Three Decades of Fighting for Our Students… and Why the Fight Isn’t Quite Over

School funding is a controversial issue constantly debated across the nation, especially in North Carolina. Source for photo: Forbes

Leandro v. The State of North Carolina was first brought before the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1994. Rob Leandro, an eighth grader at the time, was the named plaintiff whose surname became synonymous with the five North Carolina school districts suing the state: Hoke, Halifax, Robeson, Vance and Cumberland. These school districts are all located in rural North Carolina counties with large impoverished populations that are expected to finance their school districts via taxes. In 1994, the Leandro team argued that these school districts were being under-funded, resulting in an inability to provide an equal education to their students. When the case was argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court, they ruled that the state of North Carolina has to ensure all children have access to an equal education. This meant these schools were entitled to increased budgets and resources from the North Carolina government to provide their students with a sound education. After this initial ruling, Leandro seemed to get stuck in the court system with appeals and judicial procedure drowning the case out of mainstream attention. 

Fast forward almost 30 years later to March 2022 and Leandro is back on the docket of the state’s highest court. The Leandro litigation team brought a sense of déjà vu to the courtroom, again arguing that the state of North Carolina was violating its students’ right to a thorough and complete education by underfunding its public education system. The North Carolina Supreme Court handed down an official ruling and complementary opinion on November 4, 2022. The majority opinion establishes that “today far too many North Carolina schoolchildren, especially those historically marginalized, are not afforded their constitutional right to the opportunity to a sound basic education.” On these grounds, the court once again ruled in favor of the Leandro team and affirmed North Carolina students’ right to a solid educational foundation. Ultimately, the high court sent the case to a lower court in order to determine exactly how much money should be reallocated to North Carolina schools. The lower court would have to take into account the Leandro Comprehensive Remedial Plan, an outline created by the outside education consulting company WestEd of exactly where and how much money the state could allocate to schools to promote a sensible education.  

So what happens now? Even though the Leandro team saw victory in the courtroom, actually ensuring underfinanced schools see this money is a whole other battle. Many Republican politicians argue that while the North Carolina Supreme Court can recommend the money be spent on fulfilling the Leandro Plan, they can’t require legislators to spend the 1.7 billion dollars on education when creating the budget. Senate leader Phil Berger is an especially outspoken opponent of fulfilling the Leandro Plan to increase students’ education, stating “Rather than accepting responsibility for lagging achievement and outright failure, the Leandro parties insist that the pathway to student improvement is always the simple application of more money.” As recently as February 9, 2023, Republican lawmakers are filing courtroom motions in an attempt to have the case reheard and the recommendation of fulfilling the Leandro Comprehensive Remedial Plan overturned. Across the aisle, Democrats championed the court’s decision and praised the 4-3 party-line vote by the court justices in March 2022. However, Democrats will not necessarily be in a position to combat any Republican attempts at overturning the decision following the November 2022 elections. Because these elections created a Republican dominated legislature as well as a Republican majority Supreme Court bench, if conservative politicians make overturning Leandro a high priority it could very well become reality and public schools will be forced to continue operating with sub-par funding. 

No matter the resistance from the Republican controlled legislature, North Carolina children do have the fundamental right to a well-founded education. The fact that the North Carolina per-pupil funding in schools is nearly $4,700 below the national average is one of many statistics that exemplify the need for the Leandro Plan to be fulfilled. Elaine Zukerman, Advocacy and Communications Director at the North Carolina Early Education Coalition and member of Every Child NC, points out that while the win in the Leandro case should certainly be considered a victory for North Carolina students, the purpose of the Leandro plan is to give schools the funding to provide an education meeting the bare minimum. Zukerman asserted “To really get us to where we would ideally want our education and childcare system to be, it's going to take Leandro . . . and then some.”