Episode 271: Eggs & Issues 2026 Pt. 1 – Measuring Progress on the Top Issues

On this special episode we’re taking a look at the Public School Forum’s annual Eggs & Issues event, which was held on April 7 in Raleigh this year. Eggs & Issues is held at the beginning of each legislative session so that the Forum can share our policy agenda for the biennium. This year is a short session year, meaning the Top Issues focused on measuring progress toward the issues named in 2025. Within the episode you’ll hear status updates on those issues, as well as analysis of the recent Leandro V ruling from legal expert Ann McColl. 

Guests:

• Dr. Lauren Fox, Public School Forum of NC
• Ann McColl, Legal Expert

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Welcome to Education Matters, presented by the Public School Forum of North Carolina. I'm your host for the week, Shantae Russell. In this special edition episode, we'll be taking a look back at the public school forum's annual Eggs and Issues event, which was held on April 7th in Raleigh this year. Eggs and Issues is held at the beginning of each legislative session so that the forum can share our policy agenda for the upcoming biennium. This year is a short session, meaning that the top issues focused on measuring progress toward the issues named in 2025. In this episode, you'll hear status updates on these issues as well as analysis of the recently Andro V ruling from legal expert Ann McCall. Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully, you'll learn something new and share what you learn within your community.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

And I'd like to just start off with sharing a few examples of how awesome our public schools in North Carolina are. Just last week, DPI announced that more than half of our public school students completed at least one college-level course while still in high school. Nearly 23,000 public high school seniors accepted direct admissions offers from North Carolina colleges and universities through the NC College Connect program. The North Carolina Community Schools model, which you'll hear more about later today, has expanded to serve students in 42 schools across 23 districts across the state, including the entire Sand Hills region. And we'll be expanding to more next year. North Carolina is the leader in the country both in the number of CTE credentials earned and the number of nationally national board certified teachers. And just yesterday, a North Carolina public school graduate and NC State alum, Christina Cook, became the first female astronaut to fly around the moon. And the students you hear from today on this stage will give you more examples to be excited about all of the great things happening in our public schools in North Carolina. For me, and I think for many of us, what makes the promise of public education so powerful is that it's for everyone. It's not about good schools for a few, it's about great schools for every child. Public schools bring our communities together and make all of us stronger. That's why all of our collective work to support and strengthen our public schools has never been more critical. We're here today because we know that supporting our public schools isn't a partisan or political issue, and it's not optional. It's an absolute necessity, and it requires all of us to come together no matter our role. We need business leaders who know that North Carolina will not remain a top state for business if we fail to invest in our students who will lead us in the future. We need parents who advocate for the resources that their child and every child deserves. We need neighbors who understand that when our local schools thrive, our property values, our safety, and our collective future thrive along with it. And we need policymakers who will put politics aside and put the needs of our students and communities first. So today we'll share some data and policy recommendations, and then you'll hear from policy leaders, educators, and students about all of the great work happening in our schools and what is needed to help them be successful. You'll also have an opportunity to talk to each other about what you hear. And we hope that no matter your role, you'll walk away today with ideas about what you can do. We'll equip you with information that you can share with those in your networks, and really anybody who will listen, you should hear my team. We talk to everybody about this data. And we're here at the forum to support you all and to work collaboratively moving forward. So with that, I'll jump right into our top education issues. Behind our top education issues, at the core of all of the work that we do at the forum are a set of priorities that guide the development of our policy agenda. While our top issues may change each biennium, these five priorities, which I'm not going to read out, but you can see on the screen, remain a consistent foundation. As those of you who have been with us before know, the top education issues outline the forum's policy priorities for each legislative biennium. Our issues are not meant to be exhaustive of everything that is needed for public schools, but they guide our advocacy and policy agenda. We release an updated set of priorities at the start of each long session and then share progress on these priorities at the start of each short session. Those of you in the room may have lost track of where we actually are in the sessions right now, but I'll remind you that technically speaking, we are approaching a short legislative session and are in the second year of the Biedium. So it's time to share an update on progress made. So I'm gonna give a fairly quick update on these measures this morning so that we can get to our student and educator and policymaker discussions, but the full details are in the handouts on your table, and you can also find the publications online. So for 25-26 or 25-27, we had four overarching top issues with specific recommendations under each. Number one, ensure our school funding system is equitable, adequate, and flexible enough to meet students' unique needs. Two, make educator pay competitive in North Carolina with a goal to reach the national average by 2030. Three, address critical needs to support the well-being of children both in and outside of school. And four, adopt assessment and accountability policies that are fair and effective, both for public schools and for private schools that receive public tax dollars. In short, our state unfortunately made very little progress in these areas, in large part due to not having a state budget last year. As you can see, we saw no progress or even backwards progress on the majority of our metrics, unfortunately. We did not meet or exceed metrics in any of the priority areas that we identified. So we have a lot of work to do this session. It might end up being a long session. We'll see. So let's take a closer look first at our first metric related to school funding. With no state budget or increased investment, we remain at the very bottom of two key indicators on school funding. We fund our schools at a level far below the national average, ranking us 50th out of 51st, including DC, in per student spending. And we rank dead last in funding effort, which is a measure of public school funding relative to our state's GDP. And just last Thursday, as Dr. Harrison spoke to the North Carolina Supreme Court, reversed its own decision from two years ago, which ordered the state to fund the multi-billion dollar LeAndro Comprehensive Remedial Plan, which would have brought our state into compliance with the Constitution when it comes to adequate funding for public schools. You'll note that in your publication, which was printed before Thursday, there's some information that has now been updated online because of the recency of that decision. