Education funding in New Hampshire has become the proverbial riddle wrapped in an enigma and then lost in a never-ending maze of court cases and legislative efforts over the past two decades.
Not surprisingly, attempts to solve the problem of plenty leads to public frustration.
“I think it’s atrocious, a fiasco,” said Jack O’Reilly, a Newington selectman about the current funding proposal in the Legislature, designed to meet one state Supreme Court guidelines and one in which Newington will become a donor town and to pay Property excess tax to the state.
“It’s important to keep perspective,” said Sen. Iris Esta Brook, D-Durham, who led the joint legislative committee that came up with the formula funding for Senate Bill 539, more than a $ 900 million plan that would go into effect in 2009 .
SB 539 has been approved in the Senate and the House Education Committee has passed. It is scheduled to be voted on by the full House this Wednesday.
Esta Brook believes the concerns of the donor towns are minor compared to the larger goal of satisfying the Supreme Court, and providing a funding plan.
“It’s just ridiculous,” said Pat Remick, coordinator of the Communities Coalition, a group of 35 towns and cities formed about a decade ago to fight the statewide property tax and the donor-town concept of property redistributing wealth around the state to pay for Education.
“The debate is starting to become honest,” said Andru Volinsky, a Manchester attorney and lead counsel in the famous inadequate education funding judicial Claremont called in 1991 that I got involved the Supreme Court in the first place.
Remick O’Reilly and support a constitutional amendment, called CACR 34, being pushed by Gov.. John Lynch that would redefine the state’s role in education. For example, it would allow the state Legislature to target aid to poor communities and potentially return local funding and local control - and deal effectively short out the oversight of the equation.
Volinsky says a constitutional amendment would be a dishonest return to the pre-Claremont status quo and worsen “educational inequalities in the state.
Esta Brook voted against the amendment in the Senate and the Legislature believes is doing everything it can to meet its responsibilities to the court and to the schoolchildren of New Hampshire.
New Hampshire hasn’ta politics since been the same court said the public education is a state responsibility and that the traditional, local funding for local schools method was unconstitutional and ordered state lawmakers to come up with a plan to fund education adequately and equitably.
Who knew that such a ruckus over such issues as taxes, local control and financing education could be unleashed by the simple word “cherish” offered by the writers of NH Constitution in 1784?
The constitutional, political, social, historical, cultural and moral moving parts of the educational funding saga in New Hampshire has been and is being played in more than 40 states around the country.
What legislators in Concord and residents in the state is now facing a culmination of nearly two decades of legal and legislative dueling. The result is today the two competing forces to deal with education funding - the Senate bill that deals explicitly with it and the constitutional amendment that offers a framework for future funding options.
The Senate bill is the only education funding plan under consideration in Concord. Esta Brook believes it will meet the court’s guidelines of defining adequate education and to costing it out (around $ 3450 per pupil amount is the baseline with additional amounts added for a few other categories.)
In essence, the bill draws on the current statewide property tax model to raise money that will then be redistributed according to a formula based on the town’s valuation and its number of students to meet the “adequate” education funding target (towns and cities would then Add budget amounts they feel necessary for their schools).
As it stands now, a majority of towns in the Seacoast region and the state would see no increase in their property tax statewide Towns that do meet the target adequacy grants are accorded to reach adequacy - and towns such as Rye, Newington, New Castle, North Hampton and where the property tax contribution exceeds the adequacy target send that money to the state, which is deemed to excess tax
For example, Portsmouth would receive a grant of more than $ 1.2 million, while Rye to excess would pay tax of about $ 1.4 million. Exeter would be a grant of $ 4.9 million, while Newington would pay in excess of $ 645782nd tax
Supporters of the constitutional amendment hail it as an opportunity to start from scratch the court by getting out of the picture and allowing the state to fund education on a targeted basis, which the court has said is unconstitutional.
“What they are afraid of in Concord? O’Reilly asked.” It’s time to let the people be heard. ”
Without a constitutional amendment, he says, there will never be any “common sense” educational funding.
O’Reilly says Newington taxpayers will have to raise more money to pay their excess tax and fund their school budget.
He’s been fighting the donor-town concept since its inception in 1999, and is blunt in his assessment.
“I call it the anti-Robin Hood bill. It’s not about education funding, but for tax relief and towns like Amherst Bedford not need that Newington’s tax money,” said O’Reilly. “I do not want to send $ 5 out of my pocket to Claremont.
This perspective Brook said is needed because the excess tax contributions are a small ($ 15 million) of the budget and that paying taxes to be redistributed is nothing novel.
“We do it with our rooms and meals tax,” she said.
The Senate bill can be a bewildering maze of additional and spreadsheet calculations of transition trays fiscal disparity and aid. (When it was first released, the bill would have financially hurt property-poor towns such as Pittsfield, one of the towns involved in the original Claremont judicial).
Remick believes it’s gone way too far and has created $ 80 million of the financing with the additions - a deficit that could require adding to the $ 1000 $ 2.14 per valuation for the property tax statewide
“The original intent of SB 539 was to cost out ‘education, but the Senate has now opened the door to discussion of funding formulas by adding the’ disparity ‘and’ transitional ‘aid,” explained Remick. “The Supreme Court also did not require the Legislature to take action regarding any excess statewide property taxes raised in a community, but that is also in the bill and we are arguing for its removal.
Remick is concerned that if the bill passes in its current form, it will become the preferred choice to fund education