write down 10 questions each, and I have not seen them. My wife has vetted them.

I hope they did a good job. I'm a little worried about it. Oh, yeah, my son's all ready for it to go. But this half, we are talking with Representative Destin Hall, talking about school choice and our new bill, House Bill 823, Choose Your School and Choose Your Future. Destin, you still there? I'm here. There you go.

All right. So you were just filling us in on school choice. One thing that I wanted to bring up was that there's what, roughly 25,000 kids already in the opportunity scholarship program? Yeah, that's right.

It's somewhere at that ballpark. And, you know, we think that that's going to dramatically increase as folks really start to learn more about it. And, you know, the other thing that I think has really popularized this idea of letting children and their parents decide where they go to school was the experience they had in COVID. I mean, you had parents who we had school shutdowns.

The governor had shut down schools. Parents were having to scramble. And, ironically, it ended up having many more parents much more involved in their child's education. You know, they saw some of the things that went on in the classroom. We had kids doing e-learning.

They were doing remote learning. And so parents had an inside glimpse. And, you know, in many cases, parents saw it, that, you know, hey, maybe this is not working for my child.

And for my child, I need something else. And so they've started looking for those things. And, you know, there's really been an outcry. We've heard from a lot of folks across the state who, as they start to learn about this program and after the experiences they had with COVID, they're looking for another option. And this bill will get them that option. And, again, it puts it in the hands of parents.

And that's the best way to raise a child is put it in the hands of the parents and let them decide what's best for their child. Now, you didn't get to hear it, but we were off the air. I was talking with my daughter Delaney and Hudson are both here. And we start asking them, you know, what do you think of the show? And it didn't take them long to figure out. They've known already that for them to have their own choices, obviously, that the best answer, you know, now, speaking of that, if we talk about we pulled this here recently before and after the pandemic. And here we are running the bill and we polled Republicans, Democrats and independents. And it was something what 80% of the people felt like they should be able to choose their school.

Yeah. You know, it's it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 80%, depending on the poll that you look at. And, you know, if you're involved in this kind of stuff, the polling of political issues across our state, you know, it's tough to get 80% of people to agree on anything.

I mean, you know, to get them to agree that it's daylight outside stuff to get 80% of folks. And so it shows us that it's one of those issues that really cuts across political line. This is not just a Republican bill. Both Republicans and Democrats across our state agree that it's better to let your family's choice when it comes to where their children will go to school.

Yeah, it's hard to argue on that one. So what's the what's the next steps in the bill? We passed the House.

What's happening next? Well, you know, you know, sure, there's many different ways that a bill can become a law. So the House has passed this bill. The Senate has done the same thing. They actually put it in their budget bill that's coming over to us. And so, you know, what I'm confident of is that we're going to get some deal on this with the Senate and dramatically expand opportunity scholarships across our state.

You know, whether it ends up being the House bill or whether it ends up being part of our final budget package remains to be seen. But, you know, one other important thing I'll point out to folks is I told you that each chamber has passed these bills and in each instance, you know, we've had bipartisan support. I know off the top of my head over in the Senate, you know, seven out of the 20 Democrats, there are 20 Democrats total in the Senate, seven of them voted in favor of a bill to have these opportunity scholarships. And it just goes to show how bipartisan this really is and how it crosses party line. Yeah, I think I remember seeing on national news that this was the one of the only bills that's out there that all Republicans had sponsored or cosponsored in both chambers. Yeah, that's right. This thing had our entire caucus.

I know in the House cosponsor it. I mean, just tremendous support from from the Republican House caucus on this bill. You just don't see that. I mean, even within the Republican caucus, you know, as you know, you know, we don't always agree on everything. And, you know, we like to think for ourselves. But this is one of those issues that, you know, yet different members have different opinions on how it needs to be done. But this is something our caucus is united on and getting done. So let's jump on to the governor. What do you think about his state of emergency on education?

Well, I think it's it's really sad to see what the governor is doing. I mean, just from the standpoint of the way that he has termed this state of the emergency, if you go online and look at his Web site, you'll see the little red exclamation point that you see when there is a real state of emergency. And I mean, this is on his official official governor Web site.

This is not the political Web site. This is the governor dot NC dot gov. At the top of it, it says a state of emergency for public education.

And again, that's a triangle with a little exclamation point in the middle. And it's all in red to seem like it's really ominous. And that's what you might see if there's a hurricane approaching. So, you know, what the governor has done is taking a political issue and he's trying to tie it in to a real emergency, which I think is irresponsible for the governor of our state to be doing, because what's going to happen when we have a real emergency, we have a hurricane or a bad storm coming, we have flooding coming and the governor needs to get out there and message, hey, you've got to be careful.

This is a real emergency. You know, a lot of folks are going to start looking at this like, look, you're being political again. They're not going to pay attention to it. So right off the bat, tremendously irresponsible from the executive of our state to use the the state of emergency term for what he wants to have a political fight over. The other thing I'll tell you is, as I said a minute ago, seven out of 20 Democrats in the Senate, there are 20 total Democrats in the Senate.

