HUFFINGTON
08.26.12
SMART START?
“I’m a Republican and I’m a huge conservative.
My parents view that if you work hard,
the sweat of your efforts will pay off. But the
second piece of that for me is, as a Republican,
providing opportunity at the earliest
age is one of the best things you
can do to promote hard work.”
spective on the controversy. When
he was 14, he was picked as the lead
plaintiff in Leandro vs. The State of
North Carolina, a landmark case in
the history of North Carolina law.
Robb had grown up in a poor, rural
county where the tax revenues were
so low that the schools couldn’t afford science labs or decent sports
uniforms. A team of activist lawyers
made the case that the state had
shunned its constitutional obligation to provide Robb and his classmates with an adequate education.
A first baseman on his high
school team, Robb was particularly
concerned about the uniforms. “I
thought it would be awesome, when
we played another team in sports,
to not look like the 70’s Astros,” he
said. As it turned out, the case ended up being about much more than
the injudicious use of polyester. In
1997, it went up to the state Su-
preme Court and was assigned to a
judge named Howard Manning, who
reviewed more than 600 pieces of
evidence and listened to the testimony of over 40 witnesses, among
them Dr. Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, a
researcher at the Frank Porter Graham Institute. After 22 days, Manning ruled that North Carolina had
indeed violated the state constitution by failing to provide at-risk
children with an opportunity for a
“sound and basic” education.
The state appealed and the case
went back to the Supreme Court,
but Manning’s main ruling held.
Starting in 2004, the state began
funneling money into pre-K.
Robb Leandro, meanwhile, went
on to law school and landed a job at
the firm that argued his case. Every
few years he still gets calls from reporters asking his opinion on some
education-related matter or another. There’ve been a lot of calls lately.
Last August, Judge Manning ruled
that the legislature’s changes to