Also, an update on the Rand School Funding case.
By ANDRU VOLINSKY
From ‘A Book, an Idea and a Goat,’ Andru Volinsky’s weekly newsletter on Substack 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
On a recent Sunday it was our turn to prepare and serve dinner at Concord’s Friendly Kitchen. We’ve volunteered at the Friendly Kitchen for over twenty years. Most of that time, Amy coordinated the volunteer shifts for our synagogue. I was just the labor. We served often with friends or made new friends when volunteers joined our shifts. Our children regularly participated before going off to college and during holiday breaks. One year, Amy got each of them their very own potato peelers. Occasionally, I met an old friend or a former client going through the line. Poverty can happen to almost anyone with a bad turn of events or an illness.
Dinner on Sunday was Amy’s chili and cornbread. We served more than 60 meals. Almost 500 dinners were served over the course of the week in the walk-in dining hall. The family program separately prepares and serves meals to families that are housing insecure and receive temporary shelter in Concord area churches and synagogues.
Although the numbers are fewer now that the family program exists, we’ve served a handful of families with children at almost every meal. These families are generally not living rough through NH winters. They couch surf, stay in vehicles or are in shelters.
Children who are housing insecure have the right to go to school. In a recent survey, New Hampshire was found to have 3300 children who were housing insecure attending public schools. Maine had 4400 and Vermont had 1600. There are over one million children across the nation who are in this category.
School districts receive federal funding to identify and assist children who are housing insecure through the McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act. The act provides the right to immediate school enrollment for transient or housing insecure students, even when records are not present. Qualifying students also have the right to remain in their school of origin even if they have moved out of district due to their housing insecurity. Qualifying students have the right to receive transportation to and from their school of origin and the right to receive support for academic success which may include counseling and nutritional services.
The act is supervised by the US Department of Education which makes grants to school districts. That’s the same DOE that the Heritage Foundation and President-elect Trump want to dismantle. Today, the act would be considered an anomaly because it was passed with non-partisan support and signed into law by staunchly conservative Republican president Ronald Reagan. The act was originally passed in 1987 under another name. The name was changed to posthumously honor Congressman Bruce Vento, a Democrat from Minnesota, and Congressman Stewart McKinney, a Republican from Connecticut, who worked together to address the issue of schooling for homeless youth. Last year, $129 million was distributed to schools pursuant to the act, about double the amount distributed in 2013. The McKinney Vento funds are distributed to states in proportion to their Title I population (kids in poverty).
Last week I wrote about the US Supreme Court case of Plyler v. Doe (1982) that requires states to admit children to public schools who are without authorization to be in the country. One of the strategies to undermine the constitutional right to attend school is to slow-walk enrollments by asking for all sorts of paperwork. Under the McKinney Vento Act, this slow-walk technique is illegal if the child is housing insecure or an unaccompanied youth.
A “child who is housing insecure” is defined as one without a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. There is no fixed duration of homelessness that a child must meet to benefit from the act. Substandard housing doesn’t count and this includes housing that “lacks one of the fundamental utilities such as water, electricity, or heat; is infested with vermin or mold; lacks a basic functional part such as a working kitchen or a working toilet; or may present unreasonable dangers to adults, children, or persons with disabilities.” Children who live with relatives because of the loss of housing or turmoil in the family likely qualify for benefits as well. School districts are required to assign personnel to find, identify and help children who qualify for benefits.
“Unaccompanied youth” are those not under the supervision of a parent or guardian.An unaccompanied youth includes a young person running away from home even if the parent wants the child to return home.
If you have questions about McKinney Vento, school districts have designated liaisons. Here are the most up-to-date contact lists for the McKinney Vento liaisons in NH, Maine and Vermont.
You can also learn more about states’ efforts to meet the educational needs of transient and unaccompanied youth here:
Maine: https://www.maine.gov/doe/index.php/schools/safeschools/highmobility/homelessed
Rand School Funding Update
The parties argued the Statewide Education Property Tax (SWEPT) portion of our case before the NH Supreme Court on November 13th. Judge Ruoff ruled last February that the SWEPT was unconstitutional because it gave illegal preferences to taxpayers in 26 wealthy towns to effectively pay lower SWEPT rates than the residents of all other towns. The Department of Revenue Administration (DRA) also issued canceling rates that effectively wiped out the entire SWEPT payments from residents in the state’s unincorporated areas. The preferences for the wealthy towns cost the state about $26 million annually in lost tax revenues. The canceling rates wiped out another couple hundred thousand dollars in revenues.
The losing parties argued first. They’re called “appellants” in legal parlance, not “losers.” The wealthy towns were represented by John Mark Turner of the Sheehan Phinney law firm. The state was represented by Solicitor General Anthony Galdieri. Turner argued there is nothing to see here. We all pay taxes. We pay a bit more than we need to meet the standard of adequacy and we just put the rest of the money, the excess, to use paying other education expenses. Justice Donovan appeared skeptical. He asked if there were affidavits in evidence from town managers that showed the wealthy towns spent the “excess” sewer projects and roads and bridges.
Galdieri argued the SWEPT doesn’t apply in unincorporated areas because the statute says the tax applies in “municipalities” and by definition unincorporated areas aren’t municipalities. Never mind that the DRA has always gone through the fiction of issuing tax warrants for the SWEPT, a state tax, to taxpayers in these jurisdictions and then imposing a canceling local tax. Galdieri had to explain why a number of other legitimate and unquestioned statutes use the term “municipality” as a generic term to refer to places where people live, including unincorporated areas.
Natalie Laflamme, a proud graduate of Berlin High School, argued for our side. We were the winners before Judge Ruoff on this issue and we’re referred to as “appellees.” Natalie pointed out this isn’t the first time the Court has had to keep the state on the straight and narrow when it comes to funding the state’s responsibility to pay for constitutional adequacy. She said all of the problems we pointed out with the SWEPT stem from the state’s continued refusal to abide by the Claremont rulings.
Justice Basset was absent from the argument but will participate in deciding the case. This usually happens when a justice is ill or has an unavoidable scheduling conflict. Justice Hantz Marconi is on administrative leave from the Court while she fights charges that she was trying to pervert justice when she spoke with Governor Sununu about her husband’s investigation after having asked the chief justice about the propriety of doing so.
The NH Supreme Court has a practice of trying to issue its decisions 90 days after argument. With one justice down, the Court is working overtime and we should expect a ruling in about April 2025.
