“Whatever the State identifies as comprising constitutional adequacy it must pay for.”
— N.H. Supreme Court, Londonderry School District SAU #12 v. State of New Hampshire, 2006
Since the state lost its first Claremont education funding case in 1993, legislators and governors (including Democratic Gov. John Lynch in 2011-2012) tried to undo the decision with a constitutional amendment restoring the plain, pre-Claremont understanding that “cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries and public schools” does not mean “finance 100% of the costs.”
The failure of those efforts had consequences. Last year the court for the first time ordered the state to provide a specific amount of base adequate education aid: $7,356.01 per student.
That decision is producing its own consequences. A House bill introduced by former N.H. Supreme Court justice Bob Lynn would narrow the scope of adequacy to academics only and give school districts an incentive to trim other spending.
Fixing the court’s math
Until last year, the courts deferred to the state to set the cost of an adequate public education. What changed? The math.
Following the logic in previous Claremont rulings, last year’s Conval decision effectively expanded the state’s funding obligation while excluding 21% of state adequate education funding.
The court reaffirmed that the state must fully fund all expenses necessary to provide “the opportunity for” an adequate education. Per the court, those expenses include “teachers, principals, administrative assistants, guidance counselors, library and media specialists, technology coordinators, custodians, nurses, instructional materials, technology, teacher professional development, facilities operation and maintenance, and transportation.”
At the same time, the court excluded more than a fifth of the state’s actual adequate education spending from being counted toward that obligation. (The court also excluded all other state education spending, on the reasonable grounds that the state did not statutorily define those as part of adequacy.)
The state in RSA 193-E:1 establishes an adequate education as one that “is consistent with the minimum standards for public school approval, the state-established academic standards, and school district or school curriculum.”
In RSA 198:40-a, it provides a base level of adequate education funding for each student ($4,100) plus additional aid for low-income ($2,300), special education ($2,100), and non-English speaking ($800) students. The statute specifies that “the sum total” of all of those amounts “shall be the cost of an adequate education.”
All of that aid goes into each school district’s general fund and can be spent however the district sees fit. All of it together comprises the state’s adequate education payments. Despite this, the court ruled that only the $4,100 of base aid can be counted toward fulfilling the state’s obligation.
Thus the court created an artificially wide gap between the state’s court-ordered obligation and what the state spends to meet that obligation.
House Bill 1815 would fix these errors by:
- Narrowing the scope of adequacy to cover core educational content.The bill removes the state minimum standards for school approval from the definition of adequacy, leaving the state-established academic standards and local curricula. Then it defines an adequate education as the existing school approval standards in 11 core academic areas.
- Changing the state’s statutory obligation from funding “an opportunity for an adequate education” to funding “an adequate education.”
- Reaffirming the proper constitutional understanding that local governments are “indivisible from the state for the purposes of providing an adequate education,” meaning that “the state and local governmental entities function collectively” through “a system of shared responsibility” to jointly provide public education services through responsibilities legally determined by statute. It then states that how “the state and its local governmental entities choose to raise, allocate, and spend financial resources to implement this integrated public education system is a political policy matter reserved to legislative and executive judgment and control.”
This combination would achieve three outcomes:
- Focus state education aid on academic instruction.
- Create a strong incentive for school districts to control costs.
- Restore the pre-Claremont understanding that education is a shared state-local responsibility.
HB 1815 does not eliminate the state’s obligation under the Claremont rulings to define and finance an adequate education. Instead, it obligates the state to fund each school’s core academic program, and lets school districts decide how much they want to spend on everything else.
The current funding framework creates no incentives for school districts to drive hard bargains with suppliers, contractors or labor unions, to adjust staffing levels when enrollment falls, or to pursue significant infrastructure and transportation savings.
HB 1815 would create these incentives while following the court’s 2006 directive to pay for whatever it defines as adequacy.
