28 years later, NC schools still seeking Leandro case's promise of a 'sound basic education'

The rural county school district’s leaders boast a burgeoning innovation to the county’s educational landscape. Slowly, “F” schools are moving to “D.” “D” schools are moving to “C.”

At one school, Aurelian Springs Elementary, pre-kindergarten through second grade students are learning Spanish and English throughout the day.

It’s a global-themed school; all district schools have themes now, meant to attract students and families. Like magnet schools that a larger county would have, but right here in rural Littleton.

This isn’t the same Halifax County School system whose school board sued North Carolina in 1994, along with four other school boards and families, saying the state wasn’t giving them enough money to educate their students.

Though, in some ways, it is.

The books displayed atop Aurelian Springs’ library shelves, lit by a skylight, date back decades. One purports to tell the reader about how children live in West Germany, which dissolved in 1991.

While the students speak Spanish in their classes, it stops after second grade, and they have no art or music or specialty classes other than physical education.

Two miles up the road from Aurelian Springs, the collegiate and technical high school can’t afford a Spanish teacher, so non-Spanish speaking students can’t learn it there.

“It's almost a waste of time for the program to invest in it, if we can't continue it throughout,” Aurelian Springs’ Principal Marcus Jones said. “That's why it's so important that we get the material and the personnel to support the program.”

Halifax County Schools leaders’ visions are bigger than their pocketbooks, broader than reading, writing or arithmetic. Those are essential, they say, but not the only essentials.

The district is just a few years removed from the height of state scrutiny over its finances and poor-performing schools. It still has one of the highest rates of teacher turnover among North Carolina school districts. Two schools remain “F” schools. None are “A” or “B” schools. The shares of students reading or doing math proficiently have improved but still lag behind the state averages.

Today, school leaders know success doesn’t just spring from money. But they say success springs from the ideas money pays for.

“Everything boils down to money,” Superintendent Eric Cunningham said. “We’re so close.”

The 1994 lawsuit the Halifax County Board of Education joined eventually resulted in a judgment and directive for North Carolina: Every school should have a high-quality teacher in every classroom, a high-quality and well-prepared principal and enough resources for effective instruction.

Called the “Leandro” lawsuit for one of the original student plaintiffs, it’s still mostly unresolved. The North Carolina Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs and has ordered the state provide a “sound basic education” to the state’s students. Since that initial ruling, superior court judges have continued to find the state is not doing so.

Test scores have stagnated; about half of students are passing end-of-grade and end-of-course tests, as the state sets ambitious growth goals.

By law, the state must pay for education. Counties are only responsible for capital costs, such as new buildings, repairs and renovations.

Every Child NC, a consortium of nonprofits that advocate for the plan, estimates the 2,000-student Halifax County Schools would have $8 million more to work with under the plan. Funds would nearly double for students with disabilities, triple for instructional support and nearly triple for disadvantaged students, by the 2027-28 school year.

“I know in my county, we have good teachers. We have good principals,” said Northwest Collegiate and Technical Academy Principal Steve Hunter. “But the resources always play a part.”

Halifax County Schools leaders say they’re asking for what other schools would consider basic.

“I’m asking for things we should have,” Hunter said.

Hunter’s school does receive a couple million more each year as a state Restart school to turnaround performance, but that’s just been a start for Hunter. With more money, Hunter would hire the Spanish teacher, buy more instruments for the band, take students on field trips and offer more career and college-ready programming.

Hunter wants people to think of his school — the same high school he graduated from in 1987 — as something other than the stereotype of a destitute, poor school. That’s not what it is.

The 300-student school’s performance grade rebounded in Hunter’s first year, from a “D” to a “C.” The four-year graduation rate rose from 71% to 83%.

To do that, Hunter emphasized teamwork. Faculty and staff worked together on a plan focused on meeting state accountability measures.

“I think we are headed in that direction of becoming a B school,” Hunter said. “And that would be colossal for a pure Title I school in eastern North Carolina, to become a B school.”

A Title I school has more students living in poverty. That’s every school in Halifax.

As Hunter plans for what he can afford, data suggest some correlations between funding and performance scores. Performance scores are 80% test scores and 20% academic growth scores.

WRAL News analyzed funding and school performance data from the 2018-19 school year, the latest year for which data on both were available.

Data show a statistically significant positive correlation between both the percentage and the raw dollar amount of a school district’s funding that came from local sources and the school district’s performance score.

The inverse is true, too: Increased reliance on state funding correlated with lower performance score. Data did not show a relationship between the dollar amount of state spending and performance score.

Essentially, schools that relied more on local funding — and spent more local dollars — did better than those that relied more on the state and spent less locally. Why these relationships exist is not clear.

