NH urged by state expert to consider school models used in developing nations.
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
What can you get for $30,000 these days?
The answer is either a used SUV or an out of state expert from Arkansas who will opine, for a fee, that the state of NH should consider school funding models used in developing nations to reduce the state’s burden of funding a constitutionally adequate education.
NH, meet Jay Greene, PhD.
Dr. Greene testified Tuesday on behalf of the state of NH in the Rand School Funding Case. Out of state expert Greene was questioned by out of state counsel, Nikki Warr, of the Stinson law firm in St. Louis. Dr. Greene testified in the ConVal case as well.
Greene has not developed his own estimate of the cost of adequacy even though he has now testified in two NH school funding cases in which the dominant issue was the sufficiency of the state’s adequacy funding. He doesn’t even try to support the state’s current base cost of $4100 plus additional increments for children who live in poverty ($2300), are learning English ($800) or who qualify for special education and related services ($2100). No, all Dr. Greene wanted to do was to criticize the testimony previously offered by our expert, John Freeman, EdD.
Freeman was the long-time superintendent and principal in Pittsfield and superintendent in Strafford. He did a study in which he tried to build a barebones budget with just the state’s adequacy funding. Funding adequacy is unquestionably the responsibility of the state as set out in numerous Claremont decisions. Funding adequacy can’t be downshifted to local taxpayers because local taxes aren’t uniform across the state. The state responsibility to pay for adequacy must be funded by a state tax with uniform rates across the state. Uneven local education tax rates—when used to fund the state’s adequacy responsibility– are a major constitutional problem and one of the primary reasons why our state’s over-reliance on local property taxes is so unfair.
Freeman’s budget at the time of his study in Pittsfield was approximately ten million dollars. His district received $2.9 million in adequacy aid. That’s base adequacy plus the additional increments. The district had 530 students at the time. Just doing the math, on a per pupil basis, Freeman was attempting to reduce his average cost per pupil from $18,868 per pupil to $5,572. The average per pupil cost across the state, including buildings and transportation, was about the same as Pittsfield’s. The lowest spending district at the time was Manchester at approximately $14,389. Portsmouth’s per pupil spending was $20,685.
[As a side note, it’s this level of Manchester per pupil spending that the 2018 School Funding Commission found was $10,000 too little per child to meet the needs of Manchester’s school population.]
Unsurprisingly, Freeman could not build a budget for a functioning school district at $2.9 million. So, he doubled it to $5.8 million. Then he cut everything he possibly could, and more. He cut the entire technology budget, there was no art, no professional development for staff. He hypothesized paying teachers less and choosing the cheapest healthcare insurance available regardless of what was called for in the collective bargaining agreements. He disregarded subject matter certification requirements for teachers and reduced support staff and administrators. Oh, and he cut building maintenance and the cost of buses. And still no dice. The school district could not function as a school district in NH and Freeman couldn’t get down to $5.8 million or $10,943 per student.
Looking at his existing town approved budget in another way, Freeman found more than 95 percent of his budget went to pay for the state’s minimum standards. The one choice the district made that was not driven by minimum standards was to fund pre-school, an investment that Freeman and the residents of the district thought was worthwhile. NH doesn’t require preschool or fund it, as its neighboring states do.
Freeman’s baseline testimony, to be clear, was that twice what the state allocates for adequacy is not enough to fund a basic school district’s budget. For point of reference, Judge Ruoff found in the ConVal case that $7356.01 was the very least the state could pay for adequacy. Freeman testified that twice adequacy, which is now $4100 per pupil, is not enough.
The state brought out Jay Greene to criticize Freeman’s commonsense study that concluded the state’s adequacy money was insufficient even when doubled. Greene testified that Freeman’s study lacked the hallmarks of a full-fledged published academic research paper and should therefore be rejected. He claimed that he couldn’t tell what assumptions John Freeman made in conducting his study, even though John identified his specific revenue sources and line items he cut using the state-required budget form. Greene claimed Freeman’s study was of no relevance because it was based on Pittsfield’s budget even though high-needs Pittsfield spent right at the state’s per pupil average and Freeman gave the state credit for two times what it actually pays for adequacy.
How did Greene come to be in a NH courtroom? He came by way of a Harvard PhD in political science and stints at various colleges ending with the University of Arkansas. Greene is now a senior fellow in education at the Heritage Foundation, the creator of Project 2025. I have previously written about the damage that Project 2025 will do to education in America. Greene also likes to write anti-DEI and anti-LGBTQ drivel on X.
To give Greene full credit, he didn’t only suggest NH should examine school models in developing countries, he also said NH should step backwards in time and return to previous (“historical”) funding levels. Greene didn’t provide much advice for Judge Ruoff or for NH school administrators who are starting to compile their actual budgets for next year.
Jennifer S. Dolloff, EdD testified for us about the insufficiency of the extra increments of adequacy aid provided as “differentiated aid.” Dr. Dolloff has been a working professional in special education for thirty-six years. She’s worked as a special education teacher, out of district placement coordinator, special education director, and, as a consultant to a private non-profit called SERESC, was tasked with evaluating special education programs in public schools and private settings on behalf of the state of NH. All told, she has a deep understanding of a broad range of districts from Manchester, Goffstown and Nashua to Winchester, Hinsdale and Lisbon.
Dr. Dolloff’s testimony was that no district with which she has had contact spends so little on special education as the differentiated aid provided by the state. That increment of differentiated aid is now $2100 per student who qualifies for special education. She characterized the entire amount of special education funding from the state and the federal government as “not even close” to covering the cost of special education services. This requires school districts to ask local property taxpayers to make up the significant shortfall.
Dolloff also explained the purpose of special education is to provide a bridge to the general education curriculum for children with disabilities. Dolloff made clear that it didn’t matter to her how the state defined adequacy, her job as a special educator was to help children access the entire general education curriculum.
Dolloff gave the example of a child who has a disability that makes it difficult to read. Her job is to help the child, through services, devices and materials, to overcome her disability and be able to read. Building the skill is the goal. It doesn’t matter whether the child is learning to read a book in a very basic core English course or the most esoteric language elective.
Because of special education’s focus on helping children with disabilities access the entire general education curriculum, the entire cost of special education and related services should be included in the cost of adequacy, not the arbitrary $2100 currently allotted. At the very least, if you omit all of the administrative requirements, the 70 percent of special education budgets directly related to the cost of providing services should be reimbursed to school districts.
The state didn’t have much of a response to Dolloff’s testimony other than to point out that districts have choices in how they provide special education services. While this is true, the dearth of providers makes it hard for districts to look for cheaper service providers and, since the state sets the non-negotiable rates that the private institutions charge for the budget-busting out of district placements, there’s no way to lower costs by negotiating with the private providers—even if there were choices to be considered that still serve the needs of children.
One other point was made by Dolloff. Meeting the special education needs of children who also live in poverty is hard and costly. The differentiated aid increments for kids who live in poverty and for kids who qualify for special education are not double-dipping. These kids cost more to educate.
How do we deal with these funding problems long term? Design and fund programs to intervene early. Address the causes of poverty. Ah, but that’s another post.
Trial Week One: https://indepthnh.org/2024/10/02/op-ed-the-rand-school-funding-trial-is-underway/
InDepthNH.org takes no position on politics, but welcomes diverse opinions at nancywestnews@gmail.com
