On Monday, June 1, John Tobin, one of the attorneys in the original Claremont cases and now the Chair of NHSFFP’s Board of Directors, spoke before a joint meeting of the the Fiscal Policy and Adequacy Workgroups of the Commission to Study School Funding.

 

In his remarks, John offered an overview of New Hampshire’s Supreme Court cases on the subject of school funding as well as a summation of the amici brief he authored in the ongoing ConVal case. Among his key points:

  • Two provisions of the New Hampshire Constitution are at the core of the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s decisions in the Claremont cases, and, by extension, should guide the Commission’s work:
    • First, the State of New Hampshire has a duty to pay for the cost of a constitutionally adequate education for every K-12 public school student. (Part 2, Article 83; Claremont I, 1993)
    • Second, the taxes that the State of New Hampshire uses to pay for this education must have a uniform rate across the state. (Part 2, Article 5; Claremont II, 1997)
  • The resources needed, and the costs that must be incurred, to achieve adequacy may vary from district to district, but regardless of a community’s capacity to provide those resources or meet those costs, “none of [the state’s] financial obligation can be shifted to local school districts”. (Londonderry School District v. State, 2006)
  • New Hampshire’s current adequacy formula is completely incongruent with, and contradictory to, the Court’s decisions and the State’s own expansive statutory definition of constitutional adequacy, including key portions of the State’s “Minimum Standards” for public education.  Indeed, since the State of New Hampshire pays for less than one-third of the actual cost of K-12 public education, he noted that it is nonsensical for the State to assert that it covers the true cost of adequacy.
  • As the result of the insufficiency of state funding, local school districts must make up the gap between what the State requires and what it pays for.  Yet, because property wealth among school districts varies so greatly, the taxes that districts must impose to compensate for the State’s shortfall are levied at highly unequal rates.  These nominally “local” education taxes are, in reality, state taxes used to meet the State’s duty.  Furthermore, these unequal rates violate the New Hampshire Constitution and the Supreme Court’s rulings in the Claremont cases, which require that taxes assessed to meet the State’s educational duties must be assessed at uniform rates.

John’s full presentation is above. You can also find the Zoom video of his presentation via the Carsey School’s Commission website later this week.