Low-Wealth Schools Suit
Marks Sixth Year in Court
On a July day six years ago, she'd
sat by her father's side, talking about her future.
Vandaliah Thompson was in the eighth grade, and she took
after her father, Angus Thompson. He'd always had an
interest in music and the arts, and his daughter was
beginning to excel at the clarinet.
She was lucky. In Robeson County, her Carroll Middle
School was newer than most. Some local schools, says
Thompson, a native of the area, were built not long after
the Depression.
This summer, Vandaliah Thompson has grown into a young
woman working in a department store and about to return
for her second year at N.C. State University in Raleigh.
But some things haven't changed.
The sluggish Lumber and Big Swamp rivers still wind
through Robeson County, the people are still poorer than
most and North Carolina is still mired in court,
attempting to determine how to fairly put schools like
Vandaliah Thompson's on a more equal footing with
wealthier ones that have more of everything, from
experienced teachers to lab equipment.
Meanwhile, says her father, one of the original parents
who sued, “The gap between us and everybody else is
as wide as ever.”
After thousands of courtroom hours, poor school districts
and the state remain at loggerheads. But two points stand
clear. Barring unexpected intervention by the coming
General Assembly, the case will drag on through appeals
and other maneuvers for months — and possibly years
— to come.
However, says Mike Ward, state superintendent of public
instruction, “We don't have to be sitting around
waiting for a final resolution.”
The state contends current allocation of resources
provides all students a good education and meets
constitutional minimums, although, adds Ward, he's not
satisfied with minimums and he nor others dispute that
gaps exist.
Ward says efforts to close them should include increased
General Assembly appropriations for the state's
Low-Wealth School Fund, plus a supplemental fund for
small school districts, together now totaling about $100
million a year.
On the second point, most agree the lawsuit has the
potential to dramatically alter how North Carolina
divides its education money.
“It'll be one of the most important decisions in
history in terms of school finance for North
Carolina,” adds Mitch Tyler, superintendent of Hoke
County schools.
As a principal there six years ago, the parents of one of
his students, Robert Leandro, helped launch the lawsuit.
“The only guarantee is that it's not going to be
settled any time soon,” Tyler says.
In the latest action a few months ago, Judge Howard
Manning in Wake County Superior Court began reviewing
hundreds of pages of briefs from both sides, each
suggesting what, if anything, the state should do
differently.
Both the state and school districts indicate they'll
appeal if they lose.
Robeson, Cumberland, Vance, Halifax and Hoke have agreed
to let Hoke be the judicial test, although the lawsuit is
still widely known as the Leandro case — after
Tyler's former student.
Leandro's parents, along with the Thompsons and eight
other families, first took their challenge to court in
1994. Two years later, the state Court of Appeals ruled
against them, declaring that the constitution requires
only equal access to schools, not necessarily equal
funding.
The seemingly thin distinction dated to 1970, when North
Carolina amended its constitution to end racial
discrimination, deleting “separate but equal”
in favor of “equal opportunities” for all
students.
Then to complicate matters, wealthier school systems,
including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Asheville,
Winston-Salem-Forsyth County and Buncombe, Durham and
Wake counties, jumped into the Leandro fray, contending
that they too needed more state resources to deal with
poverty, floods of immigrants and homelessness.
But the heart of the issue remains North Carolina's
longstanding school funding model.
The state gives school districts most of what they need
for instruction, based on enrollment, but leaves capital
expenses to local governments that give schools as much
money as they can muster for other purposes.
How much depends largely on the tax base of the city or
county in which the district is located. Statewide, local
supplements might vary from $400 or so a year per student
in Hoke, to $4,000 a year or more in counties like Wake
and Mecklenburg.
North Carolina isn't alone in grappling with the issue.
According to the Education Commission of the States, a
nonprofit organization based in Denver, Colo., more than
40 states have had similar policies challenged.
That's how it all started, back in 1994 when Kathleen
Leandro says she was so concerned about the condition of
her son's Hoke County school bus that she drove behind it
to make sure he arrived safely. Today, Robert Leandro,
like Vandaliah Thompson, is in college, at Duke
University on an academic scholarship.
But as months have dragged into years, notes Edwin Speas
Jr., senior deputy attorney general, a subtle turn in
Leandro arguments has emerged. Gradually, focus has
shifted from funding levels to educational results.