Seven of them voted in favor of this. So if the governor is to be believed, almost half of the members of his party in the North Carolina Senate voted in favor of this bill that he says causes a state of emergency in public education. It's ridiculous. It's absurd. It's hyperbolic. Anybody who takes two seconds to look at this knows that this is just simply the governor trying to go out on a political mission.

And that's really it. You know, the real state of emergency for public education happened back when the Democrats last controlled the North Carolina General Assembly pre 2010. And that's because at that time, teachers were being furloughed across our state. If you contrast that to what we're doing now, giving teachers pay raises the house version of the budget gets 10.2% over the biennium.

It puts the average teacher salary somewhere in the neighborhood of almost $65,000 a year, the median household income in North Carolina. It's absurd to say that. Hey, this is Matthew Winslow on the Steve double show filled in for Steve Noble. Thanks for joining us today. Steve is at a homeschool conference and asked us to fill in and so he was gracious enough to let me program the show. And part of the programming was let my two kids Delaney and Hudson.

They're here with me today delays 19 houses 15. And I did something I'm questioning it if it was a smart idea or not, but they have they're doing a fabulous job. I get an opportunity to write down 10 questions each. And I have not seen them first time hearing from their mother.

All she did was just kind of review and make sure that they'd be okay for the show. And so far they've done a pretty remarkable job of coming up with questions. So I guess turn it back over to you. This longest session. Remember, I got a couple of questions for you. And so all right. Who's next? All right.

Let's see. Where's your favorite place you've traveled to? Oh, yeah. Favorite place to travel. So I am lucky enough that I've been able to travel a lot. So it's through work. So it's through vacation.

Some of it is just through family stuff. I have seen the great redwoods that I want to see. Yeah, I think you guys are some day into Alaska, which was amazing Montana.

Oh, yeah. I remember pictures of that mountains are beautiful there. I've been to Montana a little bit.

I would say that's in the state. I have been to Boston on the 4th of July. Oh, that was pretty amazing. Amazing fireworks and cannons and everything else.

I was pretty cold in Niagara Falls. Oh, really? I did not know that. Yeah, I guess I share stuff to you. When I was in college, I got to drive for a drum and bugle corps band. Oh, yeah. And part of that was traveling all around the East Coast. And so we got to go to Niagara Falls, went to Illinois, went all the way down to Florida, up and down the coast.

So that was pretty neat. Let's see, where else have I been? Saw the black sands in California where they had the rocks sticking up out of the water like you see in the movies. Traveled over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Oh, cool. Saw Alcatraz. Drove through Oklahoma up into Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, Kansas. But out of the country, in the Caribbean and different places, I would say probably my favorite trip was with you guys when we all went to Costa Rica. It was not a normal vacation where you go someplace and you stay. We got to travel. We drove ourselves all over the place. We had to learn Spanish because we went places where no one spoke English. We got to practice our Spanish speaking skills and so you and your mother were very helpful. They only spoke to us.

We all were giants. Yeah, exactly. So I would say probably Costa Rica. Definitely.

I'd agree with that. Very good food there. It's really good.

All right, Hudson. What are some bills that you have passed or sponsored? I've been involved quite a bit. So first, let's go back to the first session. It was the first bill I've ever gotten passed and it was to help with our veterans and DMV. There was kind of a loophole in the law that when they would leave, if their driver's license expired, the registration expired, that each month they would go by, they would receive a penalty. And so the way I wrote it was that it wouldn't expire while they're overseas and when they come back, they can still drive for 30 days on that license and they wouldn't have a penalty.

And if the registration expired, then they'd have also 30 days to renew it without having to worry about penalties and fees. I like that bill. If you were to live anywhere in the world, where would you want to live?

Right here in North Carolina. Really? Absolutely. I mean, the weather's a little crazy though. It is for more weekend. I'm supposed to go to the beach. You're all disappointed.

You and your friend were supposed to go to the beach and that's not ruined. But we need rain to water the crops so we have food to grow. Food does taste good. Yeah, we're right here in North Carolina. I think we have the best of everything. We're in a good place on the East Coast. We have the mountains. We have the beach. We have the Piedmont. We get there in like less than five, six hours.

Yeah. We're close to cities if you want to be. We can be in rural areas if you want to be.

And it's the truth. I love North Carolina and I love being here. I do love traveling though.

Awesome. What are some favorite memories of us? You guys trying to make me tear up? You don't cry.

What do you mean? Favorite memories of us. All right, let's see.

How about, you know, we were talking earlier about education, how each one of you are different. When Delane was born, she came out ready to go. I mean, she was like, she arms stretched out. She was like crying and she's like, I'm ready to go. And she was like that from day one. And Hudson comes out.

