Views

NC Schools: The Sad, Hard Truth About Leandro

Details

Tuesday, 14 April 2026

Written by Margaret Dickson

Robb Leandro is disappointed.
Robb was a Hoke County eighth grader when a major lawsuit regarding public education was filed with his name as the lead plaintiff. The original 1994 case challenged North Carolina’s school funding formula on behalf of young Robb and students in 5 low-wealth counties, including Cumberland, Hoke, Vance, Halifax, and Robeson. At issue was—and is—whether North Carolina children are entitled to “a sound, basic education” as described in our state Constitution. Over time, the case has come to involve early childhood education, high quality educators, and accountability issues.
Our North Carolina Supreme Court has just ruled that none of these educational components are required by our Constitution and dismissed the long-running lawsuit despite the reality that other courts have made radically different decisions.
Today, almost 32 years later, Robb Leandro is a Raleigh attorney specializing in health care issues. His epic lawsuit may have met its end, a victim of this century’s toxic politics. The Supreme Court’s death blow was dealt by 4 Republicans intent on privatizing public education. Dissenting were 2 Democrats and 1 Republican who bucked their party to support public education.
The original issue at its most elemental level was—and remains—that North Carolina children who live in wealthier counties, like Wake and Mecklenburg that can afford higher school spending, are likely to receive a more comprehensive public education than children in counties that have fewer resources. The suit asked: Could young Robb, living in low-wealth Hoke County, receive the same quality education as another Robb growing up in Wake County? For decades, various courts ruled that he could not and ordered the state to beef up educational spending. Those decisions have been appealed at every turn, so back to the courts the Leandro case has gone time and time again.
That remains the basic issue, but over the years, the case has also become burdened with partisan political questions involving division of powers among the 3 branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial.
Layered upon all this, the North Carolina General Assembly has begun channeling billions of state tax dollars into private schools with very little accountability and leaving public schools ever more starved for funding. As students follow state dollars to private schools and make other choices, including homeschooling, public school rolls are decreasing, meaning even fewer state dollars coming in. School closures loom in a growing number of communities, including Cumberland County.
Many people think of this situation as a deliberate abandonment of public education. Some would even say it is a war against public schools now well on its way to the half-century mark.
Governor Stein voiced his version of a war cry regarding the court’s decision this way.
“Education opens doors of opportunity for children, but today the Court slammed them in the face of students who deserve the right to a sound, public education. The Supreme Court simply ignored its own established precedent, enabling the General Assembly to deprive another generation of North Carolina students of the educational opportunity promised by our Constitution.”
I wonder whether the 4 North Carolina Supreme Court Justices who slammed that door on North Carolina’s young people wonder what several generations could have accomplished, invented, created had they had access to top notch public schools. If they wonder, do they care? Do they believe quality public education is for only who can afford it or that quality public education floats all boats and enriches community life in North Carolina?
They seem to have answered those questions earlier this month.

