RALEIGH (February 22, 2024) – In a lawsuit that’s lasted almost 30 years, lawyers argued before the NC Supreme Court today about lofty concepts like jurisdiction and who has authority to spend state dollars.
Meanwhile, after decades of lawyers arguing, 69% of North Carolina children in 3rd through 8th grades don’t read at the level required by previous rulings in the Leandro case.
“Those are 480,049 children,” Melanie Dubis, an attorney for school boards that sued the state over support for public schools, told the justices.
Those children will become the third generation of children to pass through the state’s schools since the lawsuit was first filed in 1994, Dubis said.
AT ISSUE is an order the Supreme Court issued in November 2022 – when it had a 4-3 Democratic majority – for state administrators to fund a plan to improve state schools, even in the absence of action by a “recalcitrant” General Assembly.
A judge in a lower court later determined that amount to be an additional $677.8 million for two years of the plan.1
“We do not do so lightly,” Justice Robin Hudson wrote for the court. “Nevertheless, years of continued judicial deference and legislative non-compliance render it our solemn constitutional duty to do so…
“When other branches indefinitely abdicate this constitutional obligation, the judiciary must fill the void.”2
Previous rulings in the case, starting in 1997, found that the state does not provide all its children with “the opportunity for a sound basic education,” as required by the state Constitution. But Republicans won a 5-2 majority on the court in the 2022 elections and reheard the case today.
Republican state legislators maintain that only the legislature can approve expenditures of state funds.
Matthew Tilley, an attorney for legislative leaders, said the Supreme Court didn’t have jurisdiction to issue a statewide ruling over a lawsuit that originated in Hoke County.
In a 2004 decision in the case, “The zone of interest was Hoke County only,” Tilley said.
But Justice Anita Earls countered that the first Leandro decision, penned by former Chief Justice Burley Mitchell Jr., did say the courts could determine whether every child in the state is receiving a sound basic education.
“(School districts) are challenging the state policy of how schools are funded,” Earls told Tilley.
Tilley said Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr., who oversaw the case from 2004 to 2016, found that education failures occurred among school districts, not in state funding.
Dubis said that, at worst, the General Assembly wants to draw the Supreme Court into its “obfuscation and recalcitrance.” She cited an opinion from the Court’s second hearing of the case that said the state can’t abdicate its responsibility for providing a sound basic education by blaming school districts.
Dubis painted the notion of a ruling just about Hoke County as absurd.
The Leandro rulings call for a well-trained, certified teacher in every classroom. Today, Hoke County has 114 classrooms that aren’t staffed with a certified teacher, Dubis said, while House Speaker Tim Moore’s Cleveland County has 115 such classrooms.
Should Hoke County get help while Cleveland doesn’t? she asked. Should aspiring teachers get scholarships only if they agree to teach in Hoke County?
“It is a system, Your Honor, that works on a statewide basis,” she said.
Justice Phil Berger Jr. – son of NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger – asked at one point whether the Supreme Court would cross a boundary and step into a legislative role by ordering the expenditure of state funds.
But state Solicitor General Ryan Park countered that if the courts find a constitutional violation but can’t order a remedy, “I don’t think anyone wants to live in that system.”
A decision is expected in the coming months. Meanwhile, North Carolina ranks 49th in the country in the percentage of its economy that it invests in public education.3
Whatever the justices decide, North Carolina needs to keep those 480,049 children in mind and – finally – do what’s right by them.
1 https://www.wral.com/story/judge-nc-s-unfunded-education-mandates-total-677-8m/20819047/.
2 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23266854-hoke-county-board-of-education-et-al-v-state-of-north-carolina-et-al-425a21-2, p. 125.
3 https://edlawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Making-the-Grade-2023.pdf, pp. 22-23.
Susan Hughes says
Teach Phonics!!!!!
The science behind learning to read has been lost due to all the federal BS. And it starts with the schools of education – why are we not training future teachers in phonetics?
My 2 children who were taught phonics in kinder/1st grade have ALWAYS read above grade level and enjoy reading! My three who didn’t have phonics instruction always struggled and to this day never pick up a book for pleasure.