Hudson was so laid back. He was about, I don't know, three and a half feet long. Biggest kid. The doctors ever saying this didn't even fit. You were so big. You didn't even fit on the ultraviolet light that they put you on when you're born.

And you just kind of stretched your arms out and your legs and your arms and your legs hung out of this thing because you were so long. So yeah, I remember that was from when you both were born. Since then, I would say that favorite memory of you guys. How about, let's see, I don't know, I've got a ton of good memories with you guys.

How about this? Any time that we get to spend time together is cherished for me. I love spending family time with you guys.

You know, we try to carve it out in our busy lives. So that was just us, me, you and your mama spending time together traveling or just going places together. What's your favorite thing about being a parent? Favorite thing about being a parent? There is joy in watching you guys grow up. I enjoy each part of the stage where you guys are at in life. I enjoy that when you were younger and as you've gotten older and you've gotten into teenage years, even as challenging as it can be sometimes, I still enjoy those times. As you get older, I'm excited to see what both of you become and what you do for the world and what you can do for others.

So I would say my favorite part is just being a part of your lives and seeing what you become. If you get another dog, what kind of dog would you get? Well, I know what your mother wants. Your mother wants one of those little small little pocket purse dogs, you know, like the rat dogs, like the white crusty looking ones, the little fluffy ones, you know, that you have to, you know, uh, have them trimmed all the time for the big poofy head and the big poofy tail. Yeah. So she put your purse, that dogs would die. Yeah. Hawk's going to come eat that. We live on a farm and so, uh, there are a lot of, uh, predatory animals on the farm and so big hawks and I think our cat would eat it.

So that doesn't work. So we need, I need a big dog. So what do you guys think? I like the German Shepherds. Yeah. I like German Shepherds. Um, maybe a collie. Um, Oh yeah.

Those are pretty. Yeah. Uh, or Doberman Doberman. Yeah, that'd be fun too. Something like that.

Big, big farm dogs. All right. What's your, what's the most fun car you've ever driven? Ooh, most fun car I've ever driven.

I, I, for a Christmas present, your mother got me one of those super car track deals where you could get to go drive cars and you can pick from um, Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Mustangs and a Porsche and now they have an Audi Delaney, a eight. Yeah. We have to go.

I want to go. Yeah. All right. Yes. All right. Yeah. All right.

Um, and I, you know, I'll never, I can't say myself ever buying a Ferrari or anything like that. And uh, so I thought what an opportunity to drive one and it was a lot of fun. Your face go back like all your skin. Uh, but it was, it, it, you could go very fast. We had to drive on a track on a racetrack. And so literally you had a driver with you and he just told you how fast to go and it would just go as fast as you want it to go.

And, and you go through the curves as fast as you want to go. And uh, this poor guy was like, all right, let's go. And I went, now we're going to talk about, um, Michelle, my legislative assistant and our very, very good friends, right? She also got to do it and she drove the Ferrari and you could hear her. We were standing on the sidelines and you could hear screaming as she hit the straightaway. She went through the fast. She was like, whoa, the whole way down the track. So we had a blast.

It was so much fun. What's the one piece of advice you would give people? Just one. Yeah. Just one. One. Wake up first, go to bed last.

You should write that one down too. Yeah. Uh, uh, Churchill says, uh, the world's made, the world was made by tired people. And so, uh, I'm afraid our country is getting away from what's significant. Um, I think one of the reasons why we have a labor shortage is that, uh, we choose to, we are choosing to go the easy route and missing the significance of work.

And so one of the big things of pushing politically is to get, uh, our youth and our young adults involved in the trades, you know, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, welding, um, truck driving, those kinds of things, because there's a dire need because we moved away from a workforce country. That's all my questions. Yeah. Nice.

I got two. All right, what is your favorite food? Favorite food, favorite food, all food. I am a foodie. I like anything that I can try. Um, if it looks good, I'll eat it.

If it doesn't, I'll try it and see, um, I know you're not Hudson Hudson. You're the plane eater. Oh, and uh, what is your dream place or dream vacation to go to?

Oh, you covered already Costa Rica. Now we're about shows about the end. So we've got to ask you quick. Who's your favorite parent, their parent.

Who's your favorite parent? Uh, both. Oh, quick, quick, quick.

So it was almost over. I can't say that's wrong. And who's the favorite kid. Me, me.

This is Matthew Winslow on the Steve noble show. Uh, with everybody. Thank you so much for joining us.

I got the feeling today. Had a great time with the kids and I hope you had a good time too. Thank you so much. And I hope you have a good Memorial weekend. And remember those that have lost for more weekend is why we celebrate. We celebrate them. Uh, thank you so much for all they have served. And we thank you to our veterans. And we thank you to our friends and family for joining us today. Uh, this is Steve noble show, and this is Matthew Winslow filling in for today. Thank you so much. Oh, I didn't get to end it. Well, I thought for sure I was within.