The New Hampshire Supreme Court and School Funding
If anybody missed the recent news in state educational funding last week, the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Contoocook Valley School District v. State of New Hampshire, more commonly known as the ConVal case. This appeal from an earlier trial court ruling is the latest chapter of a decades-long discourse over how we pay for schooling in New Hampshire.
The trial court in ConVal addressed whether the State was meeting its obligation to provide an adequate education under the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Article 83 of the State Constitution. It did this by analyzing whether the current base adequacy aid (defined as $4,100 per student) could provide an adequate education. It found that $4,100 was not enough. Additionally, it made the calculation that $7,356.01 per student ought to be the minimum amount for base adequacy aid. The trial court referred to this newly-calculated number as the “conservative minimum threshold.”
If the legislature acted to change the state law for base adequacy aid to its conservative minimum threshold, the Hollis-Brookline community could see over $7 million in additional school funding to schools in SAU 41 from the State. The State of New Hampshire appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court.
The ConVal trial court used conservative numbers and calculations to reach the amount of $7,356.01, further stating that the real cost of an adequate education was higher than that number. This newer, higher number for base adequacy aid may be better, but it’s still constitutionally insufficient.
The fact that base adequacy aid is as low as it is points to the root of the most common concern about living here. For a state whose people are highly sensitive to the role taxes play on monthly bills, it may be stating the obvious that homeowners pay a large portion of the difference between what the actual cost a school district requires to educate a student for one school year, and what the state pays towards providing an adequate education.
For context, $21,545.17 was the statewide average cost of educating one public school student in the 2023-2024 school year, with the highest per student cost in Pittsburg at $44,483.94, and the lowest per student cost in Auburn at $15,135.09. The State provided base adequacy aid ($4,100) plus the cost of additional aid for things like special education and reduced lunch, for a total average state adequacy aid of $5,148.02 per student. The vast difference between those numbers is why school funding is such a large portion of our property tax bills, and why property tax bills are essentially a second mortgage to homeowners.
To get a little more specific to the Hollis-Brookline community, here are the reported per student costs for SAU 41 in the 2023-2024 school year from the NH Department of Education:
Hollis School District per student cost: $21,006.67
Brookline School District per student cost: $18,014.34
H-B Coop per student cost: $21,086.14
It’s a stark contrast to compare those numbers with what our towns received in adequacy aid from the State:
Hollis adequacy aid per student: $4,492.70
Brookline adequacy aid per student: $4,581.33
Which brings us back to maybe the most obvious point that came out of pages of careful judicial analysis in ConVal. $7,356.01 is not adequate and the State needs to do better. The next logical question is what can be done to fix this problem. The simple answer is that school funding needs to be prioritized in the next state budget, which starts after Election Day 2026.
The current state budget process, which recently ended with the Governor’s signing, has resulted in cuts to state services, as well as the eliminations of others. Overly-aggressive state tax cuts on the back of Federal funding over the past few terms has resulted in the floor completely dropping out on state revenue and, even in this tough financial climate, the Republican-controlled state government has decided to expand a second publicly-funded school system, which you may know as private school vouchers.
While the Supreme Court’s ConVal opinion is a positive sign for what ought to be, it stopped short of directing the legislature to act and instead said that the base adequacy aid of $7,356.01 should serve as “guidance for future legislative action.” The current batch of Republicans in Concord control all levers of the state government. Expanding this private school voucher program to the point where it would operate like an additional school system was the priority of their leadership, and they’ve made it happen. Even free-thinking Republican legislators who disagree have been whipped back to toe the party line.
The ConVal opinion will do nothing for us this term, but it ought to be plenty for a future legislature that cares about school funding and what it’s doing to local property taxes. It's time to demand that our potential legislators for the next term (1) increase base adequacy aid to be constitutionally compliant, and (2) work to wind down the private school voucher system.
The choice that some champion as a feature of private school vouchers is not free and we can’t afford it. The money to fund that choice comes from the same place that educational adequacy aid comes from. When the last dollar in the bank has been spent between the state’s two school systems and our public schools are coming up short, there’s no amount of saving and cutting at the local level that will make the numbers work while allowing our community to remain what it has been for so long.
We’ll be the ones left paying the bill. We’re paying for it right now. We can choose a better way.