North Carolina ranks last on open enrollment despite voter support

Wake County families who want out of an assigned public school can still look at charter schools, magnet programs, year-round calendars, private-school choice or homeschooling. What they cannot do is tap a statewide open-enrollment system to move to another public school tuition free, and that gap is a big reason North Carolina sits last in the country on the policy.

That tension was on display in downtown Raleigh at the June 3 forum, Open Enrollment in Practice: State Standards, District Solutions, where education leaders and policy experts argued that families want more flexibility and districts need more tools to manage enrollment. The discussion comes as public support keeps rising: in a January 2026 Carolina Journal poll, 78.8% of likely North Carolina voters said they supported open enrollment, up from 71.5% in January 2025.

By the Reason Foundation’s 2025 ranking, North Carolina received zero points and ranked 50th among the 50 states on open-enrollment policy. Reason said 16 states had statewide cross-district open enrollment and 17 had statewide within-district open enrollment, leaving millions of students in states with weak or ineffective rules. Open enrollment supporters say that kind of policy can give families access to stronger schools, increase competition and help districts respond when enrollment falls.

The Wake County debate is sharpened by recent local numbers. Wake County Public School System reported about 160,413 students in the 2025-26 school year, and local reporting in late May said the district recorded its first enrollment drop in five years. Wake remains the largest district in North Carolina and one of the largest in the nation, but even a small decline raises questions about capacity, transportation and which schools families can realistically choose.

House Bill 981, titled Local Schools Open Enrollment, passed the House in May 2025 and would have created a study committee to examine whether students should be allowed to attend any public school within their home district. During House debate on May 6, 2025, Rep. Mike Schietzelt, R-Wake, said children’s educational opportunities should not be limited by the ZIP code or neighborhood where they live. Rep. Julie von Haefen, D-Wake, warned about logistics in larger districts such as Wake County, while Rep. Donny Lambeth, R-Forsyth, pointed to Winston-Salem’s long-running open-enrollment model as proof the idea can work locally.

Union County Public Schools offered a closer-to-home example of how districts can use the policy. At the Raleigh event, assistant superintendent Bashawn Harris said the district has about 38,000 students and adopted open enrollment after losing students to charter schools and homebound options. He said about $15 million of the county school budget goes toward charter schools, a reminder that for many districts, the open-enrollment debate is already tied to enrollment losses and money leaving the system.