When Governor Cooper vetoed House Bill 10, he was trying to keep another half a billion dollars this year from going to vouchers. The reason that a vote to override that veto has not happened yet is apparent: Hurricane Helene.

Vouchers would hurt rural county school systems most. In the late spring of 2023, 19 superintendents whose systems reside in 17 eastern rural counties wrote a letter asking that vouchers not be expanded.

That power of that letter and intent of it remain now.

Now add to that the number of counties that were declared disaster areas from Hurricane Helene. In fact, the number of counties that can apply for FEMA relief is still growing.

Most all of those counties are rural.

Combined with the number of school systems represented in that 2023 letter, around a third of the state’s local public school systems have very real reasons to have Cooper’s veto stand. Most of those school systems are represented by GOP House members in the NCGA. If those representatives really were serving their constituents, then they would not override the veto.

The cornerstones of their communities are being threatened.