Leandro vs. NC: quality education for every child

Recently, a non-profit advocacy group asked local candidates their opinion about the Leandro vs. the State of NC case. This photo/quote is my response.

If you're not familiar with Leandro, way back in 1994 - 30 years ago now - five rural NC counties brought a case against the state of NC which claimed that the state was in violation of providing their students their constitutional right to a sound basic education. This language comes from the NC Constitution written in 1868 which says NC will provide “a general and uniform system of free public schools... and wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students."

After the case went through the system, in 1997 - 27 years ago now, the NC Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the NC Constitution does require that our state provide a "sound basic education" for all students in our public schools. But the courts then had to qualify exactly what that means.

In 2004 - 20 years ago now - the NC Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s order finding the state had violated the NC Constitution regarding a sound basic education for all students, particularly in regard to at-risk students in Hoke County.

It took 10 years just to get to that point, but the case is still ongoing, 20 years later. In a nutshell, there is a lot of arguing back and forth about what it would take to provide a sound basic education to all children in our state and of course the money to pay for it. Regardless of those arguments, the big picture point is that our state has been found to be violating our children's constitutional rights by not providing a sound basic education to all children. There is inequity in our system.

I hope that we can all agree that every child deserves a quality education regardless of where they happened to have been born. All the research tells us that education is the key to ending generational poverty, which not only benefits individual students and families, but our entire community. If elected to our local Board of Education, I can't control decisions about this at the state level, but I promise to do what I can to improve the quality and equity of education in our county.