North Carolina set to nearly double remote charter academies next year

The number of remote charter academies operating in North Carolina is expected to nearly double next school year, according to state education officials.

Ashley Logue, executive director of the Office of Charter Schools, told the state’s Charter Schools Review Board on Monday that 19 remote academies are expected to operate during the upcoming school year, up from 10 during the previous year. That total includes four statewide virtual schools.

Remote charter academies have seen huge growth in the state since a law was passed in 2023 allowing traditional brick-and-mortar schools to establish separate online programs or operate as standalone virtual schools. The first seven remote charter programs opened under the law in 2024.

Logue said that the growth is creating new administrative demands for the Office of Charter School staff. 

“The impact of that is that we now authorize and monitor remote academies on top of the brick and mortar academies,” Logue said during her presentation of the 2025 North Carolina Charter Schools Annual Report.  

The office is also creating a different renewal process for the remote academies. Under state rules, remote charter academies receive fixed five-year contracts and are not eligible for the up to 10-year extensions available to traditional charter schools.

This past March, board members argued over whether the rapid growth of remote programs is driven by educational needs or by the ability it offers schools to enroll more students—and collect the state funding tied to each one.

“I see it as a money grab for a lot of schools that are doing it,” board member Stephen Gay said during that debate.

Board Chairman Bruce Friend, whose own school earlier this year received approval for a remote charter academy, bristled at the characterization.

“If it’s a money grab, then we need to weed that out from the get-go,” Friend said, “not make that a generic comment that applies to those involved in this learning environment.”

While charter school performance grades and student academic growth improved slightly, grade-level proficiency still hasn’t caught up to pre-pandemic levels, and college and career readiness declined to 38.9%, according to the report. That is down 2 percentage points from 2024 and 13 points from 2019.

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“Grade-level proficiency improved slightly but remains below pre-pandemic levels, which is what we see across the state in all public schools,” said Ashley Logue, executive director of the Office of Charter Schools.

She added that college and career readiness remains the “clearest academic concern.”

Charter school enrollment in North Carolina continues to rise, with the state ranking fourth in the nation for growth over the past six years, behind Texas, Florida and California, according to figures presented Monday.

Between the 2019-20 and 2024-25 school years, enrollment grew by 31,000 students, a 26% increase. More than 161,000 students now attend charter schools, accounting for more than 10% of the state’s public school students.

But the schools are also heavily concentrated in urban counties, led by Mecklenburg with 34 schools, followed by Wake with 26, Durham with 17 and Guilford with 15.

“Mecklenburg, Wake, Durham and Guilford account for almost half of the charter schools in the state,” said Logue.