Today’s Senate budget debate – and the outcomes it has yielded for school funding – will be a grave disappointment to families, educators, taxpayers, and communities throughout New Hampshire.  The version of the budget that resulted from today’s debate fails to close the full $90 million school funding gap that communities will face in the coming year and will force many to continue to push up local property tax rates and to hold back children’s educational opportunities.

Multiple attempts were made during the Senate’s budget process to preserve aid intended to help communities with particularly low property values, so that they can continue to invest in schools and reduce local tax bills.  Yet, the Senate majority rejected those proposals each time, opting instead to preserve a poorly-targeted and poorly-timed reduction in the statewide property tax.  In so doing, they went out of their way to ensure that places with exceptionally high property wealth received the benefit of that reduction. In so doing, they put ever greater pressure on local property taxes in places like Derry, Rochester, Weare, and many others with a fraction of their neighbors’ property wealth.

As disappointing as today’s debate may be, when it comes to changes in New Hampshire’s school funding formula, the Senate’s version of the budget should nevertheless serve as the floor, not the ceiling, in negotiations between the two chambers over the FY22-23 budget.  Despite its flaws, such as the inclusion of a voucher scheme that will drain funds away from public schools, the Senate budget offers a stronger response than the House to the pandemic’s impact on school finances and, unlike the House, creates a new form of assistance to cities and towns with high concentrations of low-income families.

In the end, this year’s budget process represents an enormous missed opportunity to strengthen school funding and to make further progress toward greater equity for students and taxpayers alike.  Any movement away from the Senate’s changes to New Hampshire’s school funding formula would simply make an already bad situation worse.