That shift was pivotal in 1997 when the N.C. Supreme
Court overruled the appeals court, saying students have a
right to a sound, basic education, dollars and cents
aside. Justice Burley Mitchell defined that education as
one that gives students the opportunity to succeed in
life, writing and speaking well, competing for jobs and
pursuing higher education if they choose.
Critics of the traditional funding system say Mitchell's
mandate requires greater funding, not less, for students
in poor districts, because they often lack home and
community resources conducive to learning.
Tyler has seen the issue from both sides. He grew up in
Robeson County, taught school and was a principal in
Hoke, and then, while studying for his doctorate at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, interned in
the affluent Orange County system.
He served as Ward's assistant in Raleigh before going to
Cumberland County as an assistant superintendent. He
returned to Hoke recently to become superintendent there,
again on the opposite side of the question from his
former boss.
To teachers, parents and administrators in low-wealth
counties, Tyler's complaints about how the state
allocates school resources are familiar: With a
half-percentage-point local supplement, compared to four
percent and higher supplements in surrounding counties,
he says he can't recruit experienced teachers, equip
schools and offer advanced-placement courses.
“When our kids get ready to take end-of-grade or
end-of-course tests, we struggle because we don't have
enough calculators to go around,” he says.
“That's the kind of resource for which we shouldn't
have to go begging.”
Last year, he adds, Hoke had about 50 teaching vacancies,
out of some 400 positions. “If you're at career day
talking with a prospective teacher, but the guy in the
booth next to you offers $2,300 a year more because of
the local supplement, the teacher will go with the higher
supplement.”
Tyler and John Dornan, executive director of the N.C.
Public School Forum, an independent education research
group, say the difference forces poor counties to recruit
new and inexperienced teachers from out of state. But in
revolving-door fashion, they jump to better-paying and
more urban systems where they can continue their
education, as soon as they gain experience.
“A teacher from Hoke can drive up the road to Wake
and get a $4,000 raise,” says Dornan, who testified
as an expert witness for the suing districts.
“Low-wealth counties are farm clubs for the more
affluent systems.”
Attorneys for the state and officials of the Department
of Public Instruction see matters differently.
In court, they've contended that more than money makes an
education. “It began as a funding case, but it's no
longer that simple,” says Speas.
In testimony, some of which recently retired Hoke
superintendent Don Steed concedes was
“painful,” the state has contended that poor
teacher training and certification, quality of curriculum
and other factors contribute to low standardized test
scores and poor college performance by Hoke students.
“Although the (state) Board of Education, the
Department of Public Instruction and the General Assembly
all believe we can improve, our position is that the
system we have certainly meets the constitutional
minimum,” adds Speas. He describes the essence of
the Leandro case as “the search for a constitutional
floor.”
Meanwhile, Ward, the state superintendent, says his
department isn't standing still as the case bobs slowly
along the judicial stream.
“I certainly think we've got to return to the
legislature in the biennial session with a request for
more resources to get at the inequities,” he says.
That would be additional funding for the low-wealth fund,
but also funds for to pump up districts where students do
poorly, regardless of wealth.
That'll be doubly important next year, he adds, when the
state begins implementing new promotion standards.
“They'll say kids have to be academically proficient
to be promoted,” he says. “It's not rocket
science to know that doing otherwise cheats kids and
their communities, but it could also be very punitive if
we don't invest in extra support for kids who need it
most.”
The politics of Leandro? Few expect a radical
redistribution of dollars, such as in Texas, where a plan
to shift property taxes from areas like Dallas and Fort
Worth to poor south Texas created a political firestorm.
But while open to new ways of leveling allocation of
resources, Ward says the Department of Public Instruction
is wary of doing it by court fiat.
“We're asked if we'll appeal a ruling that goes
against the state, as if we're not interested in helping
poor counties,” he says.
“But a lot depends on the ruling itself. If the
court imposes an incredibly prescriptive formula, we are
just about obligated to appeal, because the Board of
Education, legislature and Department of Public
Instruction have a much better capacity to adapt and
respond to education priorities than the courts.”
He cites the current six-year odyssey of Leandro as an
example, and on that score, he may not get an argument
from opponents. —Edward Martin
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