Judge said NC schools need more money. But Berger says COVID-19 may limit that.
The coronavirus pandemic could become the latest obstacle to North Carolina’s efforts to provide every student with their state constitutional right to a sound basic education.
In January, Superior Court Judge David Lee signed a court order in the long-running Leandro school funding case ordering state leaders to “work expeditiously and without delay to take all necessary actions” to improve the state’s education system.
But Senate leader Phil Berger warned at a news conference this week that the state expects to face a revenue shortfall of billions of dollars caused by the coronavirus shutdown.
“Our Constitution does not provide for judges to appropriate dollars,” Berger said. “We’ve said on multiple occasions that if judges want to get into the field of appropriating, they need to run for the legislature.
“We’ll see what the order is, but again we cannot spend money that we don’t have.”
Berger said the state’s highest priority, given how tight money will be, is to make sure that schools can open next school year and that teachers get paid.
COVID-19 not a valid excuse, education advocates say
Education advocacy groups say, though, that state lawmakers can’t use the pandemic as an excuse.
“Judge David Lee is responsible, however, to uphold the law and examine the degree to which we as a state have fulfilled our constitutional obligation to ensure each and every child has access to a sound basic education,” Michael D. Priddy, interim executive director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Judge Lee has found that we have failed to do that in ways that include adequate and equitable fiscal appropriations to our system of public schools, and Senator Berger, in concert with his fellow legislators, is required to rectify this situation and fund our public schools to a level that ensures we meet this constitutional requirement.”
Earlier this year, the Public School Forum declared that carrying out the court order was the top education issue in 2020.
The Leandro case
The Leandro school funding case began in 1994 when school districts in five counties — Hoke, Halifax, Robeson, Vance and Cumberland — took the state to court. Leandro is the family that was originally the lead plaintiff when the lawsuit was filed.
In 1997, the state Supreme Court declared that the state constitution guarantees every child “an opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” Then in 2004, the state Supreme Court held that the state’s efforts to provide a sound basic education to poor children were inadequate. The court did not prescribe specific solutions; that was left up to legislators and education leaders.
In his January court order, Lee backed the findings of WestEd, an independent consultant, which recommended that the state increase education spending. WestEd found that state funding hadn’t kept up with needs, leaving students further behind academically than they were in the 1990s.
WestEd also made a wide-ranging series of recommendations, such as changing how schools are funded, how teachers are trained and how schools are evaluated.
The state was supposed to report back to Lee by the end of March. The deadline has been extended to June 1 due to COVID-19.
“There is a lot of talk about Constitutional rights these days, and folks should remember that the right to a sound basic education is a State Constitutional right of all North Carolina children,” Melanie Dubis, attorney for the school districts suing the state, said in a statement Wednesday.
“The constitutional violations and the unmet needs of poor and disadvantaged children have existed for over two decades and the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbates those needs. The State of North Carolina has agreed, and Judge Lee has found, that these longstanding needs can no longer go unmet. Plaintiffs expect the State to honor its Constitutional obligations.”
Some call it ‘tone deaf’ to require funding increase
North Carolina’s public schools have been closed since mid-March due to the pandemic, forcing schools to switch to remote learning.
Kris Nordstrom, a senior policy analyst with the N.C. Justice Center’s Education & Law Project, said the pandemic has put on display the inequities of the education system. Some low-income students have been unable to connect online due to the lack of computers and broadband access.
”This economic downturn doesn’t absolve the General Assembly of its constitutional duty to provide a good education to every kid,” Nordstrom said in an interview Wednesday. “Even though the challenges have increased, they can do plenty this session to make progress to reverse the trend of the last 10 years where we’ve backslid.”
But Terry Stoops, vice president of research for the John Locke Foundation, said it would be “tone deaf” for Lee to issue an order that would require a large increase in education funding this year. Stoops said Lee should give the state a longer time period to carry out his decision.
“Judge Lee should recognize that the state is not in a position to provide additional resources to schools at this time and write a consent order accordingly,” Stoops said in an interview Wednesday.
Priddy of the Public School Forum said some lawmakers have shown the way, such as House Bill 1130 that increases funding for disadvantaged students, low-performing schools, pre-kindergarten and getting students access to broadband outside of school.
Priddy also praised House Bill 1129, which creates an Opportunity Gap Task Force and ends what he calls the “unaccountable” Opportunity Scholarship Program. Parents For Educational Freedom in North Carolina has denounced the effort to end the voucher program, which provides lower-income students up to $4,200 a year to pay for tuition to attend private schools.
“COVID-19 has presented our state, our nation and our world with an incredible challenge,” Priddy said. “We have the resources to overcome it. It will take a bipartisan effort to unite around shared priorities and make sound investments that position us to be even better on the other side of this pandemic. We believe our state leaders can meet this challenge together.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 2:48 PM with the headline "Judge said NC schools need more money. But Berger says COVID-19 may limit that.."
