John-
This will be a two-part response.
First, the issues that you raise in your initial comments – of whether or not our state Constitution requires higher funding on schools (or equal funding amongst schools) – are largely beside the point. What the state Supreme Court decided in Leandro was that every child has the right to an equal opportunity to receive a sound basic education. This does not mean that every local system has to provide each student with an identical (or identically funded) education. A sound basic education can look different in different places.
This constitutional requirement does mean, however, that every system must meet some basic standard of adequacy. Students will not truly have a real opportunity to receive a sound basic education if they have an incompetent teacher or crumbling facilities or prehistoric textbooks. As I noted earlier, the NC Public School Forum has some good research on the needs in rural areas. Now, once we have established this basic premise, we move on to the enforcement of the Court?s ruling.
That?s where state policymakers, and, if necessary, the trial court (Judge Howard Manning) enter the picture. These entities must determine what it will take to lift up the school systems that have been incapable of providing a sound basic education and then figure out a way to make it happen. While this process can and should involve the identification and implementation of creative tactics and new efficiencies (your point about teacher assistants is not be completely off base if we can get teacher/student ratios down to 1 to 15 levels), it must also involve identifying and responding to system shortcomings that are a function of inadequate resources.
In this regard, where it can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the court that particular school systems simply cannot meet their constitutional requirement because their local tax base will not generate, for instance, enough revenue to provide adequate teacher supplements to attract and retain good teachers or adequate special programs to cope with an influx of limited English proficient students, the state is constitutionally obligated to act.
Part two of my response will be brief. I think your points about state education funding growth and state teacher compensation are also off the mark. As to overall funding, sure we?re spending more than we did a decade ago. We?ve got about a century?s worth of catching up to do. As for teacher compensation, I don?t think anyone can seriously argue that public school teachers are paid anything near what they are worth. State teacher salaries continue to be a vestige of a bygone era in which so many brilliant women had few if any other employment opportunities. In today?s world we cannot expect to hire and retain the teachers we need without paying them truly competitive salaries. While I might quarrel with your contention about where our teachers fall within the national pecking order, a more relevant question would be where they fall within the pecking order of professionals in whom such tremendous responsibility is vested. By this measure, they are clearly and badly underpaid ? particularly in poorer, rural areas.
