Public school parents and concerned citizens in North Carolina have hoped that the General Assembly (legislature) would fully fund the Leandro decision of 2022, which requires full funding of public schools. The original Leandro case was decided thirty years ago!
But the leaders of the General Assembly, which has a veto-proof majority, went to court to ask the new members of the court to overturn the Leandro decision.
The GOP majority is committed to charter schools and vouchers, not public schools, even though the vast majority of children in the state are enrolled in public schools.
The North Carolina Supreme Court is weighing whether to reverse a 2022 decision that allows judges to order the transfer of hundreds of millions — and potentially billions — of dollars to fund public schools. In November 2022, the Supreme Court’s former Democratic majority ruled that the courts can order state officials to transfer funds to try to provide students their constitutional right to a sound basic education. During oral arguments Thursday, an attorney for Republican legislative leaders Sen. Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore asked the court’s current 5-2 GOP majority to overturn that 2022 ruling. “The court has recognized time and time again that if a decision is wrongly decided, if it conflicts with the constitution, if it conflicts with prior precedent …. then it should be overturned and corrected at the next possible moment,” said attorney Matthew Tilley. “This is the next possible.” WILL COURT OVERTURN PRECEDENT? But attorneys representing school districts, the State Board of Education and the state urged the justices to stand by the 2022 decision. “It has been the rule of this court for over 100 years that the court will not disturb its prior holding in the same case, even if it would have overturned that holding on a properly presented petition for rehearing,” said attorney Melanie Dubis. “We do not have a properly presented petition for rehearing in this case.
“Nevertheless, that is what the defendant-intervenors are blatantly asking this court to do, to go back and overturn Leandro IV, which is binding precedent cited merely 14 months ago.” That view was echoed Thursday at a rally held across the street from the court hearing and in statements from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the state’s Democratic legislative delegation. “Public school children are at the most important crossroads in our history,” Cooper said in a statement Thursday. “Will our Supreme Court be courageous enough to protect those children, or will it once again protect the power of the politicians who would rather give billions in tax breaks and private school vouchers for the wealthy?” The court is expected to issue a ruling this year.
This week’s court hearing is the latest chapter in the now 30-year-old Leandro school funding lawsuit that was initially filed in 1994 by low-wealth school districts to get more state funding. Over the years, the state Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution guarantees every child “an opportunity to receive a sound basic education” and that the state was failing to meet that obligation. In November 2021, Superior Court Judge David Lee ordered the state treasurer, controller and budget director to transfer $1.75 billion to fund the second and third years of an eight-year plan developed by a consultant. The plan is meant to try to provide every student with high-quality teachers and principals. The eight-year plan is estimated to cost at least $5.6 billion. Just days before the 2022 midterm elections flipped the court from Democratic to Republican control, the Supreme Court upheld Lee’s order. The Democratic justices said that the courts had deferred long enough for the state to implement a plan to provide a sound basic education. Soon after taking control, the court’s GOP majority blocked enforcement of Lee’s order.
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article285710266.html#storylink=cpy
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article285710266.html#storylink=cpy
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article285710266.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Jonathan Kozol in The Nation 2/26/24.
“In chronically underfunded inner-city schools, by contrast, overburdened teachers are too often under constant pressure to suppress the liveliness of children, to keep them silent and immobile in their chairs, and to rigidify their interactions with them. Austerity in funding, for these reasons, has increasingly led to austerity in pedagogic practices and an unhappy desiccation of the personalities of teachers, who are frequently obliged to undergo training in order to develop an unnaturally autocratic presence in the classroom.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/austerity-public-education-schools-investment/
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Democrats need to learn that they have to go the extra mile if they want any public supporting legislation to have teeth and staying power in red led states. Roe was never codified, and now it is being nullified in red Southern states. In this case they may have to try to get redress in the courts. As we know, it depends on how many extremist justices have been appointed by Trump. Of course, the case may eventually end up in The Supreme Court where extremists hold the majority. Elections matter and so does pushing back with the same level of commitment urgency that the authoritarian extremists do.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil, is to do more of what so far,
has failed to stop it…
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The problem starts with the primary process in the Republican and Democratic Parties that decides who runs in the midterms and general elections.
