MELISSA PRICE KROMM: Will justices side with N.C. kids or extreme politicians?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Melissa Price Kromm is the director of North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections.

It’s that time of year again, when parents across North Carolina are putting their kids in their best new outfits, getting out the chalkboards and lining them up for first-day pictures on their front porch. I’ll admit, I got a little sentimental when I walked my youngest daughter to school.

And while I’ve seen tons of similar first-day pictures flooding my Facebook feed, what I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about something that could impact our children for years to come – the Leandro constitutional right to education lawsuit that will be argued this week before the North Carolina Supreme Court.

For more than a decade, I’ve seen how funding cuts have starved our kids’ schools of vital resources. In the middle of one school year, my son’s favorite teacher departed for a better-paying job to take care of her own family.

Another year, our kids had to share a single set of crumbling social studies textbooks across three classrooms. My daughter had no Spanish teacher for weeks on end. Last year my youngest had no teacher for half of Kindergarten.

Here in North Carolina, we know our kids deserve better. That’s why our founders wrote the right to a quality education into our state’s constitution. Our state Supreme Court upheld that right in 1997 and determined that every North Carolina child has the right to “receive a sound basic education.”

The justices doubled down in 2004, ordering a much-needed increase in funding for our schools. However, for 18 years, extremist politicians in the legislature have defied that court order and failed to even develop a plan to remedy this ongoing constitutional violation. For 18 years, extremist lawmakers have chosen political grandstanding, while North Carolina’s children have suffered.

We don’t need to add more political grandstanding to our courts.

North Carolina courts should be free of partisanship, ensuring equal protection for all under the law. If you’re ever in a situation where you must appear in court, you don’t want the judge to be wearing a jersey for this team or that team – you want the judge to be wearing a plain black robe that shows they will be fair and impartial, no matter whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent.

However, over the past decade, actions by the legislature have increasingly infected our courts with politics and undermined judicial independence.

It started with the legislature changing judicial elections from non-partisan to partisan contests – making North Carolina the first state in decades to force judges to declare their party affiliation. But it didn’t stop there. There have been repeated attempts – some successful, some not – by the legislature to rig judicial elections, gerrymander judicial districts, and even threaten judges with impeachment when they make unfavorable rulings.

The legislature’s attacks on judicial independence should be very concerning to North Carolina citizens. What’s more, recent, unprecedented actions by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby and his allies raise ethical questions and have intensified the partisanship of the Court.

The court’s independence is crucial to ensuring fair maps and elections and being the last line of defense against political gerrymandered maps. State courts are often the final deciders on crucial issues that impact our everyday lives, such as voting rights, fair elections, reproductive freedom, and our kids’ schools.

That’s what’s on the line with the Leandro case. North Carolina is sitting on billions in reserves. Those are our tax dollars – not the legislature’s – and they should go to provide for a sound basic education for our children.

So the question is this – will the state Supreme Court continue to uphold the North Carolina Constitution and ensure our children have what is due to them? Or will justices like Newby choose to put on their team jerseys and side with extremist politicians in the legislature?

Without fair and impartial courts, we wind up with decades of political combat and nothing to show for it but crumbling social studies books.