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Forth the sixth year in a row, Rep. Julie von Haefen has filed a bill to fully fund the state’s Leandro education plan, a landmark court-ordered initiative to provide every child in North Carolina with a sound basic education. And for the sixth year, the Democratic lawmaker says her bill has been ignored by the state’s Republican legislative leadership.
“It is long, long past time for our legislature to do the right thing for North Carolina children,” von Haefen said. “It’s long past time for them to do the right thing for educators, our staff and our beloved public schools,” von Haefen told a crowd of education advocates gathered at a Wednesday Legislative Building press conference.
The Leandro case dates back to 1994, when a group of five low-wealth, rural counties sued the state over insufficient school funding. The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the state was violating students’ constitutional right to a sound basic education, a decision that has been upheld four times since then. Yet more than three decades later, von Haefen said, 1.5 million students in the state continue to have their basic rights violated.
She cited a report by the nonpartisan research group WestEd, which documented the “continued and worsening violations” of the state constitution in North Carolina’s school systems. “Every day, I talk to families who aren’t getting the services that their children need to thrive, and I talked to educators in both visiting schools and serving as a substitute teacher who don’t have the resources and professional freedoms that they need to succeed,” von Haefen said.
The court-ordered Leandro comprehensive remedial plan, developed by WestEd, outlines a detailed strategy to bring the state into compliance with the court’s ruling. It calls for investments to provide, among other things, qualified and fairly compensated teachers, strong school leadership, adequate and equitable funding, and early childhood education.
Frenchy Davis, CEO of the Foundation Builders Academy Childcare Development Center in Rocky Mount, said fully funding the Leandro plan would provide critical resources like smaller class sizes, better teacher training and modernized school facilities. “Investing in the Leandro plan means investing in our children, our educators and our future,” Davis said.
But for parents like Susan Book of Wake County, the state’s failure to act has had real consequences for her son, who has autism and relies on a team of specialized educators and therapists to access his education. “The state carries a primary responsibility to fund our schools, but has failed multiple times with each budget cycle,” said Book.
“Don’t tell me not to worry about my son’s future. Don’t tell me everything will magically be okay. Our state sits in violation of its constitutional duty, and this General Assembly knows it. I have good reason to worry.”
Jackie Perez-Albanil, a statewide organizer with Education Justice Alliance, said the state’s inaction is part of a “calculated attack on our public education” by lawmakers more interested in pursuing a partisan agenda than fulfilling their constitutional duty. “Lawmakers have deliberately kicked the can down the road when it comes to funding our public schools,” said Perez-Albanil. “They literally have a plan laid out for them on how to properly fund public schools, and have chosen to withhold funds so they can use the narrative that public schools are underperforming as an excuse to shut down public schools altogether.”
In 2022, the state Supreme Court ordered the General Assembly to fund the Leandro plan, but it has thus far failed to do so. in 2024, the high court — by then featuring a much different composition than it had in 2022 (a 5-2 Republican majority rather than a 4-3 margin for Democrats) — heard pleas from GOP legislators to reverse the 2022 order. It has yet to issue a ruling.