NC Opportunity Scholarship and ESA+: The Guide for Families of Students with Disabilities

Any North Carolina K-12 student may apply. Since the 2023 expansion there is no income cap and no requirement to have attended public school first. The student must be at least 5 by August 31 (or 4 by April 16 and approved for kindergarten under state guidelines), live in North Carolina, not have graduated from high school, and not be enrolled full-time in a post-secondary institution. Income does not decide whether you qualify, only which of four award tiers you receive.

For 2026-27 the tiers pay up to $7,942 (Tier 1), $7,148 (Tier 2), $4,766 (Tier 3), and $3,574 (Tier 4), paid in two semester installments. Tier placement depends on prior tax-year household income and household size: for a family of four, Tier 1 tops out at $61,050 and Tier 2 at $122,100. Tier 4 has no income limit, so every North Carolina family qualifies for at least $3,574. No award can exceed the school's actual required tuition and fees.

Four tiers, set by prior tax-year household income and household size. For a household of two the ceilings are $40,034 (Tier 1), $80,068 (Tier 2), and $180,153 (Tier 3). For a household of four they are $61,050, $122,100, and $274,725. For a household of six they are $82,066, $164,132, and $369,297. Any household above the Tier 3 ceiling, or that does not report income, receives Tier 4, which has no limit. NCSEAA publishes ceilings for households up to twelve.

Yes, and it is written into state law rather than just program policy. N.C.G.S. 115C-592(c) states that an eligible student may receive, in addition to a PESA (the statutory name for ESA+), a scholarship under the Opportunity Scholarship article. One condition applies, and it decides whether stacking is possible at all. To use both awards your student must be enrolled at a Direct Payment School, so stacking does not work at an ESA+ reimbursement school or for homeschooling. NCSEAA applies Opportunity Scholarship funds to tuition and fees first, then ESA+, and any ESA+ remaining goes to your spending account for other allowable expenses.

No, but they do need an Eligibility Determination, the document a public school issues when it decides a student with a disability qualifies for special education services. NCSEAA is explicit that an IEP itself is not required, only the eligibility determination, issued within the last three years by a North Carolina public school or a Department of Defense school located in North Carolina.

No. NCSEAA states that an eligibility determination issued in the last three years by a North Carolina public school is the only document accepted to verify a student's disability. A 504 plan will not work, and neither will a letter from a physician, a private psychological evaluation, or an out-of-state IEP. A private school cannot issue one either, so a family who has never enrolled in the public system still has to go through it to qualify.

Yes. NCSEAA's 2026-2027 eligibility requirements list Autism first among five categories that may qualify a student for the higher award, alongside Hearing Impairment, Moderate or Severe Intellectual Disability, Orthopedic Impairment, and Visual Impairment. The category has to appear as the primary or secondary disability on the eligibility determination. Several third-party summaries leave autism off this list, which is incorrect.

Yes. The award follows the disability category written on the eligibility determination, not the diagnosis. A child with an autism diagnosis who is served under "other health impairment" or "speech or language impairment" receives the $9,000 base award instead of $17,000. Because the category can only be changed through the public school, it is worth raising at the eligibility or IEP meeting rather than after the determination is issued.

State law allows tuition and fees at a compliant nonpublic school, required textbooks, tutoring from an accredited individual or facility, curricula, standardized and college entrance test fees, fees for classes or extracurriculars at a public school, educational therapies from a licensed or accredited provider, educational technology on the Authority's approved list, and student transportation under contract. Consumable supplies such as paper and pens are expressly prohibited, as is tuition at a higher education institution. If your child attends a private school, funds go to tuition first and only what remains can go to other allowable expenses.

Yes to both, within limits. NCSEAA's allowable-expenses guidance names applied behavior analysis (delivered by a board certified behavior analyst) and speech therapy and audiology among the educational therapies it will fund, alongside occupational, physical, behavioral, music, art, and recreational therapy, each requiring the relevant credential. The provider must be registered with the program before they can be paid, so confirm that before booking a course of treatment. Note also that ESA+ is a secondary payer: its guidance describes covering insurance co-pays or paying once medical insurance has been exhausted. Separately, NC Medicaid covers behavioral treatment including ABA where a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder is documented, and that is usually the larger and more durable funding source.

No. Opportunity Scholarship funds can only be used for tuition and fees at registered private schools. A student may be co-enrolled in a homeschool program and a registered private school with the funds applied to the private school tuition, but full-time homeschooling is not eligible. ESA+ does support full-time homeschooling, and homeschool families may use the entire award on allowable expenses since there is no tuition to pay first.

It depends on which award you receive. The $9,000 base award does not roll over, and unspent funds return to the Authority at the end of the year. The $17,000 higher award allows up to $4,500 per year to roll over, subject to a $30,000 cap on the account balance. Rollover funds can only be spent on current-year expenses.

Split the two programs. ESA+ is no longer accepting new-student applications for 2026-27, so the next full new-applicant window is February 2027, though NCSEAA extended additional 2026-27 ESA+ offers on July 27, 2026 with an accept-or-decline deadline of August 17, 2026 for families already offered. Opportunity Scholarship priority for 2026-27 closed March 2, but NCSEAA says new Opportunity Scholarship applications remain open and are considered monthly as funds are available. Because North Carolina allows up to 90 days for a special education evaluation, a family that needs an eligibility determination for a future ESA+ window should request it in the fall, not in January.

No. NCSEAA reports more than 700 registered Direct Payment Schools, but being on that list only means a school can accept the money and says nothing about whether it can serve your child, because North Carolina does not require nonpublic schools to employ licensed teachers, follow a curriculum, hold accreditation, or take state tests.

In North Carolina, generally yes. The nondiscrimination requirement on scholarship-receiving schools covers race, color, and national origin, and does not cover disability. An August 2025 Public School Forum of North Carolina analysis (Public Dollars, Private Schools) found roughly 32% of voucher-receiving schools explicitly exclude some or all students with disabilities, and about 9% more exclude them in practice by charging additional fees (about 41% combined). Ask directly, and ask in writing.

No. Federal regulation at 34 CFR 300.137(a) states that no parentally placed private school child with a disability has an individual right to receive some or all of the special education and related services they would receive if enrolled in a public school. NCSEAA says the same on its own ESA+ page. Any services a private school provides are a matter of agreement between you and that school, so get them in writing before you enroll.

No. The release ESA+ parents sign covers only the period the student is receiving scholarship funds, and it expressly preserves rights and claims against the district from before the scholarship began and after it ends. If your child returns to public school, IDEA protections apply again, though re-enrolling mid-term means notifying the Authority and returning unspent funds. You also keep the right to ask a district to evaluate your child while privately placed, and that right remains enforceable through a due process hearing.

NCSEAA advises families not to apply for ESA+ without one and points them to the Exceptional Children's Assistance Center, a free service for North Carolina families, at 800-962-6817. Put your request for an evaluation in writing to the district. If a district tells you your child must enroll in the public school before it will evaluate, that is not what the child find obligation requires. For a privately placed child, the obligation sits with the district where the private school is located, which is not always the district where you live.

There is very little rigorous evidence either way, and anyone who tells you otherwise is overstating what exists. North Carolina's own legislatively mandated evaluation was never carried out, because the state concluded it could not be done with the available testing data. The one peer-reviewed NC achievement study excluded students with special education needs and its authors declined to claim causality. Nationally, the best-known disability voucher study measured students who stayed in public school rather than those who left. The one result that repeats across dozens of studies is that participating parents report higher satisfaction, which is worth weighing on its own terms while measuring something different from academic outcomes.