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit. I think it's important to put education funding conversations in context, especially right now, and consider the policy choices that have led us to where we are. This chart on the screen shows the impact of planned tax cuts over the next decade. Our funding levels are a direct result of prioritizing tax cuts over more robust investments in our schools. And disagreements over tax policy and impending revenue shortfalls were at the root of the misalignment across chambers and across political parties this past session. So I anticipate we'll hear more about that on our policymaker panel in a little bit. One of our recommendations under this top issue related to funding is also to ensure that stakeholder input informs any potential changes to our school funding model. We've had a lot of conversation over the years around the possibility of moving to a weighted student funding model. On the screen, you see a bill that was proposed in 2023. That's the most recent legislation proposed related to this. We have not seen additional legislation move forward, but the public school forum has been convening stakeholders related to this to gather input that we will include in a policy brief this summer. So keep a lookout for that, and we know that any potential changes moving forward should take that feedback and input into consideration. Now I'm going to move on to our second issue related to educator pay. We know that one of the most important investments that we can make in education is supporting a highly effective teacher workforce. Pay for educators remains a central issue. It's not the only issue, but it is an absolute critical issue for our public schools when it comes to recruitment and retention of a highly experienced and qualified teacher workforce. We remain last in teacher pay regionally, both in terms of average teacher pay and beginning teacher pay. And as a result, we often lose teachers to other states as well as to other sectors that are able to pay more. Last session, we saw a couple pretty promising proposals on teacher pay that would have been a step in the right direction. Both the governor's budget and the House budget would have brought us closer to having competitive pay regionally with across the board increases. Both would have also reinstated master's pay. The Senate's proposal was significantly lower in its proposal related to teacher pay, and it did not include master's pay reinstatement. In the House, there was also a separate bill proposed that would have raised average teacher pay by 22% across the board. So because of these proposals, we were generous, I think, to show minimal progress on this metric as we hope that these proposals will move forward in the next session. Our third issue is to address critical needs to support child well-being. We know, and you've heard us say many times, that all children must feel safe and supported in order to learn and thrive. And too often in North Carolina and nationally, students and families have had reason to fear that attending school may put them at risk. This is unacceptable. Our students are dealing with so much, and our schools have to be equipped to keep children safe and meet their needs so that they can be successful. So there are a few ways that we're monitoring progress in this area. First and foremost, our school's mental health workforce remains understaffed. You can see the most recent data that we have from 2024 on the screen. We're far below the recommended school student support ratio for psychologists, counselors, and social workers. One bright spot which I mentioned before that I want to share on is the expansion of the community schools model across the state. We've seen great promise and impact in community schools, which serve as hubs of resources and community pride, and ensure that students have the supports that they need to be successful. This could look like providing healthcare access within schools, providing meals and other community services. And research shows that implementation of the community schools model leads not only to improved school climate, but also increased attendance, academic achievement, and educator retention, just to name a few. So we're very lucky to have this model expanding in North Carolina. And our final top issue for this biennium concerns fair and effective assessment and accountability policies. We're pleased to see some progress here as well for our public schools. Building on past efforts, DPI has convened a task force to redesign how school performance is measured with a clear timeline for deliverables. And there were a few bills that were introduced last session as well that would address school accountability. And finally, just as with public schools, it's important to ensure that we have accountability for private schools that receive public dollars through our Opportunity Scholarship Voucher program. As you all know, we saw a dramatic increase in state funding allocated to the Opportunity Scholarship Program after it was made universal in 2023. You can see that increase on the screen. With planned spending expected to exceed $800 million annually by 2033. By that time, collectively, we will have spent about $7 billion on this voucher program. And amongst states with universal voucher programs, North Carolina remains the state with the least accountability by a long shot. As we're considering changes to North Carolina's public school accountability model, this provides an opportunity for us to look at accountability across the board as our private schools receiving our taxpayer dollars should be held to the same standards. So we urge our lawmakers to um to move forward with those in this short session.org slash top issues.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

After the break, we'll hear from Ann McCall about the latest Leandra ruling.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

So I want to invite Anne McCall to join me on stage for a little cameo. Many of you know Anne. She's an experienced education lawyer and constitutional scholar who the forum was lucky enough to have as our interim CEO for much of the past year. And Anne is one of the leading experts on the Leandro case. So after the ruling last week, she read all 244 pages pretty quickly. And we knew that this would be top of mind for those of you in the room. So Anne was gracious enough to join us and she'll come and say a few words about what's next and the implications of the case. And I also just want to shout out before Anne takes over that our friends at Every Child and C who are at a table back in the room are also hosting an event tomorrow at 9 a.m. that we'll go into more depth. So if you'd like to check that out, go see them in the back and get your information. Thank you all so much for being here.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

