Public education in North Carolina has its share of challenges, not the least of which has been the state’s ongoing failure to make sure that school systems in poorer communities receive the financial support they need. But in one major respect, the pattern by which most of our school districts are organized helps them serve all their students, no matter their circumstances. The pattern is consolidation – larger districts serving families from across the economic spectrum. In the best of cases, a commitment to socioeconomic diversity also promotes racial diversity….
Steve Ford, Volunteer Program Associate
Public Schools’ Call to Quality – For All
It was perhaps the N.C. Supreme Court’s finest hour. In 1997, the high court held unanimously that North Carolina public school students are entitled under the state constitution to the “opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” In other words, it’s the state’s responsibility to make sure that all children – even those living in communities dogged by poverty – have a fair chance to learn what they need to learn in order to make their way in the world and become productive citizens. Hard as it may be to…
On the Hot Seat, Where She Belongs
Ordinary Americans – those of us not allowed to know the secrets of high-level espionage work – at this point find it hard to judge accurately the accomplishments of Gina Haspel as she climbed through the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency. President Trump, in nominating Haspel to head the agency where she now is deputy director, of course painted her in glowing colors. (It seems that Trump, as he goes about cementing his bid to become the most problematic chief executive in our history, believes all his nominees are…
Class Sizes and More: An Awkward Finale
As the General Assembly wraps up its weirdly timed and generally ill-conceived winter session, it would be nice to think that the grand dispute over class sizes in North Carolina’s public schools had been resolved in a way that met valid objections to legislators’ smaller-classes mandate. Alas, no such luck. Those objections may have been papered over, but the key issue – who pays for the smaller classes – remains. And legislators don’t seem inclined to bend on their insistence that local governments, not the state, foot the bill. As…
With Rights at Stake, Judges Stand Tall
The pattern has become familiar – and a welcome pattern it is, even if brought about by the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s relentless abuses of our democratic system. Call it, “Judges to the rescue!” Legislators have moved to make voting more difficult, to gerrymander election districts so as to insulate themselves from meaningful competition, and to inject conservative partisanship into North Carolina’s courts to protect their flanks. They’ve tried to gum up the oversight of elections to boost their party’s chances. Even with lawsuits still ongoing and legislative chiefs hoping to…
Thumbs-up to Fairer Districts
Progress in rooting out North Carolina’s gerrymandered voting districts hasn’t always occurred in a straight line. But the trend – thanks to federal judges honoring their duty to uphold the Constitution – bodes well for giving all voters an equal chance to help choose their leaders. That’s the essence of a democratic system in which each of us, even those who lack the traditional means of influence such as money and connections, has a voice and thus a role in setting the course of government in line with our values…
U.S. Court: Those Districts Won’t Fly
Grand constitutional questions in this country aren’t settled until the Supreme Court has its say, either by affirming or reversing the rulings of lower-court judges or simply by declining to hear challenges to those rulings. So it’s too early to conclude definitively that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly has set a sorry standard leading to a national crackdown on over-the-top partisan gerrymandering of election districts. That’s a call surely destined to be made by the justices in Washington. But the bombshell Jan. 9 decision by three Greensboro-based federal judges upheld every…
N.C. Judges on Trial
Well, here we go again. If the Republican-led General Assembly in 2017 focused on trying to exert its dominance over a freshly installed Democratic governor, then 2018 could bring the climax of legislative efforts to “reform” the courts. Translated, that means efforts to stack the state’s judicial deck in favor of Republican goals and priorities. The upshot could be a double-dose injection of conservative politics into a court system that is supposed to be independent and politically neutral. And that would be bad news for those who look to the…
Torture Inquiry Hits Close to Home
The solid citizens of Johnston County, N.C. – in a fateful quirk of geography – for several years have faced an unusual dilemma: What to do about the local company whose airplanes and personnel helped the Central Intelligence Agency carry out an interrogation program featuring human rights abuses that amounted to torture. By extension, the same dilemma has confronted other North Carolinians, officials and ordinary residents alike. That’s what happens when the U.S. government picks your conveniently accessible state as a base of operations for what became known among critics…
Tax Plan Twist: Churches, Charities, Candidates
With Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House desperate to post a big legislative win, their push for so-called tax reform – the label being used to sugar-coat costly tax changes mostly benefiting profitable corporations and the wealthiest among us – has reached red-line intensity. On the merits, the tax plans now being bulldozed through Congress have little to recommend them in terms of helping the economy or making the tax system more fair. Which unfortunately is beside the point. This is all about giving GOP chiefs and…
GOP’s Goal: A Tilted Bench
To the Republicans who run the N.C. General Assembly, the concept of judicial independence – central to our bedrock American principle of checks and balances and to the rule of law – must seem as alien as the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater of vintage Top 40 radio. Yes, it must be a strange concept indeed. Or as the old song remarks, “What a sight to see!” But in reality, it’s not strange at all. Consider this straightforward pronouncement in the state constitution: “The legislative, executive, and supreme judicial powers…
Defenders of Rights; Defenders of Privilege
At many levels, Americans are confronting issues of race relations and racial justice with an intensity that echoes the climax of the civil rights movement five decades ago – as well as the violent urban protests that signaled black citizens’ impatience with the pace of progress. Martin Luther King’s 1968 martyrdom was a big reason why that impatience boiled over. Barack Obama’s presidency finally seemed to show progress that wouldn’t or couldn’t be eroded. But then along came Donald Trump, who can’t manage to utter a discouraging word about white…
Post-Charlottesville: What Trump Said, and When
When President Trump stepped to a White House lectern on Monday and rebuked the instigators of the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., that had erupted two days before, he was essentially doing what he’s said to do often on the golf course – taking a mulligan. This time, he got off a pretty good shot. But wouldn’t you know it: He shanked his next one out of bounds. So much for the brief redemption. Trump’s first drive, as it were, had landed way over yonder in the poison ivy. That…
Marching Orders for New Maps
The three federal judges could have just come right out and said it: The Republicans who rule the N.C. General Assembly have elevated foot-dragging to a fine art. Their stall tactics take the cake. Instead, the trio overseeing the legislature’s efforts to draw new voting district maps seems to have angled for another prize – for understatement. Consider this masterpiece of tact from their latest ruling: “The General Assembly’s failure to comply with this Court’s August 2016 order or to take any apparent action since the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed…
Rights Advocacy At Risk
The optics, as they say, are terrible. But in a state whose motto is “To Be Rather Than to Seem,” it’s even more important to look at the substance. And the substance is worse. Think about it: In a Southern state where the legacy of race discrimination and its attendant social ills remains starkly visible, our leading public law school is on the verge of being forced to abandon the courtrooms where the struggles for civil rights have so often played out. Conservative ideologues now clustering among the leaders of…