North Carolina lawmakers should fund the more than $5.6 billion education equity plan ordered by a state court, the Wake County Board of Education said in a resolution approved Tuesday.
The board also approved a resolution urging lawmakers to pass legislation allowing the board to have staggered four-year terms instead of two-year terms all up for election at the same time.
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Bills have been filed to do both things in the resolutions, but they haven’t proceeded to the school board’s satisfaction.
Changes have been made in the election bill’s term lengths, and House and Senate leaders won’t commit to funding the education equity plan in biennium budget for this year and next.
The so-called Leandro plan — a reference to an original plaintiff — calls for nearly $1.8 billion in funding over both this year, beginning July 1, 2021, and next year, ending June 30, 2023.
House and Senate budgets filed this summer proposed less than half that.
Republican leadership has touted efforts to improve reading instruction already under way and to increase scholarships for students to use to transfer to private schools. So-called Opportunity Scholarships have been underutilized but lawmakers have said increasing the amount of the scholarships would increase their use.
The goal of the Leandro plan is better teachers and principals, more support for struggling students and more learning opportunities — especially for the state’s low-wealth counties.
North Carolina has been increasing its education spending at a faster rate lately but still remains toward the bottom nationwide in spending per student.
Several Wake County school board members spoke in favor of the resolution Tuesday night, arguing the state has the money to fund the plan without raising taxes or taking from other funds.
Robustly funding schools has been critical toward improving North Carolina’s economy, Board Member Chris Heagarty said. It was supported by both major political parties in the in 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, he said, but is more divided now.
“We had different ideas for how we funded schools,” he said, such as income tax or sales tax. “But there was never any question that we should fund our schools.”
Board Chairman Keith Sutton said funding three main goals of the Leandro Plan — a high quality teacher in every classroom, a high quality principal in every school and universal access to high quality early education — would be transformative to students and the state. He agreed that rural schools are often in worse shape than more urban ones like those in Wake County.
Board Member Christine Kushner said the state needs to focus on public education.
“We don’t need more scholarships,” she said. “We don’t need more privatization of schools.”
By law, the state is supposed to fund education. Counties can level property taxes to raise additional funds for education. But the state’s Constitution said says all children are entitled to a “sound basic education.”
So in 1994, five school boards from the state’s poorest counties sued and argued the state wasn’t doing that. On top of that, the counties said they couldn’t raise enough local tax revenue to pay for it themselves.
Wake County superior court and the North Carolina Supreme Court have agreed with them in several rulings.
While the lawsuit dates back 27 years, concerns over resources to fund education has been compounded by disrupted learning and lower test scores that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of three federal stimulus packages sending more than $5 billion to North Carolina has been muted by high turnover and a lack of job applicants, mostly for the lowest-paid positions.