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Property-poor towns consider new education funding lawsuit

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Several New Hampshire communities want the state to improve education funding. Frustrated by what they perceive as inaction by policymakers, they are considering a lawsuit to force the state’s hand.

Education funding comes from two sources: local property taxes and what the state allocates through a so-called “adequacy formula” to each school district, based largely on how many resident students attend that district's schools. As the cost per pupil rises in many districts, property-poor communities like Pittsfield, Berlin and Franklin say the state isn't contributing enough money to make up the difference to provide an adequate education for their students.

Pittsfield, Berlin, Franklin, Keene, and other communities are considering a lawsuit to force a change in how the adequacy aid is determined and distributed.

It wouldn’t be the first time a local community sued to challenge education funding. In 1997, Claremont School District v Governor of New Hampshire led to the allocation of additional state money for communities in need, by more evenly distributing the state allocation between the property rich and property poor communities.

Yet, a report by the N.H. Center for Public Policy Studies says significant disparities exist today and that by fiscal year 2022, the state could be paying approximately $16 million less toward public school education than it did in fiscal year 2017.

"Where a child lives should not determine the quality of their public education. In our country, everyone should have the opportunity to get ahead, everyone should have the opportunity to a free and appropriate education,” said Middleton McGoodwin, superintendent of the Claremont School District. “But, in truth, in New Hampshire as well as other parts of our country, where a child lives determines their future.”

A committee of state lawmakers has been meeting since September 2017 to consider changes to the allocation formula. Some on that committee argue that more money forced by a lawsuit is not necessarily the answer.

“Sure, I’m sympathetic to those arguments. But I think as we discussed on the education committee this year also, that money is not the answer to all the education problems,” said state Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro.

Other opponents argue that a lawsuit will only shift more power over school funding to the state, when local communities are more accountable to citizens and therefore better positioned to decide how money for schools should be raised and spent.

What do you think? Is it time for another lawsuit to even out the money for education that goes to rich and poor communities?

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