Thank you, Lauren. Um it's great to be here. I wasn't really expecting to be here. I've written for Ed and C, and so you can see a more comprehensive explanation of the case there. Um my article explaining it was on Thursday, and then last evening they published my commentary. So those things that they wouldn't let me put into a news piece, I got to finally put in somewhere else. So this will be short. Um, and I'm trying to think of those things that I think are most important for you to walk away with. Uh the first is about the nature of the ruling itself. Um, I mean, please make no mistake, this was a political decision cloaked in procedural language. We can say subject matter jurisdiction, we can save facial challenges to the Constitution versus applied, but that's just language that intentionally is meant to be difficult in public discourse. Um but if we were to dissect the opinion together and walk through all of that, what you would find is that it is nonsense to suggest that the plaintiffs failed to appropriately plead subject matter jurisdiction during the course of this 30-year litigation after they had already pled it. It was not a fault of the plaintiffs that in some way the case had morphed into this applied to facial, it's just nonsense. Um let's take it for what it is. It's a political decision. There is one aspect that we're all going to have to learn about this case. We are used to talking about a court reversing a prior opinion. In more dramatic circumstances, a court will justify overturning precedent or starry decisis. That is not what happened here. What they used in their holding was they claimed that all court decisions since July of 2017 since July 2017 are void abinitio. Now, does that sound more like something from Hogwarts? And so it really does have a bit of that sorcery to it. That what it means in this Latin phrase is that it is as if it never happened. Right? It's as if we're going to pretend, or we might say we're going to erase the history of this case since 2017. It feels like it is part and parcel with the fact that in this case, unlike all the others, they refuse to name the trial court judges who moved this case forward. So I want to say their names here. There is, of course, Superior Court Judge Howard E. Manning Jr., a stunning example of dedication to students in North Carolina. The other judges came in at the critical time of working out a comprehensive remedial plan. It was very complex work. And these judges, Judge W. David Lee, Judge Michael Robinson, and Judge Floyd Amons Jr., did so with remarkable judicial decorum and clarity. And we can thank them for that work. And I encourage you, instead of allowing this erasure, to allow time to talk about Leandro. Allow time to thank all of the people who have been involved in this case for 30 years. It is an extraordinary number of people who have been involved in the courts, been involved in the public interest groups, trying to let people know. Let's give some space for that. And I want to paint a scenario for how we move forward. So imagine that there is this loose network of lawyers, private attorneys, lawyers that work for nonprofit organizations, lawyers that are professors at university law clinics like at Duke or Campbell. And they are working together on litigation across North Carolina that's going to hit different constitutional issues. All of those issues that Lauren just shared with you, those are constitutional issues, right? We could pick up mental health and talk about that. That could be one lawsuit worked out of a particular arrangement between this supportive network of lawyers. And then let's imagine that this network of lawyers is then connected into those who do policy. That's not hard given that some of the nonprofits, like the Justice Center, have lawyers and people in policy. The forum is now deeply committed to this work. They can be a part of it too. And so many of you are with organizations that can be a part of this. Where now we're going to look at the whole thing. We're going to reframe what it means to have a constitutional right to education in North Carolina, and we will work together to figure out is this something we go first to the General Assembly, give them their chance to do it right, or do we first go into the trial? And if we're going to go into a trial court, what's the best way to do that? We can all work on this together. So I really want us to encourage that right is still there, as uh Dr. Bill Harrison said. Leandro one, two, and three are all intact. There is plenty for us to work with. And so I look forward to being with you in that fight. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

To learn more about the Leandro case, visit ncforum.org slash Leandro. After the break, we'll wrap up today's episode with some insight from North Carolina's business community.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Why should business leaders care about local public schools? I, as a business leader, you know, and a and a parent uh that has a child that went through public schools, I am looking for public schools to to get my next employee ready for that job. You know, they're the starting point. Uh, public schools are the starting point for that person. I have an uh an intern program that I use every year as a financial advisor, and I hire interns for the summertime or for the year that are either high school students who graduated looking to get into the business world or a college of business students at East Carolina that are looking to get into the business world in the finance space. So I need public schools to get them to the point where they are useful for me and useful for themselves to grow.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Well, I feel that business leaders should care about public schools because it builds a pipeline for the communities when businesses support public schools. It also can be a pipeline for employment for them investing in the schools. And plus, I think it just builds more relationships when businesses are in school, first and foremost, for them, because people see rather as banners or them in the schools working. And then they also may see students out doing mentor type work or co-op work as I'm used to seeing when I was in school with those businesses. So I think it becomes a win-win situation for businesses when they can work in public schools. And for many businesses, if they ever really be truthful about it and look back, their careers probably started in public schools because we didn't have all of the different platforms of education now that we have that exist across the spectrum with, you know, charter schools and schools of choice. So I just feel that businesses can play a vital part in the success of communities being economically uh more impactful.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Thank you for taking the time with us to learn and think about education. That's all for today. And next week, we'll be back with more from Exit Issues 2026.