JLF head John Hood offers up an assessment of the ongoing litigation about school funding in North Carolina which will undoubtedly set some folks on the Left of. John’s analysis begins:
The North Carolina Supreme Court has never ruled that the state constitution requires the delivery of early childhood services to all preschoolers, or even to all low-income preschoolers.
I know that may not be what you’ve read in news stories covering funding disputes about North Carolina Pre-K and Smart Start. But my statement is correct. You can check behind me by reading the relevant Leandro decisions at the website of the Administrative Office of the Courts, including last year’s unanimous Court of Appeals ruling on the funding dispute. You can also ask the Supreme Court justices who wrote the original decisions in the long-running Leandro school-funding lawsuit what they meant.
I’ve done both. There is no constitutional right to preschool. No such provision was written into the current state constitution or added by constitutional referendum.
You can read the rest here.
