“I don’t want to ride my bus because they are loud and I get home late. I have bipolar disorder and ADHD and more…When I was put into the EC classrooms, I gave up hope on trying to learn and grow up. I am not that smart and I want to be normal. I have low self-esteem and I hate life and I just want to see my dad and be smart and a normal kid.”

The words above were written by one of my former students a few years ago. For the purposes of anonymity, I will use the pseudonym Kelly. She is an American and former President Ronald Reagan, during his first inaugural address on January 20, 1981, described her dilemma: “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?”

Kelly is our fellow countryman. She is our fellow North Carolinian. Did we do the best that we could to “reach out a hand” to her?

Another Generation Underserved

Before Kelly was even born, in the Leandro v. the State of North Carolina case, five low-wealth counties – Hoke, Halifax, Robeson, Vance and Cumberland – sued the state, claiming that their resources were not sufficient to meet the needs of their students. In 1997, the NC Supreme Court found that all children have a state constitutional right to a “sound, basic education.” 

When Kelly was still very young, the original Leandro ruling had been in place requiring adequate funding from the State so that she might have a different experience during her school years. However, by 2017, as Kelly was approaching the end of her k-12 public school journey, the promise of the Leandro decision was still unfulfilled. 

Governor Roy Cooper, also in 2017, created the “Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education” to assess the ability of NC to staff schools adequately and to provide the resources that public education needs. Then, in January of 2018, North Carolina was reported to have dropped to 40th in Education Week’s Quality Counts state rankings–down from 37th in 2016, 34th in 2015 and 19th in 2011. We also ranked 45th in school spending and 37th in teacher pay. As a state, fully funding Leandro would reverse this trend. 

The court appointed WestEd later in 2018 as the independent consultant to work with the Governor’s Commission “to develop detailed, comprehensive written recommendations…to achieve sustained compliance” with Leandro’s mandates. A year later, on December 10th, 2019, WestEd released its final report in the face of these declining conditions and as it stands today, the State is still not in compliance with Leandro. The WestEd recommendations have been on the table for nearly two years and our state is capable of fully funding Leandro today. Yet it has not. 

Despite the 1997 ruling, school systems across our state have continued without adequate funding. Kelly’s whole generation has seen their k-12 school days come and go. Did she and her generation have access to a sound basic education? Will the current or next generation have it?

Time to Secure Our Children’s Right

The North Carolina State Constitution is clear about how to view and treat the people of our state. In fact, our state government is set up “solely for the good of the whole” to secure collectively what we could never secure individually – our inalienable rights. Of the rights stated, the pursuit of happiness is often misunderstood as many people think of it as chasing short-lived, feel-good moments. For the government, the pursuit of happiness is something different, being instead about people’s right to follow the course laid down by their own interests and talents. 

Even though we say all men are created equal, there is a catch rooted in the fact that men and women are not created, children are. Children are not born as full grown adults in small bodies. With no voice, no values and no culture at birth, they must discover their happiness and there is only one means for the State to secure the pursuit of that happiness: our system of education. From the schools’ view, it is appropriate to say, all [children] are created equal [and dependent]. 

Schools are to magnify equality and diminish dependence by working to transition each child to self-sufficiency. NC children have a constitutional right to an education that helps them discover and follow their interests and talents while fostering self-sufficiency and equality, or in other words, a “sound basic education.”  

There are a lot of factors that can impair that transition and children, as our most vulnerable countrymen, depend on adults to “reach out a hand.” That helping hand is both a duty and a wise investment. Investing in our children secures their rights and it secures our future. 

Kelly did not have adequate resources to meet her needs. She had the right to it but her education did not help her discover her talents or foster self-sufficiency and equality. In her own words, “I am not that smart and I want to be normal. I have low self-esteem and I hate life and I just want to see my dad and be smart and a normal kid.”

No school system can secure a child’s right to the pursuit of happiness and a sound basic education without adequate resources. A child’s unmet needs often distract from academics. Kelly’s generation does not get to grow up a second time. They have had their one childhood. Now, they are adults who must live with the consequences of an under-resourced education. 

Fully funding Leandro will make a tremendous difference for the current and future generations of children in North Carolina. It is time to secure our children’s right to a sound basic education. To find out more about Leandro, visit www.everychildnc.org.

Demetrius Haddock, a public school educator for more than two decades, is the Chair of both the River Jordan Council on African American Heritage and the Community Interagency Council for Quality Education (CICQuE) in Fayetteville NC.

 

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