Leandro Should Have Ended Long Ago

Details

Tuesday, 14 April 2026

Written by John Hood

For all the confusion, finger-pointing, and rancor that accompanied the North Carolina Supreme Court’s final ruling in the Leandro school-finance case, the primary emotion it conjured in me was relief. This is likely the last time I’ll feel compelled to comment on the matter.
I have many acquaintances, and some cherished friends, who are very angry at the Supreme Court for bringing an official end to the litigation without delivering its intended outcome: a court order compelling the state to spend billions of dollars more on public schools, necessarily financed by tax increases.
I mean no disrespect to them, but such an outcome would have been outrageous. Begun in 1994 as a legal claim that school systems in low-wealth counties should receive additional state funds so they could offer programs and facilities comparable to higher-wealth counties, the Leandro case then morphed into a broader claim that all of North Carolina’s public schools were funded below a minimum level required by the state constitution.
An “equity” lawsuit, in other words, became an “adequacy” lawsuit. Why? Because unlike the prior states targeted by similar equity lawsuits, North Carolina already funded its schools primarily with state taxes, not local ones. Because urban school districts intervened to lodge their own fiscal claims. And because the organizations behind the Leandro litigation believe increases in education spending would be good public policy.
They have every right to believe that. But Article IX of the state constitution, the one requiring that the state legislature “shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools” wherein “equal opportunities shall be provided for all students,” isn’t the whole of the document.
Other sections require that all legislative power be vested in the General Assembly, that the legislature enacts state budgets, that “no money shall be drawn from the state treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” and that “the people of this state shall not be taxed or made subject to the payment of any impost or duty without the consent of themselves or their representatives in the General Assembly, freely given.”
Nothing in the design or operation of North Carolina’s constitutional order could reasonably be construed to allow the judicial branch to decide how much money taxpayers must spend on education, or for a governor and court to collude to produce a “settlement” drawn up by a left-wing advocacy group and about which the legislative branch, possessing the power of the purse, has no say.
Moreover, the state constitution is full of explicit and implicit protections of rights other than that of the opportunity to receive a sound, basic education. It protects, for example, the rights of North Carolinians to enjoy “the fruits of their own labor.” It promises that “every person for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person, or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law; and right and justice shall be administered without favor, denial, or delay.” And it states that the “benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education” should “as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the state free of expense.”
Would it be proper to taxpayers to file a lawsuit alleging that North Carolina’s tax code imposes too heavy a burden on their right to “the fruits of their own labor,” and then for some future governor to negotiate a “settlement” that required state lawmakers or county commissioners to lower their tax rates by a set amount? What about litigation to force the state treasurer or state controller to transfer funds to the Department of Public Safety, the Administrative Office of the Courts, or county sheriff‘s departments for specified programs to ensure swift justice? Should the Supreme Court decide what specific amount of UNC tuition is as “free of expense” as “practicable”?
These are weighty matters, but not justiciable ones. So is the amount annually appropriated to public schools.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

A journey to space: Artemis by any other name

Details

Tuesday, 14 April 2026

Written by Pitt Dickey

Celestial Events Desk: It is beyond debate that the greatest movie made in 1959 was the Three Stooges interstellar l epic Have Rocket Will Travel. The Stooges were working as janitors at a space port and accidentally launched themselves into space. Mankind has always reached for the stars. The Stooges were no exception. I bring this up because in early April, NASA launched the Artemis II crew to circle the Moon with a crew of four intrepid astronauts. This is one more astronaut than even the Three Stooges. The Artemis II mission is to ride an Orion rocket around the moon and back.
When you weren’t marveling how Dook managed to blow a 19-point lead to lose to Connecticut on a buzzer-beater half-court shot, did you ever wonder where the colorful names for Space Missions came from? If so, today is your lucky day. Return to the wild and wacky world of Greek Mythology to learn who Artemis was. For extra credit, discover how Orion fits into the naming of this space mission.
Artemis, as Frank Sinatra described Luck, was a lady. Her mom, Leto, and her Baby Daddy, Zeus, were free spirits, unhindered by the holy bonds of matrimony.
Zeus, at the time of Artemis’ conception, was married to Hera. As might be expected, Hera was not amused by this situation. Leto produced not only Artemis but her twin brother Apollo, who went on to own a very famous nightclub in Harlem.
To escape Hera, Leto took her two children into the hinterlands of Asia Minor, where she stopped in Lycia to drink some water and bathe her kids. The local villagers were inhospitable. They stirred up the pond’s mud, making the water undrinkable and yucky for bathing.
Leto was so torqued off at the villagers that she turned them into frogs. She later had trouble with a giant named Tityos, who took a hankering for Leto. He made some unwelcome moves on her. The twins peppered Tityos with arrows, which cooled his ardor considerably. Leto did some magic, stretching Tityos’ body over nine acres, leaving him like a thin mint for vultures who ate his liver and heart every day.
Artemis was a Goddess with responsibilities and a short temper– She was a protector of young children (She apparently was out to lunch during the Epstein extravaganza). She was a huntress who frequently bathed naked in the woods. This led to an awkward situation where Actaeon, who was out innocently hunting in the forest accidently saw Artemis in her birthday suit. Artemis was not amused and turned Actaeon into a deer. Her transformation of Actaeon into Bambi’s father was so convincing that his own hunting dogs did not recognize him. His dogs turned on him, chewing Actaeon into bite-sized pieces of venison. Myths, being old, tend to have many versions of the same story.
In another telling, King Agamemnon shot and killed one of Artemis’ sacred deer. Artemis demanded Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia, be sacrificed to pay for the killing of her sacred deer. This story was later made into a disturbing movie called The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is still available for your viewing pleasure on HBO Max. Watch at your own risk.
After several other misadventures in which lots of Greeks were killed by Artemis and her brother Apollo, Artemis hooked up with a hunting buddy named Orion. Orion was a loudmouth, constantly bragging about his hunting skills. He boasted that he was going to kill every animal on Earth. The Earth Goddess, Gaia, was not amused.
In one version, Gaia sent a gigantic scorpion to kill Orion. Artemis saved Orion by tossing him up into the skies where he became a constellation. Orion became famous for wearing a belt instead of suspenders. In another version, Orion tried to make unwanted whoopee with Artemis’s friend Opis. Artemis was having none of that. She killed him and tossed his dead body into the sky, where he also became a constellation. Yet another version has Artemis falling in love with Orion. Her brother Apollo tries and fails to talk her out of marrying Orion. He tricks Artemis into an archery contest in which he challenges her to shoot at a tiny speck way out in the ocean.
Unfortunately, the speck was Orion swimming. Artemis hits him with her arrow, causing Orion to expire. His body floats back to the beach. Artemis, consumed by grief, tosses him up into the skies where he becomes a constellation.
Now you know how the Artemis crew and the spaceship got their names. Bonus points for learning about the Three Stooges in Have Rocket Will Travel.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)

