A Book, an Idea and a Goat

From ‘A Book, an Idea and a Goat,’ Andru Volinsky’s weekly newsletter on Substack that is primarily devoted to writing about the national movement for fair school funding and other means of effecting social change. Here’s the link:  https://substack.com/@andruvolinsky?utm_source=profile-page

Two topics this week, special education funding reform and a childish attack on Judge Ruoff by Governor Sununu.

By ANDRU VOLINSKY

Special education funding should be our next consideration for funding reform.  Special education is necessary for some of our children to receive a constitutionally adequate education as required by the state’s constitution. Special education is important and we should support it. It’s how we fund it that is the issue.

Legally, the state should foot the bill for special education and not foist it on local districts. The state’s inclusion of special education costs as an increment of adequacy funding in RSA 198:40-a is an admission that adequacy includes special education and related services. We just need to convince the state to put a fair price tag on their admission.

Special education costs are repeatedly cited as the first or second most significant driver of increased school budgets. The other being the ever increasing cost of employees’ health insurance.  Again, New Hampshire should do more than just fix funding for special education but fixing special education funding is a good place to start.

Funding for special education New Hampshire, as in many states, comes from federal, state and local sources. Local funding is the largest of the three by far and is derived from the property tax.  New Hampshire’s total spending on special education and all of its related costs is approximately $850 million each year.  The federal government contributes $48 million directly, and another $15 million through the state-federal Medicaid partnership.  The state contributes $93 million through two programs.  The balance, approximately $694 million, is raised by local property taxpayers.

Assume a small district must raise $500,000 to pay for special education expenses.  Its ability to do so depends on the property wealth of the community.  Moultonborough and Pittsfield are two communities of similar size but Moultonborough has valuable lakefront property.  To raise the same $500,000, Moultonborough must impose a tax of just over eight cents per $1000 of property value.  Using 2022-23 numbers, this would raise Moultonborough’s equalized local education tax rate to $1.53/1000 and add a total of $25.05 to the property taxes on a $300,000 home.  Pittsfield must impose a tax of a full dollar to raise the same funds and that dollar increases its local education taxes to $8.82/1000, an increase of $291 in local education property taxes on that $300,000 home. 

The same cost shift of adding $500,000 in special education costs causes ten times the increase in property taxes paid by the Pittsfield homeowner as the Moultonborough homeowner, and, this is to provide programming that is mandated by federal and state laws.

New Hampshire should overhaul its two very modest special education funding streams. One program provides about $32 million in reimbursements a year after expenses are incurred based on arbitrary limitations and the state seldom fully funds the program.  The second funding program supplies about $61 million through adequacy aid. This component of adequacy aid is $2100 per pupil even though we know districts spend $30,000 per pupil on average. 

The reliance on local funding also does not address the costs of children who move from one district to the next without notice, saddling the new district with high special education expenses for which it could not plan. Particularly in smaller districts, the families with children who have costly special education needs are scapegoated when the special education budget jumps when they move to town.         

How do we fix this problem?

First, when Congress passed the key special education law, now called “IDEA,” in 1975, it committed to funding 40 percent of the cost of compliance.  It has never done so.  Federal funding generally hovers around 20 percent.  Representative Rick Ladd (R-Haverhill) and others are behind a resolution to ask the federal government to “pony up.” That’s good, but they also need to look nearer to home.

Second, New Hampshire should create a state program analogous to an insurance plan for special education funding as proposed by Rep. Cam Kenney (D-Durham).  Cam, by the way, had an IEP for special education through elementary school. He’s about to graduate from UNH Law and is serving his third term in the House.

A statewide insurance-style special education funding system would pay outside consultants directly, reimburse local employee costs related to the provision of special education services quarterly and better allow local officials to plan their special education budgets year to year.  The ability to exercise local control—rather than just responding to emergencies—would be enhanced.

As well, requiring communities without property wealth to raise money in the same way as communities with great property wealth is unfair and contributes to the scapegoating.  If the state’s policy makers insist on relying on a property tax, a new insurance-style funding program can do that. It costs $1.00/1000 on a state property tax to raise about $250 million in revenue given the value of the taxable property in the state.  If the state levied an additional $2.00 in a state property tax to fund this insurance-style plan, it would raise $500 million. 

Recent business tax cuts, of course, reduced state revenues by more than $500 million.

