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Commission to Study School Funding

Petition in Support of Fair School Funding

On Monday, September 21, NHSFFP, on behalf of more than 400 Granite State residents, presented a petition of support to the Commission to Study School Funding, conveying both widespread concern about the problems plaguing the state’s existing system for funding public schools and strong backing for efforts to address them. (Please see below for the full text of the petition; a complete of signers can be found here.)

The Commission is an independent body established as part of last fall’s state budget agreement. It has been tasked with, among other responsibilities, making “recommendations to ensure a uniform and equitable design for financing the cost of an adequate education for all public school students” and ensuring that New Hampshire’s school funding formula relies upon “a revenue source that is uniform across the state.” Those recommendations are due by December 1, 2020.

Petition of Support

Commission to Study School Funding

For decades now, two fundamental injustices have been allowed to persist in New Hampshire.  Despite clear constitutional mandates, far too many of our children continue to face deep and enduring inequities in the educational opportunities available to them, diminishing not only their futures, but the future of the Granite State as a whole. At the same time, enormous disparities in the property taxes we pay as residents and business owners can pose significant barriers to economic security and potentially forestall economic development where it is needed most.

Accordingly, we, the undersigned residents of the State of New Hampshire:

  • Support the efforts of the Commission to Study School Funding to find a permanent and lasting solution to this pair of urgent and profound problems;
  • Value the breadth of experience, the depth of knowledge, and the intensity of commitment that members of the Commission bring to the task before them;
  • Urge the Commission to be bold and visionary, undeterred by political considerations or by immediate fiscal and economic conditions, and;
  • Call upon the Commission to produce legislative recommendations that:
    • Establish, as accurately and as comprehensively as possible, the full cost of providing an adequate education to every child in New Hampshire;
    • Acknowledge the social, economic, and other obstacles to learning that many children in New Hampshire now face and provide schools with the resources they need to help children overcome those obstacles;
    • Require the State of New Hampshire to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities and pay the full cost of an adequate education for every child in the state, regardless of where they may live, and;
    • Use a source of revenue – or a combination of sources – for meeting those costs that is fair and uniform among all New Hampshire taxpayers.

We are certain that the Commission’s work, if completed in keeping with this petition, will not only yield a more fair and more effective system for funding our public schools, but also ensure that New Hampshire remains a place we, and the generations of children who come after us, are proud to call home.

For a copy of the petition and a list of signers, please click here. To read NHSFFP’s press release about the petition, please click here.

List of Petition Signers

NSFFP’s Press Release about the Petition