Keep school free: State should ?nd a way to continue N.C. Governor’s School at no cost for those who can’t pay

Charging tuition to attend N.C. Governor’s School inherently detracts from its ability to reward the state’s best students — regardless of financial ability.

While passing the state budget, the N.C. General Assembly cut $475,000 from the high school summer program for the next two years.

The new $500 tuition is meant to close that budget gap.

N.C. Governor’s School is held at both Salem College in Winston-Salem and at Meredith College in Raleigh.

It is a six-week program for the state’s most intellectually and artistically gifted rising juniors and seniors.

The classes are tailored to the best and brightest and often go far beyond what these students would ever encounter in their own high schools.

One of the greatest aspects of Governor’s School is that social class has never been a barrier to attend. Additionally, spots are equitably allotted to each school system based on its tenth and eleventh grade population.

Starting next summer, 800 talented students will have to pay the tuition or not attend.

The new flat tuition fees destroy the unique diversity of the program, in which everyone could attend.

The state cannot be blamed for having to make cuts.

But it could have created a more just policy for dealing with them that would have upheld the program’s past class diversity.

On the table were proposals to select fewer students or to limit the program to one campus. Both of these obviously entail significant trade-offs.

But here is a better idea: The General Assembly could have instituted higher tuition for students who have the ability to pay, creating a subsidy for those who couldn’t.

This would have created a financial aid fund that would have maintained the diversity of the program while leaving the number of students and campuses intact.

Anna Diemer, an alumna of the program, stated that the Governor’s School Alumni Association is trying to offer financial aid.

Hopefully this organization can help. But the state shouldn’t have to rely on it to make its own program available to as many deserving students as possible.

The beauty of Governor’s School is that students from anywhere in the state have a shot at selection, regardless of their socioeconomic background.

The new tuition fee strikes at the core of the diversity that makes Governor’s School the great opportunity that it is.