Between 5 to 10% of the voters in each party decide in the primaries who gets to run in the midterms and general elections.
Then in the midterms and general elections, most registered Republicans and Democrats that vote, vote the party ticket. A ticket that 5 to 10% of each parties’ voters decided during the primaries.
I think it’s a safe bet that most of those that turn out to vote in the Republican primaries are fanatics of some kind. Since 2015, In the GOP, those fanatics are MAGARINOS, who are told from a pulpit of some kind, to vote and fight like hell, or they are going to lose their country to communist-socialist libtards (that do not exist), so those RED HAT fanatics brave blizzards and select candidates that are also extremist fanatics.
That explains why Traitor Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by almost three million votes and 8,000,000 votes in 2020.
That also explains why there this toxic thing called the Freedom Caucus in the house, MAGARINOS from extreme RED districts, who are role models for the fanatics that put them there.
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It strikes me that everywhere Republicans are trying to hold back the tide of a rising sea. In North Carolina, the very people that give them power live in the rural areas that were a part of that 1994 suit that produced the ruling their elected officials now work to undo. The Republicans hope to cement their power well into the oncoming youth movement, which will reject the present culture wars gambit.
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After an in camera meeting with Judge McAfee today, Terrence Bradley—the former law partner of Nathan Wade who refused to answer questions about what he knew about when Wade and Fani Willis began their romantic relationship on the ground of attorney client privilege—has been ordered to re-take the witness stand tomorrow at around 2 pm.
Possible testimony:
a. “I heard from Wade himself that he was in a romantic relationship with Willis in 2021, prior to his hiring as a special prosecutor”
b. “I told Ashleigh Merchant lies about how Wade and Willis were romantically involved prior to his hiring”
c. “I repeated to Merchant rumors I had heard that Wade and Willis were romantically involved prior to his hiring.”
d. Other.
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Flerp, only two people can say with certainty when Nate and Willis entered into a sexual relationship. Anything else is hearsay.
Isn’t it disgusting that the DA is being tried for her private life?
If the DA were a man, I doubt that any of this would have been discussed.
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Well, a finder of fact doesn’t need to have absolute, direct knowledge of something to find that it’s so. Purely circumstantial evidence can be enough. A lot of people go to jail based solely on circumstantial evidence.
I don’t think sleeping with Wade merits Willis’ disqualification, but I also don’t think it’s a huge injustice that she’s being subjected to this. All’s fair in lawfare. If I were a criminal defendant and I learned that my attorneys had a non-frivolous basis to file a DQ motion (and I didn’t think the DQ would work against me) but chose not to file it because they thought it would be unseemly, I would sue them for malpractice.
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And I have no doubt that the defendants would have followed the same course if the DA were a man and Wade were a woman.
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And teachers in over-burdened/under-funded Texas Schools.
Can now take on a new obligation.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is calling on “licensed professionals” and “members of the general public” to report the parents of transgender minors to state authorities if it appears the minors are receiving gender-affirming medical care.
Abbott’s letter follows an opinion released Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, which stated that allowing minors to receive transition care such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery is child abuse under state law.
In Tuesday’s letter, Abbott tasked licensed professionals who work with children — including teachers, nurses and doctors — and “members of the general public” with reporting such claims. He added that state law “provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse.”
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NC is one of only 7 states that selects their supreme court justices via partisan elections.
When I read NC’s BdofEd et al’s attorneys statement “It has been the rule of this court for over 100 yrs that the court will not disturb its prior holding…”, I sighed. And imagined this as pleading, not cautioning. They’re dealing with Republicans, who don’t mind breaking things to get their way.
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