Sunday marked two years since the NC Supreme Court last heard arguments in the school funding suit Leandro v. State of North Carolina, though the case’s full history spans decades.
The court remains at a standstill despite previous rulings in favor of Leandro and the other defendants as recently as 2022.
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Educators and others familiar with the case can’t help but feel as though North Carolina and the court’s inaction is intrinsically tied to the legislature’s prioritization of private school vouchers over the last 15 years.
History of Leandro
In the lawsuit, filed in 1994, plaintiffs from five low-wealth counties claimed the state was not fulfilling its constitutional duty to provide a sound, basic education to all children on the argument that their children didn’t have access to the same education and resources as children in wealthier districts.
The state appealed the lawsuit until the state Supreme Court allowed it to go to trial in 1997. In 2002, the court found the state was violating students’ right to a sound, basic education as promised in the state’s Constitution.
The court ordered the state to provide a competent, certified teacher in every classroom, a well-trained, competent principal in every school and the “resources necessary to support the effective instructional program” in every school “so that the educational needs of all children, including at-risk children, to have an equal opportunity to obtain a sound basic education, can be met.”
The state appealed the 2002 ruling, leading the court to affirm its stance again in 2004. Hearings continued for more than a decade. When the case changed hands from Judge Howard Manning, who retired in 2017, to Judge David Lee, Lee appointed the consultant agency WestEd to conduct a review and determine how the state could fulfill its responsibilities.
WestEd’s Comprehensive Remedial Plan was sent to the court in early 2021. Lee ordered the legislature to report on its progress in attempting to fund education as was included in the plan, which the legislature, in short, did not comply with, leading Lee to take matters into his own hands.
“Lee issued a decision to move more than $1.7 billion in appropriated state funds into education budgets to fund the initial provisions of the Comprehensive Remedial Plan. Although the 2021-23 budget did increase educational spending, it fell far short of the funds needed for full Leandro remediation,” according to Public Schools First NC.
The state Court of Appeals said Lee didn’t have the authority to do so, though scholars argued there was judicial precedent. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in 2022 and ruled in favor of Leandro and the other plaintiffs, ordering the legislature to partially fund the Comprehensive Remedial Plan.
Four days after the 2022 ruling, elections resulted in the court’s partisan makeup shifting from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority.
Deliberations on the transfer of funds continued through 2023 until the newly Republican-dominated court agreed to hear another round of oral arguments, which took place Feb. 22, 2024. Now, two years later, the court has not issued a ruling.
The waiting game
Educators and champions for the Leandro plaintiffs are quick to point out that the state actually hasn’t been awaiting a ruling for two years — there is already a ruling in favor of Leandro from decades ago.
“We’re not waiting on a court decision for two years; the court decided and decided when I was in high school, and I’m 47 years old,” said Bryan Proffitt, vice president of the North Carolina Association of Educators.
“We’re looking at 30 years of our state ignoring one of the most fundamental aspects of our state’s constitution, one of the things that makes our state constitution unique.”
Jack Boger, former dean of the UNC School of Law, has been involved with the case since the 1990s, including writing an amicus brief in favor of Hoke and the other districts in Leandro in 2024.
The case has drawn obvious lines in the sand between political parties, and Republicans specifically have made it known they’re against implementing the funding, Boger said. Democrats won’t have the chance to take over the court again until 2028, so although those in favor of Leandro are anxiously awaiting a ruling on the 2024 arguments, that may not be in their best interest.
“Unless there were changes in their own hearts or minds, Leandro would not survive, I think, a decision by the current court,” Boger said.
However, the court did have a difficult time trying to find a “rational, constitutional claim” to undo what had already been determined in past rulings, Boger said.
One justice raised the question of whether the rulings applied statewide given that the case primarily concerned Hoke County and a few other low-wealth districts. To that, Boger says, who wouldn’t want the resources enforced Leandro funding would offer?
“One justice interestingly asked, ‘Well, wait a minute. This was only involving a couple of school districts. Aren’t there other parents or school districts out there that haven’t been heard? Don’t they need their opportunity to be heard?’” Boger said.
“The real response to that, in my judgment, is saying, ‘This is a decision that would drive literally millions of dollars into virtually every school district — 10, 15, 20 new teachers, 14 new teachers aides, three new school psychologists.’ Is there any county in which the school board would say, ‘We don’t want that.’ They might want more than that, but it’s very hard to imagine that if asked, they’d say no.”
The court’s decision to hear additional arguments in 2024 was likely not because it intended to outright overturn previous decisions, Boger said, but simply to pump the brakes.
“The court had said, 4-3, you’ve got to do this,” Boger said. “It had not actually ordered the money be spent yet. It had sent it back down to the Superior Court for that. But unless you said, ‘Hold on, we’re going to bring the car back into the shop,’ it would have resulted in Leandro relief.
“So they halted the forward motion. They pulled the car back in for reinspection, if you would, they’ve gotten under the hood, they’ve looked under the bottom and, as the owner waits, they’ve gone two and a half years and haven’t said what they think is wrong or what should be done.”
Two things can be true, Proffitt said — prior to Republicans gaining control of the legislature after the 2010 election, there had been a bipartisan failure to meet the Leandro requirements.
However, the Republicans’ newly gained control of both the House and Senate in 2011, the first time the party had done so since 1896, marked a turning point to an “uncompromising, deeply corporate-backed, right-wing movement,” Proffitt said.
Leandro vs. vouchers?
Leandro and the state’s prioritization of the Opportunity Scholarship, or private school vouchers, are working in direct opposition to one another because lawmakers are directly choosing to fund vouchers rather than the Leandro plan, said Heather Koons, director of communications and research at Public Schools First NC.
The fight for more school funding in the ‘90s was generally successful, and schools and test scores were improving along with it, Koons said — until about 2010. Once the Opportunity Scholarship became law in 2013, lawmakers’ commitment to education has been, generally speaking, waning ever since, she said.
Every dollar that goes to vouchers is a dollar that doesn’t go to public schools, Proffitt said, and the steady expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship over the years paints a picture that might not be apparent initially but ultimately tells a clear story.
“All this is a pretty comprehensive package that, if you stepped back and said, ‘If all of these things happen, what would be the impact?’ The impact is we would not have public schools anymore in our state, and that’s been the intention of these folks from the beginning,” Proffitt said.
As the number of students and families receiving vouchers nears 100,000, they might seem more popular than ever. But public school funding is pretty popular too, and the majority agrees there’s not enough of it to go around. This demonstrates the legislature is out of step with the voters, Proffitt said.
The state currently spends about $11,000 per student, making North Carolina 50 out of 50th in per pupil spending. The NCAE’s newly launched Kids Over Corporations campaign asks for the legislature to nearly double that at $20,000 per student by 2030.
In an ideal world, the state would sunset the voucher funding altogether, Koons said. And though the WestEd report is years old now, meaning some of its recommendations are likely outdated and not up to par with the actual state of public education, something is better than nothing, she said.
“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I mean, that plan is a good plan, and they just need to put the money toward it,” Koons said.
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