Districts with more economically disadvantaged students, who often score lower on tests, qualify for more state money. Wealthier counties can raise more tax money and have smaller shares of economically disadvantaged students. Counties also tend to spend money differently than the state. When counties use their own funds, about 60% go toward salary and benefits and the rest to supplies and other resources. When the state spends money on education, about 90% is on salaries and benefits.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, which has one of the lowest poverty rates in the state, raises the most money locally and has some of the highest-performing schools. It’s often pointed to as an example of the type of district every North Carolina child should attend.

Superintendent Nyah Hamlett said what distinguishes the district is the support it provides students. The district has a psychologist and a nurse at every school, three additional school nurses that float between schools and a mental health specialist at every high school. The district is planning to hire mental health specialists for every middle school.

While districts statewide have struggled to hire nurses and psychologists for years, even when others had openings, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools hasn’t.

All of those resources are helping the district handle students’ struggles related to COVID-19, Hamlett said. But students still need more support, she said, and the district should set its sights higher for a modern “high-quality, affirming education.”

“I don’t think school districts in North Carolina can say, ‘We have enough,’” Hamlett said.

In the 28 years since the landmark Leandro lawsuit was filed, education leaders have come and gone, federal education policies have swept in and out and societal expectations for education have risen, and risen again. Throughout these past three decades, North Carolina leaders across the political spectrum agree not enough of the state’s schools have been making the grade.

Spending has risen since 1994, even when adjusted for inflation.

“And much of that money is well spent,” said Senate President Pro tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham. “But much of it is certainly not providing the outcomes that the people of North Carolina deserve and our children need.”

“The real question is who has the authority to make those decisions?” Berger said. “And if you skip over that you're missing the entire point, and you're missing the danger.”

Only the General Assembly has the authority to set the state’s budget, Berger notes. Further, Berger said the General Assembly is responsible for deciding whether and how to fix the state’s schools.

Advocates for the Leandro plan disagree with both of those notions.

Rick Glazier, executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Justice Center, said the state has agreed to a plan that a judge has ordered, and the state is bound by that. Other defendants in court would not say, “’Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, we're not going to comply,’” Glazier said.

“They would be sanctioned, they would be held in contempt of court. Courts only exist if they can enforce their judgments,” he said.

The Justice Center lobbies lawmakers to support the Leandro plan and promotes the plan through its own work and involvement in Every Child NC.

The namesake of the Leandro lawsuit, Robb Leandro, thought the case would have been over more than 20 years ago. He agreed to join the lawsuit when he was 14 years old.

Back then, he remembers his Hoke County school couldn’t afford science labs. He and his classmates watched Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools students do their science labs on a closed-circuit TV.

Leandro’s high school athletic uniforms were 20 years old. School books were just as dated. Sometimes, his school would run out of paper.

“We kind of thought the case will be decided, maybe by my senior year,” Leandro said. “All these resources would maybe come in if we want, and then it'd be great.”

Instead, Leandro graduated without a resolution in place.

North Carolina had more than 1.1 million students in 1994. Another nearly 3 million North Carolina children — including two full generations — have started school and graduated since the lawsuit was filed.

No other comprehensive plan to remedy the shortcomings has ever been presented except the one approved in court.

Now dubbed “the Leandro plan,” it calls for higher salaries for educators and staff, more educator support and training programs, more classroom resources, more support personnel, greater funding for students with extra needs, an improved system for school accountability and turnaround, expanded pre-kindergarten and more workforce and college preparation. It requires an annual increase in education spending of at least $5.6 billion by the 2027-28 school year, up from about $10 billion now.

In 1994, Cumberland County Schools received less money per student, from the state and locally, than most districts. It had overcrowded and deteriorating facilities, Glazier, a former school board member, recalled.

The district, one of the five that sued, resembled many others in North Carolina that lacked resources for disadvantaged students, while having high rates of poverty, students with disabilities and English-language learners.

“All the problems of society end up at the doorsteps of public schools across the country,” Glazier said.

The struggle for some schools is compounded by counties with higher poverty and lower property values being unable raise the local funds that many others can, Glazier said. To an extent, he and others say those local dollars are comprising essential costs.

That the state isn’t fulfilling its Constitutional duties is clear to Glazier.

“And that seems to me to be an unconscionable circumstance, and a legacy none of us want to continue,” he said.

Retired Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning said he doesn’t agree or disagree with the Leandro plan, but he’s skeptical of the California-based firm that led the project and the plan’s focus on money.

Manning oversaw the case in Wake County Superior Court from its beginning in 1994 until his retirement in 2015. During that time, Manning traveled to schools throughout the state and became outspoken against leadership at failing schools. He grew to believe some educators are more concerned about their salaries than about their students’ test scores.

