From my first reading of the opinion, the NC Court of Appeals three judge panel got the case wrong.
The primary issue was whether school boards have the statutory authority to mandate year-round schools. The trial court appears to have been correct–they do not have such authority (in my opinion).
Since
I don’t want to bore anyone with detailed legal gibberish, let me just
say that the Court of Appeals three judge panel had to do a lot of cute
stuff to basically ignore express and clear statutory language:
“There shall be operated in every local school administrative unit a uniform school term of nine months…” – G.S. 115C-1.
The
trial court believed that this meant nine months, no more and no
less. The appellate panel disagreed and argued that this type of
reading conflicted with other statutory sections, among other
things. Their arguments for not interpreting this language based
on its plain meaning are weak.
