NC Policy Watch: “In a dramatic ruling issued just days before midterm elections, the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling and ordered the transfer of millions of dollars to pay for a school improvement plan designed to provide the state’s school children with the sound basic education guaranteed under the state constitution
The court’s Democratic majority agreed to send the case back to the trial court to recalculate how much money should be transferred from state coffers to pay for the second and third years of what is commonly known as the comprehensive remedial plan.
“Once those calculations have been made, we instruct the trial court to order those State officials to transfer those funds to the specified State agencies,” Supreme Court Justice Robin E. Hudson wrote in the majority opinion.
The eight-year comprehensive remedial plan calls for more than $5.6 billion in public education spending by 2028. Spending on the second and third years of the plan was $1.75 billion before lawmakers approved the recent state budget that partially funded the plan.
State budget officials have estimated that nearly $800 million in the comprehensive plan is unfunded for year two and three.”