Days after educators descended upon Raleigh to advocate for public education funding, a prominent group of retired judges, justices, and education leaders is seeking to reaffirm the high court’s constitutional duty to enforce the rights of North Carolina’s children.
Each North Carolina child has the important right, protected by the state Constitution, to have access to a public education that will prepare them for life and work. The thousands of public school teachers and their supporters who gathered recently in Raleigh are appropriately holding the North Carolina General Assembly accountable for its failure to meet this obligation. However, their protests risk not fully identifying the other elected officials who share the blame.
In the recent Leandro case, after sitting on the case for an inexcusable 700-plus days, the state Supreme Court Justices Newby, Berger, Barringer, and Allen hid behind a manufactured procedural requirement to dodge their obligation to uphold our Constitution. Specifically, they voided previous orders that had required the General Assembly to provide the resources that schools need to enable each child to thrive.
We know that many public schools, miraculously, do well with the resources that they have to provide their students with an excellent education. Many outstanding teachers go above and beyond the call of duty, working hard and even spending their own money to make sure kids get what they need.
But there are many schools that simply do not have the resources to have excellent teachers in every classroom and to have the materials and additional support they need to provide every child with the education they deserve. According to an Education Law Center study, North Carolina shamefully ranks 50th in the country in per-student funding of public education, spending $5,660 per student less than the national average. This means school districts are chronically challenged to find and retain qualified teachers, leaving thousands of teaching positions unfilled.
We need justices and judges in our courts who believe in our constitutional rights and have the courage to enforce them. We need judges who will act independently and promptly and who won’t hide behind manufactured procedural barriers. That is their job.
We voters have a role in this, too. In North Carolina, all our Supreme Court justices and the judges in our Court of Appeals and trial courts are elected. We need to elect justices and judges who believe in our children’s right to access to a sound public education, and education that will enable them to thrive. We need to elect justices and judges who are committed enough to our children’s future to be willing to enforce these rights. And we need to elect them now: in 2026, in 2028, and every future year.
Signed,
-Hon. Patricia Timmons-Goodson, former N.C. Supreme Court Justice and Dean of N.C. Central University Law School
-Hon. Robin Hudson, retired N.C. Supreme Court Justice
-Hon. Tom Ross, President Emeritus, University of North Carolina, and former Superior Court Judge
-Hon. Mary Ann Tally, former Superior Court Judge
-Hon. Leslie Winner, former state Senator and member of the Leandro Commission
-Hon. Jim Deal, former member of the Leandro Commission and Chair of the Watauga County Commissioners
-Suzanne Reynolds, Dean Emerita, Wake Forest University School of Law
-Brad Wilson, former Chair of the Leandro Commission
