State Supreme Court decision impacts education funding
NC Local
For a generation of students, parents, and educators, North Carolina’s Leandro Supreme Court decision stood as a powerful precedent for public school funding.
In Leandro v. The State of North Carolina, justices determined North Carolina was not treating all of its school districts equitably, and that the state was failing to live up to a constitutional obligation: To give every child the opportunity for a sound basic education.
But in a split decision issued this month – after more than three decades of hearings and re-hearings – the high court dismissed key parts of the case.
The ruling leaves intact the constitutional mandate. But it wiped out years of lower-court orders that sought to enforce Leandro, including a financial remedy that would have forced the legislature to spend billions of dollars more on public education.
The latest decision in the long-running case raises new questions, chief among them: How does North Carolina distribute public education funds equitably – when the per-pupil allocation varies across school districts, just as they did 30 years ago? And, what’s considered “equitable” when state funding accounts for a shrinking share of total per-pupil spending in counties that have larger and wealthier tax bases and use local taxes to further fund public schools?
What did Leandro establish?
The case began in 1994, when five low-wealth districts sued the state. Schools in Hoke, Halifax, Robeson, Vance and Cumberland counties argued the state’s funding system relied too heavily on local tax bases, which meant poorer counties could not give students the same opportunities as wealthier districts.
Bill Harrison, who was superintendent of Hoke County Schools at the time, approached an eighth-grader, Robb Leandro, and his parents about helping file the lawsuit, giving the landmark case its name. Harrison was also a superintendent in Orange and Cumberland counties, as well as Alamance-Burlington schools, during a long career in education that included a stint as chair of the state Board of Education from 2009 to 2013. He is now an education consultant.
In an interview with NC Local following the latest Leandro ruling, Harrison recalled the financial circumstances in Hoke County Schools in the early 90s that served as one of the key arguments that North Carolina was not treating all students equitably.
Hoke County, he said, did not have the money to hire and retain qualified local teachers who could simply make more money by working in neighboring counties, causing class sizes to swell and making it significantly more difficult to provide the same academic opportunities.
“If we wanted to offer an Advanced Placement class, that would come at the expense of other classes,” Harrison said. “In order to make that happen, you’d have to walk down the hall and see classes of 35, 38, and 40 kids.”
In its original ruling from 1997, the state Supreme Court sided with the school districts, and held that North Carolina children are entitled to the “opportunity for a sound basic education.” In subsequent rulings, the court defined three core tenants to underpin what would be considered a “sound basic education” to every student:
Competent, certified teachers
Competent, well-trained principals
The resources necessary to support effective instructional programs
Why did the state Supreme Court dismiss the case?
In a 4-3 decision earlier this month, the majority opinion from the state Supreme Court said the case had evolved into a broader challenge than when it was first filed in the 1990s.
The ruling invalidated any lower court orders issued after 2017, including one that recruited an outside group, WestEd, to come up with a plan to enforce the original Leandro decision. That report, released in 2019, called for upwards of $1.5 billion in additional funding for public schools. That plan was put on hold while the case kept making its way through state courts.
Chief Justice Paul Newby, writing for the majority in this latest ruling, said the original Leandro case focused on five specific school districts, but over time it turned into a statewide effort to overhaul the education system. The ruling said that the shift was never properly argued in court, did not follow the correct legal process, and justices in the majority affirmed the legislature’s power to determine funding for public schools.
“Today’s decision rightly recognizes the constitutional role of the North Carolina General Assembly, since the state constitution entrusts sole appropriations authority to the legislature,” Republican House Speaker Destin Hall said in a statement after the ruling.
Newby and the other three justices who sided with the state are registered Republicans. Justice Richard Dietz, also a registered Republican, dissented along with the two registered Democrats on the court.
What does this mean for public schools?
North Carolina’s constitutional obligation to provide the opportunity for a sound basic education now lies solely with the legislature. Funding decisions are part of the state’s budget.
“House Republicans remain committed to investing in public education, including through our budget proposal to raise starting teacher pay to $50,000 and provide 8.7% average raises to our public school teachers,” Hall said in his statement.
But the same wide disparities exist now as they did 30 years ago in how much each district is able to spend on its students.
The state Department of Public Instruction tracks per-pupil spending annually. Statistics show how much the state contributes to each district, how much the federal government gives, and how much each district is able to add on thanks to local taxes and spending.
In 2025, Hoke County – one of the districts in the original Leandro lawsuit – ranked near the bottom in the total amount it spends per student at $12,130 annually. Just $1,371 of that came from the district’s contribution, ranking it next-to-last in the state for local supplements. By comparison, the district with the highest local supplement was Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools at $8,946 per student. That district’s total spending was $17,287, a difference of more than $5,000 per student in one year.
“The gap between the haves and the have-nots is greater today than it was in the ‘90s,” Bill Harrison, the former Hoke County Schools superintendent, told NC Local.
All of this means districts that hoped Leandro would force the state to distribute more money to them are back where they have been for decades: depending on the General Assembly to provide high-quality teachers, principals and instructional programs for every school district.
