Underfunded and failing

by Billy Ball, NC Policy Watch, November 30, 2017.

“By every objective measure, we are underfunded and we are failing.”

That’s how Larry Armstrong, longtime attorney for the Halifax County Board of Education, summed up the task before Gov. Roy Cooper’s Commission on Access to Sound, Basic Education Thursday—more than two decades after the pivotal Leandro Supreme Court decision rebuked the state for school funding inequalities in some of North Carolina’s poorest counties like Halifax.

Armstrong, along with many members of Cooper’s panel of business, K-12, higher education and charity leaders, said, that despite that 1997 ruling, North Carolina continues to fail students in poor and struggling districts.

Armstrong addressed the 19-member panel during its first meeting Thursday, which comes weeks before a judge is expected to field recommendations for an independent consultant that will determine what state officials must do to bring North Carolina in compliance with Leandro’s mandate of a “sound, basic education” to all, regardless of a student’s local school district.

“I think all of us can admit we have struggled in this state to live up to that constitutional requirement,” Cooper told members Thursday morning, shortly before the commission took the oath of office.

Members of Cooper’s commission are expected to partner with the court consultant to assess the state’s needs and, in the next 12 to 18 months, recommend fixes to long-running funding disparities between wealthy and poor counties.

“It is long past time to bring further substance and teeth to the Leandro decision,” said Brad Wilson, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of N.C.’s CEO and the man Cooper tasked with chairing the commission. “It is fundamental to our time and attention.”

A 2017 annual report from the Public School Forum of N.C., a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization based in Raleigh, offers a recent analysis of the state’s persistent gaps in per-student funding between low-income and wealthy counties.

While the state provides the bulk of operations funding for public schools, local governments, depending on the value of their local tax base, are able to supplement K-12 spending amounts in varying amounts.

According to the Public School Forum report, the ten highest spending counties in the state were able to spend an average of more than $3,000 per student in the 2014-15 school year, far higher than the $710 average in North Carolina’s lowest-spending counties.

In some communities, the differences are staggering. Leaders spent more than $4,700 per student in affluent Orange County, but in rural Swain County, schools received less than $400 per pupil.

And while state leaders offer additional funding allocations today for small and low-wealth counties, many school advocates say it’s not enough, creating “have” and “have-not” school districts.

Cooper’s office says his new commission is charged with drafting recommendations for alleviating these gaps. And the governor told members Thursday that he believes the panel faces a “comprehensive” challenge.

“There are so many dedicated principals, public school teachers and other school support personnel that are working tirelessly on a daily basis to do the best that they can,” said Cooper. “I am optimistic that we can give these principals, teachers and support personnel more help and do it in a way to attract more people to use their abilities in our schools.”

Based on members’ comments Thursday, the panel’s work may be far-flung. Officials called for reformed testing, more school social workers and psychologists, an expansion of state-supported Pre-K programs, and perhaps most of all, reviews of the adequacy of North Carolina’s K-12 spending.

“We’ve talked for really decades about every child not having equal access and equity,” said Mark Jewell, president of the N.C. Association of Educators (NCAE), the state’s top teacher lobbying organization. “We know that it’s going to take a lot of strong effort, great minds, and also a lot of resources to really address the barriers and challenges of poverty and trauma.”

Commission member Jim Deal, a Boone attorney and former member of the UNC Board of Governors, said that the state must also place a greater value on its teachers.

“We need to talk about our teachers as a valued resource, not as somebody who’s under attack, not as somebody who’s having to defend everything they do,” said Deal.

The commission’s work coincides with a legislative task force that began meeting in November to consider reforming the state’s complicated allocation funding system, although the Republican-controlled task force has been criticized because it is not expected to take up the overall adequacy of funding.

A key national benchmark ranked the state’s per-pupil spending at a projected 43^rd in the nation this year.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear how Cooper’s commission will interact, if at all, with the GOP-controlled legislature. Representatives for state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore didn’t respond to multiple Policy Watch interview requests this week, but General Assembly leadership has been at odds with the Democratic governor when it comes to K-12 funding and a host of other issues since his January inauguration.

Yet Rep. Cecil Brockman, a Guilford County Democrat who sits as vice-chair of the House Education Committee, says he applauds Cooper’s commission.

“I think an examination of inequality in education is badly needed here in North Carolina,” Brockman told Policy Watch. “Right now, 60 percent of African American students in traditional public schools are not proficient at grade level. This is a legitimate crisis and one that deserves the full attention of all our leaders across the state.”

Additionally, a panel led by UNC System President Margaret Spellings is slated to brainstorm improvements in college and career-readiness among the state’s public school students, producing two reports on economic mobility over the next 12 to 18 months.

But Cooper’s commission may play a key part in the still broiling Leandro litigation, which has wound through multiple court rulings and, until last year, long-running oversight by retired Superior Court Judge Howard Manning.

From 1997 to 2016, Manning oversaw the state’s compliance with the Leandro ruling, issuing rulings that found children were entitled to competent teachers, principals and adequate supplies. The case was handed over to retired Union County Judge David Lee last year after Manning reached mandatory retirement age in 2015 and reportedly began to suffer from health problems.

Melanie Dubis, lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Leandro case, said Thursday that the state “made a lot of progress” from 2004 until 2009, when an economic recession spurred deep cuts to public school coffers, cuts that public school advocates say have yet to be fully replaced years after the recession.

Dubis listed cuts to Pre-K slots, plummeting teacher pay rankings and the legislature’s 2011 move to eliminate the Teaching Fellows program, a nationally lauded teacher scholarship program, as exacerbating factors.

Legislators rolled out a new Teaching Fellows program this year, although its focus will be limited to prospective science, math, technology, engineering and special education teachers.

“It’s been one step forward and two steps back,” said Dubis Thursday.

However, Dubis and Halifax attorney Larry Armstrong complimented Cooper and the state Attorney General’s office for “extraordinary” cooperation in the Leandro case in the last six months.

Members of Cooper’s commission are scheduled to meet at least quarterly to discuss Leandro reforms, although Wilson said Thursday he expects meetings at least once every two months.

“Understand that we are here for the children, for the students of North Carolina,” said Wilson. “It will be easy for us to get distracted chasing other goals, but we need to constantly remind ourselves and see those faces, the faces that we see in our neighborhoods and in our homes. “What we do here will change lives in perpetuity in North Carolina.”

(Disclosure: Rick Glazier, executive director of the N.C. Justice Center, is a member of the commission. The Justice Center is Policy Watch’s parent nonprofit).