A ruling Monday by a Wake County Superior Court judge signals a rapid and comprehensive overhaul of North Carolina’s public school system. The ruling’s precise implications for schools in Moore County and across the state remain to be determined, but the changes will be profound and expensive.

Judge Howard E. Manning, handing down his long-awaited ruling in the seven-year-old Leandro case, said state and local officials must develop a coordinated strategy to serve low-income students who have been denied their constitutional right to a “sound basic education.” He gave them a year to comply, and said they should pay for the plan by diverting money from other education programs.

In terms of its impact on education, Manning’s ruling is being compared with the racial desegregation orders of the 1970s. That may not be a overstatement.

The Leandro case arose in Hoke County, where plaintiffs said low-income school districts, which are unable to raise sufficient money for schools, should get more state money to put them on a par with wealthier districts. But Manning turned the tables on both the state and the plaintiffs. He found that poor students tend to lag in academic performance whether they live in poor or wealthy districts. Where these children live, Manning said, is beside the point. What matters is that they are being under-served across the board, and programs must be developed in every school district to meet their needs.

Moore County Schools Superintendent Patrick Russo had a low-key response to the ruling. He said services being provided to low-income students here already comply with the order. He did express concern that the plan eventually adopted might take some state money away from relatively wealthy Moore and appropriate it to poorer school districts.

Russo’s assessment of Moore’s level of compliance could be prematurely optimistic. That won’t be determined until the General Assembly adopts a plan that will include funding formulas for how money for low-income students and other education programs is to be divided.

Jennifer Garner, chairman of the Moore County Board of Education, told The Pilot Thursday that she had not yet read Manning’s order and could not offer a definitive response. But Garner, a lawyer, said she was concerned that Moore could be penalized because it is considered a wealthy county. The state determines a county’s wealth by per-capita income, without taking into account average wages.

“We don’t have wealthy students,” Garner said. “Thirty-five percent of our students get free or reduced-priced lunches at school, and 20 percent of them go home after school to live in poverty.”

Garner disagrees with Manning’s suggestion that school districts pay for programs for poor children with money taken away from other programs. The legislature, she says, should increase overall state funding for education.

Garner is right. Manning’s Robin Hood approach to redistribution of school wealth would offer benefits to low-income children who underperform, but at the expense of other programs that benefit all students. It would jeopardize the teaching of foreign languages, computer skills and other disciplines, and, here at home, it would put at risk Moore County’s drive to put its schools at the top of the state and national academic heap. In the long run, robbing Peter to pay Paul would hamper Moore County’s and North Carolina’s progress toward making sure that graduates of their schools can compete in a global economy.

In their effort to comply with Judge Manning’s order, state officials should not just change the way the school money pie is sliced. They should make the pie bigger. The outcome of the Leandro case rightly reaffirms that a sound basic education is every North Carolina student’s birthright. It is our responsibility to make spending decisions that ensure its delivery.