Story by Walter Reinke
Visuals by Adrian Tillman
Governor Roy Cooper has declared 2024 the year of public schools in North Carolina, and the year is starting off with the return of a nearly 30 year old Supreme Court case that is one of the most defining pieces of education in the state.
Leandro is a nearly thirty year running case that deals with education funding and inequities.
In 1994, the mother of Robert Leandro, a student in Hoke County, along with others from four other low wealth counties, argued that their school districts did not have enough money to provide an adequate education for their children.
In 1997, the case reached the North Carolina Supreme Court. There, Chief Justice Burley Mitchell delivered a decision that would define the next three decades of litigation.
“When it was in the Supreme Court, what we said is you have to provide, the constitutional right provided in the state constitution is the right to a sound, basic education, and then we defined that,” Mitchell says.
In 2004, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that opinion, and found that the state was not living up to its constitutional obligation. That eventually led to the creation of the Comprehensive Remedial Plan, which would pour billions of dollars into education.
But Mitchell says that was never the point of Leandro.
“We said money wasn’t the answer, wasn’t the only answer, you know, the end all be all and that it should not be focused on, and of course it was,” Mitchell says.
Mitchell says the state’s obligation is about outputs, like test scores and educational achievement, not just inputs, like money.
“You measure compliance by whether the kid, whether Johnny can read, and in North Carolina right now it appears that Johnny can’t read,” Mitchell says.
But funding is all important for poor counties, like Hoke County.
“Those dollars definitely would be used to provide a better educational experience for children,” Dr. Dawn Ramseur, Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education and Technology in Hoke County, says.
Hoke County often ranks near the bottom in ability to fund county schools.
“I just do believe that those conditions still exist and it hasn’t been resolved,” Ramseur says.
Ramseur says increased funding from the plan laid out in Leandro would have a huge impact on the district.
“I think it’s not only going to benefit our school system, but also contribute to that broader community by strengthening that educational foundation for future generations,” Ramseur says.
And it would correct a three decade long mistake.
“You think about for 30 years, we’ve had an equity issue,” Ramseur says. “We can’t go back and undo that. That’s done.”
Ramseur worries that in all of the litigation, people have lost focus.
“I do hope that we get back to remembering why this is so important and that those inequities do exist across the state,” Ramseur says.
The court Former Chief Justice Mitchell once sat on will decide in February what to do next following billions of dollars in expenditures and decades of litigation. Oral arguments in this newest iteration of Leandro will begin on February 22nd.
