Editorial: End the courtroom delay tactics. Fund education equity order now

Friday, April 15, 2022 -- For too long, access to a quality education had depended on where you lived and who your parents were. That is NOT what North Carolina's Constitution intended. Now is the time for the legislature to advance the solution - and stop being the impediment to the quality education every child is entitled to.

Posted 3:21 a.m. Apr 15, 2022 — Updated 11:05 a.m. Apr 15, 2022

CBC Editorial: Friday, April 15, 2022; Editorial #8753

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

“The plaintiffs want today the same thing they wanted 28 years ago when this case was filed. And that is to have the state live up to its constitutional obligations to the children in these counties and across the state of North Carolina.”

So said Melanie Dubis, the lawyer representing low-wealth school districts in the long-running case over education equity, during a hearing Wednesday.

Twenty-eight years. Countless hours of courtroom hearings and debates. Thousands of pages of legal pleadings. Mounds of data. Two landmark North Carolina Supreme Court decisions.

What does it take to get a government -- that is supposed to represent the people; one where elected officials in the three branches of government take oaths to uphold the State Constitution -- to fulfill that Constitution’s promise of access to a sound, quality education for every child?

It doesn’t require any more court hearings or renderings from judges or justices.

What it takes is for the leaders of the North Carolina General Assembly to stop their obstinance and give Judge Michael Robinson and the plaintiffs, defendants, intervenors and their lawyers a break.

Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore need to tell Judge Robinson now that they intend, when the legislature reconvenes May 4, to introduce and move legislation to assure implementation of the Comprehensive Remedial Plan, as Judge David Lee ordered and provide all the funding necessary to do it. There’s enough money in the state coffers to do that – and more.

This will put the legislature on the side of the law – obeying a proper court order.

This will put the legislature on the side of the people it represents – supporting quality public schools.

Significant pluralities agree with the courts determination that the state isn’t living up to its Constitutional duty according to the latest WRAL-TV poll – 50% of those who say they voted for Donald Trump; 51% of rural voters and even 45% of Republicans. Sixty-two percent of North Carolinians say public schools are under funded including 59% of Republicans and 63% of rural voters. Additionally, 66% of North Carolinians say teachers are underpaid – including 66% of Republicans.

It will set aside the strange argument Berger and Moore are putting forward that legislative action – particularly on matters of the budget – are not subject to judicial review. We thought that was the absolute rule kind of stuff that our nation’s founders fought the Revolutionary War over.

Matthew Tilley, the lawyer representing Berger and Moore, suggested that Judge Robinson might even rescind Lee’s order. He suggested that enforcing Lee’s order would essentially override the budget. “That is a more extreme measure,” he said.

Courts have regularly ruled, over the years, that the state has failed to meet an obligation or acted contrary to the law – and ordered the state to spend money to remedy the matter. It is Berger and Moore who are arguing the novel concept – the consensus agreement by the Leandro case plaintiffs and defendants – as embodied in Judge Lee’s order.

For too long, access to a quality education had depended on where you lived and who your parents were. That is NOT what North Carolina’s Constitution intended.

Now is the time for the legislature to advance the solution – and stop being the impediment to the quality education every North Carolina child is entitled to.

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