State Board of Education asks NC Supreme Court to transfer $785 million to schools
Lawyers for the state and several school districts are asking the N.C. Supreme Court to order the transfer of $785 million from the treasury to fund the Leandro education plan.
In court filings dated Friday, the State Board of Education and the plaintiffs in the long-running Leandro school funding case say it’s necessary for the high court to intervene to ensure students have a right to a sound basic education.
“As things stand today, this Court’s previous rulings lead to the inescapable conclusion that the State’s constitutional duty to our children has remained unfulfilled for nearly two decades,” N.C. Senior Deputy Attorney General Amar Majmundar wrote in his filing for the state board.
“It is in precisely these kinds of circumstances that our courts are ‘called upon to exercise its inherent constitutional power to fashion a common law remedy for a violation of a particular constitutional right.”
But attorneys for Republican legislative leaders say it would violate the state Constitution’s separation of powers for the courts to order the money transfer.
“Only that (legislative) process provides an opportunity for the people to be heard and to decide — through their elected representatives — how to spend the State’s money and provide the State’s children with a Leandro-compliant education,” Matthew Tilley, the attorney representing Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, wrote in his legal brief to the Supreme Court.
“The State Constitution does not permit the judiciary to take that power from the people and reassign it to the courts — or worse, a small group of unelected lawyers.”
The N.C. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments the week of Aug. 29 — the same time that most of the state’s 1.4 million public school students start a new school year. The Supreme Court has a 4-3 Democratic majority heading into this fall’s election, when several seats will be on the ballot.
Sound basic education
The long-running Leandro school funding lawsuit was initially filed in 1994 by low-wealth school districts such as Hoke County to get more state funding.
Over the years, the state Supreme Court has ruled that the state Constitution guarantees every child “an opportunity to receive a sound basic education” and that the state was failing to meet that obligation.
In November, Superior Court Judge David Lee ordered the state to transfer $1.75 billion to fund the next two years of a plan developed by a consultant that’s designed to provide every student with a high-quality principal and teachers. A state Court of Appeals panel blocked the order from being enforced.
Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson replaced Lee as the trial judge and was asked by the Supreme Court to review how last year’s budget impacted the November order.
In April, Robinson ruled that the Leandro plan was nearly $800 million short of being fully funded. But Robinson cited the appellate panel’s ruling to remove the wording requiring the state treasurer, controller and budget director to transfer the funds.
Students ‘denied a constitutional right’
Attorneys for the state and the plaintiffs say that Robinson exceeded his authority by removing the money transfer. They’re asking the state to amend Robinson’s order to direct the transfer of the $785 million.
A repeated theme in the legal briefs from the plaintiffs and the state is that they say the courts have waited long enough for lawmakers to act.
“In the intervening eighteen years, an entirely new generation of North Carolina school children, especially those at-risk and socio-economically disadvantaged, were denied a fundamental constitutional right,” Melanie Dubis, lead attorney for the school districts, wrote in her brief.
“This Court foresaw and cautioned against the consequences of the State’s failure to act: ‘the children are North Carolina’s ‘most valuable renewable resource’ and ‘[w]e cannot … imperil even one more class unnecessarily.’”
For most of the case’s history, the state had opposed the plaintiffs. But things shifted after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper took office and he and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein have been working with the plaintiffs.
In the briefs, the attorneys point to the state’s $6.2 billion surplus. Lawmakers say they want to hold on to a large surplus to deal with a potential recession.
“The legislature could choose to devote just a fraction of this additional money to fully fund the Comprehensive Remedial Plan,” Majmundar, the senior deputy attorney general, wrote in his brief. “But regardless, this funding makes clear that the State has available to it sufficient funds to satisfy its constitutional obligations.”
Leandro only affects Hoke County?
Attorneys for GOP lawmakers say the Supreme Court’s prior Leandro decisions only impact at-risk students in Hoke County. They say this means the orders from Lee and Robinson should be tossed out because they’re directing statewide changes.
“The court’s effort to judicially dictate educational policy for the State and school systems outside of Hoke County is thus purely advisory,” Tilley, the attorney for the lawmakers, writes in his brief.
“The court should not have undertaken to decide what policies North Carolina should adopt to improve the State’s public school system, nor should it have permitted Plaintiff and the Executive Branch to use this case as a vehicle to obtain court orders securing measures that require Legislative approval.”
Last week, the General Assembly adopted a new state budget that Leandro advocates say falls $443 million short of funding the plan. Berger has said the budget meets the state’s educational needs.
“The General Assembly has responded to their proposed remedial plan the only way it can — through a vote of the entire body — and has passed a Budget that must, until proven otherwise, be presumed to be sufficient to satisfy the State’s constitutional obligations,” Tilley wrote.
This story was originally published July 6, 2022 at 12:28 PM with the headline "State Board of Education asks NC Supreme Court to transfer $785 million to schools."