Putting the the biz tax cuts aside, adding the $500 million to the federal, Medicaid and existing state monies and you raise $656 million, leaving $200 million to be raised by local taxes.  This is a much easier amount to raise locally and, my friend, Doug Hall, points out that reducing local special education costs by about two thirds also reduces the existing local school tax rate so the net increase in combined state and local property tax rates would be less than $2.00/1000.

One last point on special education funding is that districts devote about a quarter of their budgets to pay for special education and related services.  The wealthy districts bear this burden too.  Portsmouth devotes just over 20 percent of its school budget to special education costs.  This means Portsmouth will gain the predictability that a statewide, insurance-style funding plan provides.  It will also have much more of its local funding supplied by the state.  In short, this approach crosses the divide that has been artificially created between wealthy communities and those that lack property wealth.

Governor Chris Sununu called Judge David Ruoff “political” and his ruling “stupid” in a speech to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce last week. Judge Ruoff found that the state’s $4100 cost for a constitutionally adequate education is insufficient.

Judge Ruoff also found the SWEPT unconstitutional.

The speech was notable for two reasons.

Manchester, the city in which the speech was given, hosts what may be the most challenged school district in the state; one where some schools have less than 10 percent of their children proficient in reading, math and science and where two high schools only recently improved graduation rates enough to be removed from the “danger-danger Will Robinson” federal status of Comprehensive Support and Instruction schools.

It’s a school district where the school board chair recently testified to the House Education Committee that Manchester’s spending must increase by $50 million just to reach the state average and where the legislature’s School Funding Commission found that given the needs of the student population, the district spends $10,000 too little on each child in Manchester schools (an aggregate shortfall of more than $120 million).

Sununu gave the speech in Manchester, no doubt, because Manchester’s former mayor is running for governor and he wanted to throw some shade her way, but he didn’t provide any plans to improve education, make funding more fair or to assist Manchester businesses attract new employees who wish to live in the city. He offered no help to a city whose residents are generally less well educated, earn less, are more likely to be uninsured or under-insured and are more diverse than any other part of the state. No, he came to offer his considered criticism of Judge Ruoff, a judge who Sununu voted to confirm while Sununu was an Executive Councilor.

It’s hard to imagine how Judge Ruoff will ever recover from Sununu’s criticism that the judge is “political” and his ruling “stupid.”

Of course, Judge Ruoff can take consolation in the fact that Chris Sununu’s father called the Claremont ruling “dumb” and that the father’s reneging on his promise to fund the Augenblick targeted aid school funding formula was responsible for causing Claremont to file its famous lawsuit.

Maybe Judge Ruoff will also be consoled by the fact that the state spent more than $1 million on experts and outside counsel to defend the ConVal and Rand cases and still couldn’t find an expert willing to say that $4100/pupil to pay for a constitutionally adequate education is enough.

It’s not “stupid” to rule that $4100 per pupil can’t fund a constitutionally adequate education in NH. The state’s average spending exceeds $20,000 per pupil. Even Frank Edelblut’s most sycophantic supporters in Croydon wanted to spend $8000 per pupil when they cut the school budget in the dark of night after townspeople had left the school district meeting.

Careful studies of what $4100 produces in Hopkinton, Newport and Pittsfield show schools funded at this low level would have 60 children per teacher, teachers without health insurance or pensions and children without sports or other extracurricular activities. That’s not my vision of high quality schools that support the needs of the children they serve and the democracy in which they’ll someday participate.

It’s not “political” to call the facts as you see them, as Judge Ruoff did.

C’mon, Governor. You’re leaving office. What was this? A speech to encourage the next governor, whoever she may be, to follow the same path as you and your father?

We can do a lot better for the people of NH.

Yes, Governor, you gave away more business tax revenues and Interest and Dividends revenues than any other governor. You saved out-of-state multinational corporations a great deal of money and let the wealthiest people off the hook on contributing to our great state. You bought in to the discredited theory of trickle down economics better than anyone else could.

Some people would say you allowed the regular people in our state to get fleeced while you let almost a Billion Dollars in revenues go out the door.

Think of what you could have done instead. Our state, with you as our governor, could have supported policies that help seniors stay in their homes and that address high property taxes. You could have worked to expand early childhood education and revamp our special education system. Dare I say it, unlike your Democratic and Republican predecessors, you could have funded NH’s duty to provide a constitutional education for all of its children, not just the ones already favored with privilege.

Let’s stop the judicial name calling. It’s beneath the office of governor that you hold. There’s still time to move forward constructively. Don’t waste it.

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here belong to the writer. InDepthNH.org welcomes diverse opinions at nancywestnews@gmail.com.