[Commentary] N.C. Lawmakers and State Supreme Court Turn Backs on Our Future

By Kimberly Jones,
Beacon Media

It was 32 years ago, in 1994, when five mostly rural Eastern North Carolina counties sued the state for failing to live up to North Carolina’s constitutional obligation to deliver a “sound basic education.”   

For decades, the case that would come to be known as Leandro has stood as a clear affirmation that every child in this state is entitled to a sound, basic education, even as the case bounced around the courts. In the meantime, our legislature has overseen a willful decline in our public education system. 

The case recognized what educators and families have always known: opportunity should not depend on your zip code. 

That is, until early April, when the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned enforcement of the Leandro case, marking a troubling departure from that promise. 

Leandro ruling leaves DPS looking to Raleigh

After three decades in court, Leandro no longer offers Durham schools a legal backstop for broader state investment - and that shifts even more pressure onto lawmakers in Raleigh and local budget-makers in Durham.

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I was raised and educated in Harnett County, the kind of community the original Leandro decision was meant to serve. In so many communities in our state, public schools are not just schools but the center of everything, the place where communities invest their time, their trust, and their hopes for the future. 

That perspective has never left me. I have seen firsthand in my career as a teacher and in my travels across the state how schools shape opportunity, hold communities together, and how much is lost when they are not fully supported.

This is not simply a legal shift. It is a decision by these justices to abandon this constitutional obligation.

It’s striking how quickly people wax nostalgic about how “great public schools used to be.” They speak fondly of what those systems offered them, the teachers who shaped them, and the opportunities a strong public education created. Yet those same voices refuse to make the investments of time and money that made those experiences possible. We cannot celebrate the past while refusing to fund the present. That is not nostalgia; it's willful neglect. 

Across this state, our public school classrooms are filled with students who are just as capable and full of promise as their predecessors. They don’t need the empty promises and words of our neglectful legislature. They need resources, highly qualified and experienced educators, safe and well-equipped learning environments, and access to programs that prepare them for college, careers, and civic life.

Historically, there has been bipartisan recognition of this responsibility. Even the most conservative legislatures of the past understood that public education was foundational to the state’s success. There were lines that were not crossed, principles that were treated as essential: namely, the idea that every child deserves a meaningful education. 

That consensus is fading.

When a state retreats from its constitutional obligation to fund and support public education, it sends a clear message about whose futures matter and whose do not. As a veteran public school educator in North Carolina, it’s becoming harder and harder to believe that some decision-makers truly see the education of all children as a real priority, especially as funding for private school vouchers that mostly go to wealthy families, skyrocket at the expense of our public schools. 

The consequences of that shift have not been abstract. They are felt in under-resourced classrooms, in overextended and undercompensated teachers, and in the narrowing of opportunity for thousands of young people.

Republican leaders have justified this shift through conspiracy theories and fear-mongering campaigns. Let’s be clear. The claim that North Carolina public schools are engaged in widespread indoctrination, along with similar incendiary accusations, is not only unfounded, but also it is an intentional and deeply harmful distraction. Educators across the state are working every day to help students think critically, read deeply, solve problems, and engage meaningfully with the changing and diversifying world around them. 

That work is demanding, complex, and deeply human. It deserves support, not baseless accusations from internet trolls and uninformed lawmakers. 

When we invest in public schools, we invest in a more informed, capable, and engaged citizenry. That we don’t is an indictment of the world our leaders seem to want. We should invest in the long-term health of our economy and our democracy. The question is not whether we can afford to uphold the promise of Leandro. It is whether we are willing to.

We must not give up this fight. It now shifts to local communities, school boards, county leaders, and anyone willing to advocate for public education and our collective future. That work is already taking place. On Friday, May 1, educators from across the state will gather in downtown Raleigh to advocate for the resources and investment our students have been constitutionally guaranteed, and the compensation and safe working conditions teachers deserve.

Durham Public Schools Closed on May 1

The Board of Education voted Monday to close schools so teachers and staff can attend a rally at the North Carolina state capital.

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Some things should be treated as sacrosanct. The right of every child to a meaningful education is one of them. And in North Carolina, where our motto calls us “to be, rather than to seem,” this guarantee should mean something.

If our lawmakers and the highest court in our state don’t understand the obligation of our Constitution; or if they would prefer to fake responsibility and foster culture wars, rather than deliver results for our students, it will be up to the rest of us to demand our rights. If our Supreme Court can’t enforce our Constitution and if our state lawmakers continue to fail us, we should replace them with leaders who can actually deliver. 

Kimberly Jones is a high school English and humanities teacher. She was the 2023 Burroughs Wellcome Fund North Carolina Teacher of the Year. All content published by Beacon Media is available to be republished for free on all platforms under Beacon Media’s guidelines.

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