Public education advocates say the fight over school funding in North Carolina is far from over following a recent state Supreme Court ruling in the long-running Leandro case.
The decision reversed a lower court order that would have required the state to spend billions of dollars on public school improvements. As a result, the courts will no longer force lawmakers to increase education funding.
During a webinar Wednesday, April 8, members of the statewide coalition Every Child NC said the ruling does not mark the end of the Leandro case, but rather “the beginning of a new chapter” in the push for adequate school funding.
Jackie McLean, a dropout prevention specialist in Hoke County Schools — one of the original plaintiff districts in the Leandro case — said advocates remain committed to pressing for students’ constitutional rights.
“We will not let up. I will not let up,” McLean said. “We’re going to continue to emphasize that the constitutional right to a sound basic education still remains, even if the court dismissed it or blocked the funding.”
Advocates say their focus is now shifting to organizing and increasing pressure on the General Assembly through phone calls, emails, elections and rallies. Every Child NC is planning a day of advocacy in Raleigh on April 21. The North Carolina Association of Educators has a rally on the books for May 1.
Those on Wednesday’s call blasted the decision, alleging the courts tossed out a crucial education case over a procedural technicality. The court’s majority ultimately ruled that the plaintiffs technically never filed the case as a statewide action, and thus a statewide remedy was inappropriate — a characterization that the court’s Democratic dissenters disputed.
Others called out the state Supreme Court for deciding to reconsider its own 2022 ruling in the first place. That ruling had allowed lower courts to order the state to fund the multibillion-dollar plan to improve schools. Critics have alleged the court’s decision to reconsider its 2022 ruling was unprecedented and political, since it came only after the majority shifted from Democratic to Republican in 2023.
“Nothing about the case had changed, but the composition of the court had changed,” said Chris Brook, a former state Court of Appeals judge who, as an attorney, represented some of the plaintiffs in the case.
Those in favor of the decision have argued the case threatened the separation of powers and that the courts shouldn’t be able to dictate what kind of education policy the state must fund.
The Leandro case started in 1994, when five low-wealth school districts sued the state over inadequate funding. It famously established the state’s constitutional right to a “sound, basic education” and established that right was not being met for many students.
“Those kids, whose kids now we are serving three generations later, are in even far more dire straits than the kids that we initially started serving in 1994,” McLean said. “And with that, we continue to plead our case. We continue to say: ‘Listen, our kids are being denied. You have disenfranchised our kids.’”
Last week’s decision did not overturn the established right to a sound, basic education, but did void the 2022 Supreme Court decision and subsequent lower court orders to fund the Leandro plan.
North Carolina ranks last in school funding effort, a measure of school funding proportionate to GDP.