Believing the test scores should improve first, Manning has grown disillusioned by proposals to remedy North Carolina schools that include higher salaries.

Manning has heard grumbles from politicians and education leaders for years, first from the Democrats in power. Once he retired, Democrats in state government — namely the State Board of Education and the governor — started making moves to come up with a comprehensive Leandro plan, he said.

“They spent $2 million on a bunch of people from California, coming in here and examining our school system and say, ‘Oh, yeah, Kumbaya,’” Manning said.

Glazier thinks Manning has been right about a lot of things in Leandro. But Glazier thinks money is crucial toward paying to solve problems caused by a lack of resources or not having the best teachers or principals in schools.

“What he didn't recognize in my opinion, is that at a base level, adequacy is crucial,” Glazier said.

The best teachers and principals come to rural counties and stay there if they’re paid competitively, he said. And schools need extra funds for students with greater needs that they may not be getting because of funding caps.

Data shows North Carolina schools with higher poverty rates have more inexperienced and provisional teachers, while lower poverty schools have more experienced teachers.

“While they may not think the instruction level is what it ought to be in ‘X’ County, maybe that's because ‘X’ County can't afford the instructional materials, the textbooks, the mentoring, the professional development,” Glazier said.

Marcus Jones, the principal of Aurelian Springs elementary school, has seen Halifax County Schools through the decades. He graduated from there in 1993, got his first job there after college.

When Jones was a student, he heard family members elsewhere talk about education experiences he couldn’t relate to. When he was a teacher, he paid for school supplies out of his own pocket. Now he’s a principal, and his teachers continue to pay for school supplies.

He’d like to hire more instructional assistants for large upper elementary classes.

First grade teacher Connie Wheeler said instructional assistants would help students learn and learn faster. She could work with a group of students in her class while an assistant works with another. It would especially help as more students struggle with reading.

“I feel like we need assistance, to assist the teacher and working with these kids to provide them with more intervention,” Wheeler said.

Less than half of Aurelian Springs’ students are reading proficiently. Prior to the pandemic, the percentage of students reading proficiently had grown some.

With more money, Jones would ensure the school has its own counselor, its own social worker and its own nurse, to make sure students’ needs are met and they’re ready to learn. The school shares all three with other schools. Jones would also spend more money on curriculum, art, music, field trips and other experiential learning opportunities.

Superintendent Eric Cunningham has a vision, too, though he knows he can’t implement it all.

Cunningham wants more schools to have dual-language immersion programs like Aurelian Springs. He wants the students at other county schools to have access to Chromebooks like those at Northwest do. He wants microscopes for science labs. He wants all students to be able learn workforce skills and be paid for it.

He’s made progress toward paid workforce learning through local partnerships, helping several students work in solar panel installation last summer.

Cunningham knows Northwest can’t afford a Spanish teacher, even though students down the road at Aurelian Springs speak it every day. Cunningham wants everyone to know.

“I'm creating the sense of urgency, where our parents will demand that we do something,” Cunningham said. He wants the community to have higher expectations and push for consistency, push for things the Leandro plan could fund.

Steve Hunter, the Northwest Collegiate and Technical Academy principal, thinks politics have dominated too much of the conversation around Leandro and school funding.

“We need to stop the bickering about ‘I'm a Democrat.’ ‘I'm a Republican,’” Hunter said. “No. We're humans, and we have an impact on young lives.”

Berger, the Senate leader, hasn’t visited any of Halifax County’s schools, at least not recently. Nor schools in the other four counties involved in the Leandro suit. He told WRAL News he doesn’t need to. Schools in his own Rockingham County, on the state’s southern border, face similar challenges and aren’t performing at the level they need to be, either.

Berger agrees many North Carolina schools “are not performing the function that we would want them to perform,” he said.

“I don't think there's any question about that. The real question is, what's the remedy? What is the appropriate thing?”

For Berger, the solution mostly wouldn’t be about money.

An alternate solution to Leandro has been slow in arrival, complicated by financial turmoil. The recession in the late aughts prompted Republican lawmakers — elected to a majority for the first time in years in 2010 — to cut spending, including for schools.

While the state’s funding of education has rebounded, under continued Republican leadership, it hasn’t necessarily been restored to how funding was before the recession. For example, the state spent $88.5 million last year on central office administration employees, down from $118 million during the 2008-09 school year. Funding for teaching assistants remains more than $70 million below what it used to be. Non-instructional support personnel funding has rebounded but not kept up with inflation.

North Carolina lawmakers have added 19 permanent new funding sources since 2004 that remain today, totaling about $710 million during the 2020-21 school year.

Most of the new funding sources do not apply to all schools. They apply to schools that qualify, that apply to participate or that opt into programs.

