NC high court weighs who should benefit from a $677.8M education improvement plan
The future of education in North Carolina made its way back to the North Carolina Supreme Court Thursday.
Lawyers in the long-running Leandro public education funding lawsuit argued over whether all of the state’s schoolchildren should benefit from a proposed plan to improve North Carolina public education — or whether the plan should be thrown out.
Justices asked questions about recent and decades-old court decisions, what is and isn’t settled in the case, and what would happen if more families decided to sue in the future during more than an hour of oral arguments. Some justices wondered whether more families should be a part of the unwieldy, 30-year-old lawsuit before the plan can proceed. A ruling is expected in the next few months.
The lawsuit before North Carolina Supreme Court — Hoke County Board of Education v. State of North Carolina — is commonly referred to as Leandro, a reference to an original student plaintiff in the case. It has broadly focused on one main issue: Ensuring the state is providing children with an adequate education. It was first filed in 1994 but hasn’t been resolved, as technical aspects of the case float through the state judicial system and raise broad questions about education policy and funding — and judicial and legislative powers.
As lawyers argued before a packed courtroom Thursday faint noise from demonstrators outside could be heard, punctuated by a honking caravan of vehicles with placards with slogans such as “Give the children their money!”
Thursday’s arguments centered mostly on scope: Should decisions in the case apply to all schools in the state? Or should they apply to schools in just five counties where school officials and families have sued: Hoke, Halifax, Cumberland, Vance and Robeson?
“I don't think anyone would disagree that at least there are areas of the state where we're failing schoolchildren,” said Ryan Park, the state’s solicitor general. North Carolina favors a statewide solution, he said, adding: “Barely half of our students are passing the basic proficiency standards for reading and math that have been established by the State Board of Education.”
A question of scope
Matthew Tilley, a lawyer for lawmakers intervening in the case, argued no formal trial or proceedings had been held over whether issues have been found across the remaining school systems. No trial court judges have issued rulings on that, he said.
"There's no judgment there," he said, referring to the court record.
Tilley said the original judges only intended their ruling to affect Hoke County, where the case began. He said it was the state’s idea to apply it statewide, not the court’s.
“The fact that the state says, ‘OK, we're going to solve Hoke County's problems with a statewide initiative’ does not mean that the court has the power to order the state to implement those remedies anywhere other than where the violation is found,” Tilley said.
Lawyers are focusing on a lower court’s finding that $677.8 million is still owed to schools across the state as a part of a proposed remedy to the lawsuit.
The money — which funds a remedial program known as the Leandro Plan — is earmarked for salaries and programs for students with disabilities and pre-kindergarten students, among other things. At its core, it calls for high-quality teachers in every classroom, and well prepared principals in every school, and adequate resources to support them.
Two state lawmakers — Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland — intervened in the lawsuit seeking to overturn that $677.8 million finding, arguing it’s too broad, applying to too many students.
They don’t support the plan and are contesting orders related to its implementation, including a separate claim that the Supreme Court can’t order funding because only lawmakers can authorize funding. They favor many education ideas that aren’t in the plan, such as expanding private school vouchers by hundreds of millions of dollars. They haven’t listed parts of the plan they oppose but have said they are skeptical of the difference more money will make.
Supporters of that funding contend Thursday’s hearing amounted to a “re-hearing” of a 2022 state Supreme Court ruling that ordered the funding. In that party-line decision, the Democratic-led court at the time ruled 4-3 that the problems identified in the case had been established statewide.
After the 2022 elections, the state’s high court flipped in ideology. It now has a 5-2 Republican majority and is seen as more likely to side with legislators. The new court has agreed to take up arguments in other cases the prior court has already ruled on.
Melanie Dubis, an attorney for the plaintiff school boards, said the case has long established that a statewide solution is the only workable way forward. How could the court justify helping one county hire more qualified teachers but say it can't help another county do the same? she argued. "It's completely impractical," Dubis said.
Dubis also noted that the problems in the five counties exist in other counties that aren’t a part of the case.
“There are 114 classrooms in Hoke County that are not staffed with a qualified, certified teacher,” Dubis said. “By comparison, in Speaker Moore’s county, Cleveland County, there are 115 classrooms that are not staffed by certified teachers.”
More families needed?
Some justices questioned why no current students were plaintiffs in the case and whether families outside of those counties may want to be included.
Republican Associate Justice Richard Dietz said families from elsewhere could file any number of cases making similar allegations. He wondered whether some may not agree with a case that’s currently being brought only by school boards, now that the student plaintiffs are no longer students. He said county school boards themselves could be found at fault for failing to provide an adequate education, as well.
“We need to provide relief in this case,” Dietz said. He suggested a class-action process — where the counties would represent a “class” of people who are not named parties in the case — may provide more finality.
Park agreed that a class-action process could better resolve a case like this.
But Park also said it's common for people to intervene in a case if they have an interest that they think isn't being represented. It happened in the state's recent litigation involving makers of opioids. But no other families have done that in this case, he said.
More politicians weigh in
Outside of the courtroom Thursday, some state leaders urged justices to maintain the 2022 finding of a statewide problem and the Leandro Plan as its solution.
“It makes no sense that we’ve spent decades fighting over the simple principle that we need to have a good teacher in every classroom and a good principal in every school,” Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement. “The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed that principle. Now, the legislative leadership is trying to undo that landmark victory for public education because they don’t want to adequately invest in our kids’ future, and they believe the new court will let them get away with it.”
Spokespeople for Berger and Moore didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.
Stein, a Democrat, is seeking his party’s nomination to replace Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited. Cooper on Thursday accused the court’s new Republican majority of siding with Republican lawmakers since the 2022 election.
“So far, this court has done whatever legislative leaders have told them to do,” Cooper said in a statement. “Let’s hope that this time, this court will be unafraid to uphold decades of bipartisan precedent and side with school children instead of bowing to political power.”
Cooper originally fought the plaintiffs’ case as attorney general two decades ago but now as governor is supportive of the resolution the state and plaintiffs have reached, the Leandro Plan.
Republican Chief Justice Paul Newby didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment made through a court spokesperson.
'A critical moment'
Dozens of demonstrators with Every Child NC — a consortium of nonprofits that support the Leandro Plan — gathered on the State Capitol grounds across from the Supreme Court on Thursday, before and during the hearing.
Madalo Bean, an eighth-grader from Wayne County, called on state lawmakers and the court to stop delaying the billions of dollars in statewide funding the earlier ruling required.
“With the money that Wayne County could receive, my school could have done so much’ Madalo said. “Maybe we could have gotten rid of the mice in my seventh-grade math teacher’s classroom.”
Rodney Pierce, a social studies teacher in Northampton County, noted that he was a Halifax County student when the case was filed in 1994. That makes him a “Leandro kid.”
Now, his children attend Halifax County Schools, with the case still open. They’re Leandro kids, too, he said.
“We are here today together in solidarity for a cause that defines the very fabric of our society,” said Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators and an elementary music teacher in Cumberland County. “The rallying cry for an adequate funding [of] public education. And it is a critical moment here everyone, because the actions — our actions, their actions — shape the destiny of many generations to come.”
