Parents, educators ask for NC Supreme Court ruling over multi-billion Leandro lawsuit plan

Parents, educators and education advocates say they are tired of waiting for a North Carolina Supreme Court decision on a landmark education lawsuit.

It's been two years since the court last heard arguments in the Leandro case.

That's the lawsuit filed by lower-income counties in the mid-1990s, saying the state wasn't providing an adequate education.

The case has never been resolved, though the state supreme court has ruled a few times on elements of the case.

Durham parent Melissa Price Kromm is frustrated with the court, whom she said is sitting on the case.

"Do you know how much a child grows in two years?" said Price Kromm, executive director of N.C. for the People Action, which bills itself as a pro-democracy coalition. She said her daughter didn't have a teacher for most of her kindergarten year and didn't have one for much of this year -- a reality Price Kromm said is the result of under-investment in education.

Several years ago, parties in the case agreed on a multi-billion-dollar plan that would drastically increase education spending and change a number of policies. It would increase funding for teacher pay, students with disabilities and school turnaround programs, among numerous other things.

Whether the state can order that plan to be funded is at the heart of the case in front of the Supreme Court. The Democratic majority court ordered the plan be funded more than three years ago, but a Republican majority is now re-hearing that case and has been asked by state legislative leadership to consider more concerns.

A spokesperson for Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Berger intervened in the case with former state House Speaker Tim Moore -- now a congressman -- and argued that only lawmakers were constitutionally authorized to decide how state funding is spent. That argument has been echoed by State Controller Nels Roseland, who has also appealed the directive to fund the plan.

State lawmakers have also argued that the 2004 Supreme Court ruling -- which found that a sound basic education was not being provided everywhere -- was not a statewide ruling and that a statewide finding has never been made. Plaintiff school boards -- Cumberland, Halifax, Hoke, Robeson and Vance -- argued that a letter years later from now-retired Judge Howard Manning in the case noted the statewide finding, an argument the 2022 state supreme court agreed with.

On Wednesday, groups affiliated with Every Child NC -- an organization that advocates for the Leandro plan -- said schools were "starving" of funding and cited recent tax cuts, expanded eligibility for Opportunity Scholarship vouchers to private schools, and a recent Education Law Center analysis that ranked North Carolina at the bottom in "funding effort" for education as a percentage of state revenue.

Possible revenue lost from tax cuts could fund teacher raises, school meals and childcare for families on waitlists, said Kris Nordstrom, senior policy analyst for the North Carolina Justice Center, which has done work on the Leandro case.