By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome
Public education began in the “New World” in 1635 with Boston Latin School and the first tax-funded school opened shortly after in 1644 in Dedham, Massachusetts.
As the country grew, the northern states developed public school systems, but the South lagged behind until after the Civil War.
In the early 1800s the “Common School” movement led by Horace Mann, began in Massachusetts with free, taxpayer supported schools seeking to provide a standard education for all children.
Prior to reconstruction, the wealthy plantation owners hired tutors for their children, a system some New Hampshire legislators would like to replicate.
A federal compulsory attendance law was passed in 1918 and universal public education was required across the country.
The federal government became more involved in education with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, No Child Left Behind in 2001, and the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 but never fully funded any of the programs whose requirements fall to states and local school districts to fund.
But recently public education is under attack, mainly from the right, not wanting their children to have different beliefs than they have.
In New Hampshire, there is the attack led and funded by the libertarian oligarchs and there is also the unsettled and seemingly unending battle over state support for public education and the taxpayer and student inequities that result from the current system.
For the last three decades, the two original Claremont decisions have shaped New Hampshire public education, but in that time, the legislature and executive branch have bipartisanly failed to make the system any more equitable for students or taxpayers, precisely what the two decisions were about: the state providing an adequate education and paying for it.
The rulings have been upheld numerous times — as recently as last year — but the current legislature and executive branch are hell bent on shucking their responsibilities either by overturning the two decisions as Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s Attorney General’s Office proposed in its notice of appeal of the Rand decision that the state failed to pay for an adequate education and is using an unconstitutional tax system to pay for it, or through legislation.
Republicans introduced a bill that allows the state to continue the current system of lowest state support in the country for public education coupled with the highest support in the country from local property taxes.
House Bill 1815 establishes a “partnership” between the state and local school districts to pay for the cost of education.
The operative sentence in the bill says “Respecting New Hampshire’s long tradition of community involvement, it is the purpose of this chapter to ensure that appropriate means are established to provide an adequate education through an integrated public education system of shared responsibility between state and local government, in recognition of the fact that local governmental entities, including school districts, are created by the state, receive their authority to act and operate from the state, and are therefore indivisible from the state for the purposes of providing an adequate education.”
So the state is king — and knowing that — this other sentence should scare the devil out of any property taxpayer in the state.
“How the state and its local governmental entities choose to raise, allocate, and spend financial resources to implement this integrated public education system is a political policy matter reserved to legislative and executive judgment and control.”
The state is not agreeing to any base or foundational support and will decide what it wants to spend and if you local folks don’t like it, you can’t litigate it in court. But of course you can and there is bound to be even more litigation.
Ayotte signed the bill into law Friday, the first day it reached her desk, one day after the Senate passed it.
The governor’s signature was a foregone conclusion as she had earlier said the judge’s decision in the Rand was wrong because state spending on public education is among the highest in the country per pupil.
What she didn’t say was that 70 percent of the spending is from property taxes, which is the highest amount in the country.
HB 1815 not only requires local property taxpayers to share the state’s responsibility to provide an adequate education, the bill also defines an adequate education as only the 11 academic content areas currently in law.
So such things as buildings, chairs, desks, librarians, administrators or school nurses, and transportation are not included in an adequate education so all those costs will fall to the local property taxpayers because they are not “essential” to an adequate education even if they are.
Another bill, House Bill 1121 reinforces the narrowing of the definition of adequate education and has a public hearing before the Senate Education Committee Wednesday, fittingly April Fool’s Day.
HB 1815 passed the House with all but one or two Republicans supporting it and one lonely Democrat. Last week it passed the Senate on a strictly party line vote of 16 Republicans in favor and all eight Democrats opposed.
And the Republican governor signed it, so whatever happens in the next few years, the GOP owns it.
The one thing that won’t happen with this new law, is your property taxes will not go down.
If you know legislative history, you would tend to believe that the opposite will happen, your property taxes will go up.
Whenever the state finds itself in financial straits, like it did this year, it shifts the burden to local property taxpayers as it did in the current budget, or cuts services for those who need them.
In the current budget lawmakers decided to:
Cut school building aid, which used to be plentiful to help cover the cost of new buildings and renovations, eliminating any new projects.
Cut state aid to the public post secondary education, and tuition goes up and you or your parents have to pay more.
Institute copays and premiums to those on government subsidized health care or Medicaid, so the people who are already needy enough to require the state’s help to pay for health care have to pay more out of their own pockets.
That is insane (stop) and cruel.
If you wonder where the money went that once paid a good portion of school building costs, supported the university and community college systems, or for Medicaid, look no further than business tax cuts over the last decade and the elimination of the interests and dividends tax which so far has reduced state revenues by more than $1 billion.
At the same time, the GOP controlled legislature and governor found more than $100 million for the state’s universal voucher program largely going to families whose kids are already in religious or private schools or homeschooled.
Does anyone believe these changes will improve the education of children in districts that struggle to provide robust educational programs: the districts with the highest school property taxes because they lack a sufficient property value base to cover the cost of what property wealthy communities can easily afford.
This bill is not going to improve children’s education in communities like Claremont, Allenstown, Pittsfield, Franklin and Lisbon, the original plaintiff towns in the Claremont lawsuit, nor Newport, Berlin, Charlestown, Stratford, Groveton, Milan, Farmington, Rochester, Somersworth nor Manchester.
The definition of an adequate education gives those towns the options of cutting school nurses, administrators, librarians, janitors, while lowering the heat to 60 degrees and having parents pay for transportation for sports teams and field trips, and put off facility maintenance for another year.
But Bedford, New Castle, Windham, Rye, Portsmouth, Waterville Valley, Newington, Newfields, Meredith, Center Harbor, Alton, Tuftonboro, Moultonborough and Wolfeboro will be able to continue their educational programs with little increase in their property taxes.
This legislature will go to great lengths to protect the wealthy from having to pay their fair share of the cost of education or anything else that looks like help for those with the least, which is the role of government.
This push to make New Hampshire the “libertarian homeland” has a very high price.
The cost is the future. The state’s children are the future and bills like HB 1815 and HB 1121 poison the waters so eventually no business will want to move to New Hampshire unless they seek unskilled labor at a cheap price.
Welcome to the libertarian homeland.
Whoever is the last one out, please turn off the lights.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.