The biggest new investment from state education funding has been in the relatively new Restart Schools, totaling $456.6 million during the 2020-21 school year for 29 counties. Restart Schools are low-performing schools with charter school-like flexibility to implement reforms. The state has 152 Restart Schools, out of more than 2,600 public schools statewide.

Lawmakers approved a budget in November that includes just less than half of the $1.7 billion the Leandro plan calls for this year and next year. About two-thirds went toward teacher and administrator salaries, though those comprised only about 40% of the court-approved Leandro plan.

The budget also includes $100 million for teacher and administrator salary supplements in 95 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, designed to address the challenges many counties have in hiring and retaining the best educators.

At the same time, lawmakers approved personal and corporate income tax cuts that will reduce annual state revenue by at least $2 billion below what the state would otherwise raise.

Recently, the state House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, formed a select committee for reimagining the state’s education system from the ground up. Its work is expected to take two years, with no clear final product.

Still, Halifax County Schools and others continue to push for comprehensive reform, like what they say is contained in the court-approved Leandro plan.

Making progress on the Leandro case shouldn’t be this hard, Glazier said.

“Going forward, there has to be agreement, sustained cross-party agreement, about what we expect out of our educational system, and what we think we need to input into that system to create those outcomes,” he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the Leandro plan more urgent for Glazier. Children are traumatized from missing school, dealing with the pandemic and perhaps even dealing with the death of a loved one from COVID-19, he said.

“When you've just lost a parent, it is hard to focus on social studies,” Glazier said.

Plus, masks can challenge student-to-student communication.

“So the additional social workers, school psychologist support system for kids is crucial now. And if the money isn't there, that is a big missing link," said Glazier.

Some observers blame both political parties for the delay in a Leandro resolution.

“It's a failure of leadership across party lines in my opinion,” said Letha Muhammad, director of the Education Justice Alliance. “When you look at the facts, this failure has happened on more than just one party's watch.”

As a parent and advocate, Muhammad has seen how different students experience school differently, even in school districts considered to be more well-off.

Muhammad’s daughter was performing above grade-level, but Muhammad had to ask her daughter’s Wake County School to give her extra work. She saw that Black boys in her daughter’s class were being disciplined more but not necessarily behaving differently. That eventually pushed her into activism, including fighting for the Leandro plan.

“If I fail to ensure that [her 10th grade son] got to school, I could be held accountable,” Muhammad said. “So I just don't understand, and I struggle with, where's the accountability for our elected officials to do what it is that they're constitutionally mandated to do? Which is to ensure that our students get a sound basic education.”

But for Berger, the Leandro plan doesn’t represent the state’s Constitutional obligation to provide a sound basic education.

“You’ve got to be able to separate the question of what you think the solution should be, from the question of who has the authority to make those decisions,” Berger said.

If the North Carolina Supreme Court found that the state had to fund the Leandro plan, however, Berger won’t say what the General Assembly would do.

“We'll have to see if that happens,” Berger said.

Halifax County Schools is not a portrait of success. But leaders say it’s ascending.

The district has come a long way in just a couple of years. For several years, it was publicly in turmoil. Test scores were among the lowest in the state.

Outsiders found financial mismanagement. The state increased oversight. Residents sued to consolidate with the two city school districts in the county. The case was dismissed.

High per-student spending wasn’t yielding big results. Enrollment dropped by nearly half, faster than the county shrank. The district hadn’t purchased curricula to guide teaching on any subjects. The former Leandro Judge Howard Manning said “academic genocide” was happening there.

Eric Cunningham took over as superintendent of Halifax County Schools in 2016, after years of district strife reverberating all the way to Raleigh.

“This is the toughest job I ever loved,” Cunningham said. “The waves here are something that I've never encountered before in my 30 years of experience.”

Cunningham likes to recall his first day of school in 2016. He rode an elementary school bus. He saw a mother drawing water from a spring because she didn’t have running water at home. He saw another mother pull her home’s broken front door off its hinges to let her child through. He teared up. A child told him not to worry; it was just the first day of school.

“How do you provide a sound basic education for these kids when they're having so many barriers up front?” Cunningham said.

Cunningham is optimistic, though, along with his school leaders. They remain committed to their plans to improve their schools with or without Leandro funding.

Halifax County Schools has raised about $2 million more locally through a new dedicated school tax. It’s helping, but it’s not enough, leaders say.

“But imagine what we could do if we had the funds,” said Hunter, the Northwest high school principal. Hunter envisions what other, bigger counties can afford. “If this poor Title I school in eastern North Carolina is a ‘C’ school. Imagine that we have the extra millions based on the tax base that we don't have. If we had it, what could we do? Just imagine.”