If the decades-long debate over school funding in North Carolina has accomplished nothing else, it has removed any doubt about where Republicans stand on public education in North Carolina.
The GOP-controlled General Assembly is not only indifferent to the issue of money for schools, it is downright hostile.
Republicans’ contempt for public education in North Carolina is so obvious that you could tie on a blindfold, turn your back and cover your ears and still know it’s there.
Flush with a fat budget surplus and higher-than-expected revenues, the legislature still refuses to give underfunded schools the resources they need and deserve.
And it will fight tooth and nail to keep things that way.
The latest front in this shameful battle is back in a familiar setting: a courtroom.
In case you’ve missed the latest twists in the saga, the new judge in the case has asked for more time.
The state Supreme Court has given Special Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson a week’s extension, until Wednesday, to decide whether he will order the state to fully fund a remediation plan for poor school districts.
What’s another week? The Leandro suit originally was filed 28 years ago, in 1994, by needy schools seeking more equitable funding.
As for why there’s a new judge in the first place?
Because the previous one was removed. Chief Justice Paul Newby reassigned the case from David Lee, who had rankled GOP leaders with his insistence that the state send $1.75 billion to schools to address the inequities. The money would finance a remedial plan to upgrade K-12 schooling through mid-2023.
As for Lee, he had presided over the funding case, Leandro v. North Carolina, since 2016. He has reached the mandatory retirement age for judges, 72, but many retired judges have been allowed to preside over pending cases beyond retirement — with the chief justice’s approval.
Newby didn’t approve, booting Lee without telling him why. So Lee, a Democrat who was appointed by a Republican governor, Pat McCrory, in 2016, was replaced with Robinson, a Republican.
Lee has been allowed to continue to preside over another case, but not Leandro.
To be clear, Newby was well within his authority to remove Lee from the Leandro case. That didn’t make it right.
So, in Lee’s place is Robinson, who will evaluate what the current budget provides for Leandro versus what Lee had ordered.
To recap: Republicans fiercely disagree with Lee’s order that the state invest more in its schools, even calling him “unhinged.”
Newby, a Republican, takes Lee off the case and replaces him with a Republican.
With a massive budget surplus, the state easily can afford this expense.
Yet it won’t and here we are.
The need clearly is there. This state ranks 47th in the nation in per-student funding, 33rd in teacher pay, even as the state is scrambling to find and keep enough educators on the job.
According to a recent WRAL-TV poll, 62% of North Carolinians say public schools are underfunded, 59% of Republicans. Sixty-six percent of North Carolinians say teachers are underpaid, as well as 66% of Republicans.
Teachers have been confronted with COVID, culture wars and poor working conditions, and yet their concerns are disparaged and dismissed.
Instead of providing books, the GOP seems more concerned with removing them.
Public schools should be a linchpin for healthy communities and economies.
But even as Republican lawmakers huff and puff about “accountability,” they attempt to dodge their own accountability to the voters with gerrymandered districts.
How else to explain all of this as anything but a dislike for public schools?
Will somebody, please, prove us wrong, and do right by our schools?
It’s only been nearly 30 years.
Today’s editorial is from The Winston-Salem Journal. The views expressed are not necessarily those of this newspaper.
