North Carolina: Fake Voucher Schools, a Sudden Party Switch, and Unenforced Court Rulings?
How exactly did North Carolina get to be last in the country for funding public schools?
SIRI MANNERI
Public School Hallway, Squarespace 2024
The landscape for North Carolina’s public school funding wasn’t always this bleak. Recently, North Carolina was found to be last in a nationwide report about K-12 public school funding done by the Education Law Center in 2022. An example of the impact of this ranking was shown when a parent advocate with Every Child NC recently noted that she had experienced effects of the lack of school funding through her autistic son’s lack of instructional support in an interview with the Daily Tar Heel. She noted that “having a sub or long-term sub for a kid with a complicated (individualized education program) can be really devastating … this low level of funding has resulted in insufficient staff to meet student needs and a general shrinking of classroom resources, including inadequate learning technology. … increasing lists of school supplies are being sent home to be fulfilled by parents’ personal budgets.”
It’s gotten worse recently, but this still isn’t a new problem. North Carolina even tried addressing this issue with a Court ruling around something called the “Leandro Plan.” Almost 3 decades ago, in 1997, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that the state of North Carolina must constitutionally provide a “sound basic education” to its public school students.” This would’ve been revolutionary for lower income students, if it had ever been settled in the 27 years since it was originally ruled upon. Since then, the N.C. Supreme Court ordered the state of North Carolina to fund parts of the Leandro plan, until that year’s elections turned over the Court to a conservative majority. With their 5-2 majority, the Court reversed their decision, something that wasn’t supposed to happen as nothing had changed other than the court’s composition. There has also since been debate over the “proper separation” of the branches of government, essentially hindering the fact that all North Carolinian students have the absolute right to a sound education and proper funding, regardless of which branch will manage this.
If all that wasn’t enough, a state House representative, Tricia Cotham, also switched parties while expanding private school vouchers, an initiative that deeply harms public schools and public school funding in the state. Tricia Cotham, a Democrat who switched parties just three months after taking office put into jeopardy issues like abortion access, healthcare, and prominently, public school funding. Soon after turning to the conservative majority, she sponsored a charter school bill that takes away funding from public schools under the guise of “school choice.” Charter schools that gained funding from this could be wasteful at best, and corrupt at worst.
One reporter notably tried to find a private school in Charlotte receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funding, only to find an omnious run-down one-room building after a long search. She wrote about her attept to “locate it, even after scouring the internet, checking four possible addresses and playing phone tag with the headmistress.” It ended up being a leased classroom housed in yet another private school, raising questions about private schools committing fraud for public funds.
The impacts, and causes, of NC’s public school funding failures don’t end there. Hopefully though, a broader and stronger coalition of education advocates, including those at the Saphron Initiative, will help bridge the gaps in education access. Even while all the fraud & injustice have permeated our atmosphere around this issue, we must not lose hope in our mission to improve educational outcomes for students like those in NC.
I currently attend a North Carolina K-12 public school, and around me, everyday I see the potential in my fellow students to grow up to be pivotal parts of our future generation. We must call upon the North Carolina state government to fund the Leandro plan fully and elect leaders who will fund public schools equitably, in order to not fail North Carolina public school students more than we already have.
Saphron Initiative staff and guest contributors often express their views in pieces on Edisco. These pieces do not constitute an organizational endorsement of the viewpoints within. Our goal is to encourage and uplift student voices and we respect diverse opinions. We encourage all readers to conduct further research and develop informed opinions on the issues discussed.
