Parties in the long-running education lawsuit known as Leandro have made their first arguments before the state Supreme Court.
This latest phase for the case will determine the fate of a superior court-ordered plan to eventually boost state school spending by more than $5.6 billion per year and overhaul numerous education policies surrounding school accountability and turnaround.
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The lawsuit, filed in 1994, argued that the state was not providing adequate resources to enable a constitutionally promised quality education to public school students. Courts have since ruled the state is not providing a “sound basic education” to the state’s children, but haven't ruled on the resources question.
The case has lingered open for years without a proposed resolution until parties agreed to a resolution last year, called the Leandro Plan. The hangup is whether lawmakers will fund it.
The recently filed briefs will provide justices with the basis for the arguments parties will make during a hearing the week before Labor Day.
Attorneys for five low-wealth school systems, the state and others all filed briefs asking justices to order a $785 million transfer of state funds.
The money would cover the court-approved education plan’s implementation for last year and this year, which originally totaled $1.75 billion. The funds would increase funding for special education students and other disadvantaged students, and do dozens of other things.
The state General Assembly did not appropriate those funds in the budget for this year or last year. Lawmakers just passed another budget Friday, though estimates contend that budget is still more than $400 million of dollars short of what’s owed under the plan for this year alone. Gov. Roy Cooper hasn’t yet signed the budget into law nor issued a veto.
Lawmakers intervening in the Leandro case — Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland — argued courts can’t force them to spend that money or approve policies required by the plan. They say court rulings that the state is not providing a sound basic education for schoolchildren can’t be applied outside of Hoke County.
The matter before the Supreme Court could be as narrow as determining whether the court can order the General Assembly to adopt new policies or approve new funding, in the context of the Leandro lawsuit and the Leandro Plan. It could be as broad as considering whether the court can ever do that, examining whether further study is needed to determine the impact of current state funding, or weighing whether the Leandro Plan itself is overly broad.
The plaintiffs, the state (still considered defendants) and plaintiff-intervenors are appealing Judge Michael Robinson’s amended superior court order, issued in April, that removed sentences requiring three state officials to transfer funds to cover the Leandro Plan.
Lawmakers are pushing the court to consider taking a wider look at the case — not just whether the judicial branch can force the legislative branch’s hand on funding appropriations or policy-making, but also whether the Leandro Plan is fundamentally flawed or necessary at all.
The appeal filed by attorneys for Berger and Moore asks the Supreme Court to throw out Robinson’s order finding that the state has underfunded the Leandro Plan by $785 million.
Attorney Matthew Tilley contends the state Supreme Court’s decision from 2004 ruled only that the conditions of Hoke County Schools were unconstitutional. The Leandro Plan, in implicating solutions across North Carolina, goes too far, Tilley said. At the same time, he argues, no court has taken up the constitutionality of current state funding.
“(L)eft to its own devices for twenty years, the trial court disregarded and ultimately defied this Court’s prior rulings,” lawmakers’ filing argues, “by purporting to impose specific educational funding and policy requirements for the entire State in the Order on Appeal.”
Plaintiffs see those 20 years differently.
“The trial court—acting with remarkable judicial restraint—afforded the State nearly unfettered discretion for almost two decades to develop its chosen Leandro remedial plan,” they argued in their filing. “The trial court went to extraordinary lengths in granting the political branches of government time, deference, and opportunity to use their informed judgment as to the “nuts and bolts” of the remedy. In the intervening eighteen years, an entirely new generation of North Carolina school children, especially those at-risk and socio-economically disadvantaged, were denied a fundamental constitutional right.”
That the order is limited to Hoke County is an argument that’s been made before, given the nearly 400 pages of trial court rulings reviewed by the Supreme Court concerned the trial court’s findings in Hoke County and the state’s role.
Judge Howard Manning, who wrote the trial court rulings, explicitly the stated in the rulings that the state was failing to provide a sound basic education beyond Hoke County and ordered statewide remedies.
In the 2004 order, the Supreme Court affirmed Manning’s order that the state must reassess the deficiencies that led to Hoke County’s situation. The court also urged the trial court to explore more issues brought up in the lawsuit, including claims made in other counties, and remanded outstanding issues in other counties back to the trial court rather than leave them unaddressed.
Both the Supreme Court and Manning deferred solutions first to the executive and judicial branches of government.
Since the 2004, proceedings in the case have concerned whether improvements have been made both in and beyond Hoke County.
Proponents of the Leandro Plan have argued Hoke County was placed under a microscope in service to the broader Leandro case, which was brought by Hoke County’s school board and four other county school boards facing similar challenges. They contend a 14-month trial, such as was held in Hoke County, is not feasible for all 115 North Carolina school systems, which are all primarily dependent on the state.