Fighting the good fight: The truth about legacy

Details

Tuesday, 07 April 2026

Written by Dan DeBruler

Legacy is more than what we leave at the end of a life—it’s something we’re building each day we live and breathe. True legacy is made of the things that outlive us.
How do we build our lives in a way that leads others to conclude we finished well? That we completed the course of our life, remaining faithful to what we said really matters? How do we fortify ourselves, our minds, and our attention span against drift?
I look to someone I think pulled it off. As a Pastor and Christian communicator, the Bible is a natural go-to for me.
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
2 Timothy 4:7 (NIV)
This is Apostle Paul’s final letter to his young protégé, Timothy. Paul is near death and he knows it. He wants to make sure his parting words are something of substance.
He’s saying:
I fought when it was difficult…
I put one foot in front of the other even though it was long and there was no end, no victory in sight.
And while everything didn’t go the way I might have preferred, I didn’t quit. I didn’t abandon anything. In short, he says, I stayed. That’s faithfulness.
Much of what we do is unseen. Others may see the results of what you do, but they don’t notice that you do it. You may not SEE someone love others more than themselves, but you see someone who listens instead of winning the argument.
You can’t SEE someone choose integrity, but you can see an employee who does the right thing when no one is checking. You can’t always SEE someone forgive, but you see relationships that don’t fall apart. You don’t always SEE someone pray, but you see the peace that doesn’t make sense.
You might not SEE someone stay faithful in reading the Bible, but you see wisdom show up at just the right time. You can’t SEE someone fight temptation, but you see a life that didn’t derail.
That seems like faithfulness to me. Remaining true to what we say really matters. What would compel a man whose life was marked by beatings, imprisonment, rejection and ridicule to keep on the path that resulted in so much pain, so much turmoil?
The answer to that question appears in his next line:
“Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:8 (NIV)
He knew there was more. And he says it’s not just for him, but for everyone who lives their lives according to God-honoring principles.
Guard yourself against the ease of drifting from what really matters. Refuse comparison. Resist bitterness and return to God’s perspective. Legacy is lost more often through distraction than it is through disaster.