Huffington Magazine Issue 11 | Page 74

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