Protect Our Public Schools

All of us in Hampton are proud that the first public school in New Hampshire opened in Hampton in 1649.  Because of that we know we have a special responsibility to ensure that a free and quality education is available to everyone in New Hampshire. 

Public education has been the way we as a community provide our children and grandchildren with the core content knowledge, citizenship, and the skills necessary to be successful once they become adults. Today, our public schools are one of our last “shared experiences” that help to create and foster our sense of community. 

The writers of our state constitution in 1784 understood that when they wrote in Article 83 that knowledge and learning for all was essential to the preservation of a free government and that legislators and magistrates “in all future periods of this government” should cherish the interest of literature and the sciences.

However, from the very beginning, teachers, students, and families have had to fight to protect the quality and availability of this important community resource.  In 1650, for example, the teacher hired by Hampton to teach in our public school had to sue the town to get paid for his first year of teaching!  And in 1877 the constitution was amended to prohibit tax money from being used to fund religious schools, a provision that is still on the books. 

Unfortunately, the threats to public education have recently only escalated. 

Chronic Underfunding

In 1993, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that our State Constitution imposes a duty on the State to provide and pay for an adequate education for every child in New Hampshire.  It further held that none of that financial obligation can be shifted to local school districts, regardless of their relative wealth or need. 

The legislature currently defines an adequate education as costing $4,100 per pupil.  That is far short of the actual cost to send any child to almost any public school in New Hampshire.  In Hampton, for example, the cost to maintain, manage, staff and provide support to the approximately 1,000 students who attend Centre, Marston and Hampton Academy is nearly $30,000 per year.   While I am not suggesting that we – the local property taxpayers of Hampton - should not pay our fair share of those expenses, clearly the state has downshifted a significant portion of its constitutional obligation to provide a public education to us.  

Recently a Rockingham Superior Court judge agreed. In a suit brought by the ConVal School District, he ruled that the state’s current allocation of $4,100 per pupil to fund an adequate education falls far short of what the state constitution requires. Instead, he ordered that a minimum of $7,356 per pupil, is necessary to meet the state’s obligation.  However, he also said that the “true cost” to be in full compliance with the constitutional guarantee of an adequate education is probably much higher than that.  

That ruling has been appealed to the NH Supreme Court, but if they rule in favor of it - as they have done in the past – the state will have to provide local school districts with at least an additional $500 million in state educational funding.  That will then help to lower local property taxes by an equivalent amount.  


Inequitable Funding

To fund its current educational funding requirement, the state created the Statewide Education Property Tax (SWEPT), increasing the already heavy burden on local property taxpayers.   

SWEPT is a STATE tax on property, with a uniform tax rate applied everywhere in the state.  It just happens to be collected locally.

If the SWEPT revenues collected in a town for the state are less than what the calculated allocation of state educational assistance is, then the town is allowed to keep those revenues.  But it will also receive a supplemental payment of SWEPT revenues collected elsewhere from the state to make up the difference.  

Between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2025, Hampton has been or will be a net recipient of such state aid; we will have received – in aggregate –$1.8 million more in SWEPT revenues from the state than was collected in our town.

Under current law, however, approximately 40 towns are permitted to retain approximately $29 million in SWEPT taxes collected in their town that exceed what their total allocation for state educational aid is. That excess is then used by those towns to reduce their local property tax rate.  This amounts to a state subsidy provided to these towns that Hampton does not receive.

In another suit, the same Rockingham Superior Court judge ordered that the state can no longer allow towns to “keep” any excess SWEPT revenues they collect and instead must return them to the state “for the exclusive purpose of satisfying the State’s constitutional adequacy aid obligations.”

The NH Supreme Court granted a stay to that order that prevents its immediate enforcement and on September 30 a trial on the case started in the Superior Court.

School Vouchers

NH’s school voucher program was sold to New Hampshire by Republicans in the legislature as a program for very low-income families with a projected annual expenditure of about $500,000. 

Since then, the program has been expanded to fulfill its real purpose: to divert already scare state revenues from our public schools to individual families to meet the needs of their individual children.  

Today, families who make up to 350% of the federal poverty level (about $109,000 for a family of four) may participate in the school voucher program and the program is diverting over $24 million per year in public funds raised by the state from our public schools.  An attempt to increase eligibility to 500% of the federal poverty level (nearly $156,000) nearly passed this year.   Had that happened it would have significantly increased the overall annual cost of the program and damaged our public education system further.

75% of the students who were enrolled in the school voucher program where already enrolled in private, religious or homeschool programs. Families have every right to decide to educate their children that way, but the rest of us should not have to subsidize that. 

There is also no accountability - the program is administered by an outside organization- and there is little or no government oversight.  Every other government-funded program is required to operate within a specific set budget EXCEPT the school voucher program.   Once a family qualifies for the program, they can participate in the program for the entire “school life” of their child regardless of how their family’s income level may change and that just drives up the total cost of the program exponentially. 

Left unchecked this program will continue to divert much needed public funds from our public schools which are intended to offer every child – regardless of where they live or what their family’s economic status is – an equal opportunity to succeed to private education focused on meeting the needs of only one child at a time.  And don’t kid yourself, the rest of us will end up paying more in local property taxes.  

Lower Standards

Our public schools have long been the pride of our community, and we have expected them to provide all our students with rigorous, meaningful educational opportunities.  The standards that all public-school districts must follow are set by the NH State Board of Education. 

For the past three years, Frank Edelblut, the Commissioner of the NH Department of Education has been leading the effort to amend and revise those rules.   His final proposal was submitted to and approved by the State Board of Education on August 13, 2024. 

As written, the new standards lower expectations and could result in larger class sizes, fewer course offerings and fewer qualified teachers to help our students learn and thrive.  

Of additional concern is the process followed by Commissioner Edelblut and the Department of Education. The process was anything but open and transparent. I attended one public "listening session" in Hampton and there was no opportunity for anyone from our local public schools or the public at large to provide any input. The only listening that was done was by those of us in attendance listening to the presenters read their pre-prepared PowerPoint slides.

Unfortunately, this is just another attack on our public schools led by a NH Commissioner of Education who does not believe in public education. It is also a not too subtle attempt to reduce the state’s financial obligation to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to provide all children with an adequate education, by lowering the definition of what that standard is. 

Before they are adopted, the new proposed Minimum Standard Rules must be reviewed and approved by the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules.  Currently Republicans have a majority on this committee. The composition of this committee - and the action it takes on the proposed new rules - will be determined by the outcome of the election on November 5.  Democrats will oppose these new standards. 

Attacks on Teachers

In 2021 Republican members of the NH House of Representative – including the current Republican leader - introduced HB 544 to “prohibit the dissemination of certain divisive concepts related to sex and race.”  The bill was modeled after an executive order by President Donald Trump that applied to federal employees and was repealed by President Joe Biden.

That bill failed to pass the House, but in a “back door” maneuver House and Senate Republicans added similar language to the State Budget, which Governor Sununu signed into law. Most troubling was that the law allowed individual parents to file complaints against individual teachers and school staff who they believed were guilty of disseminating “divisive concepts.”  And it gave the State Board of Education the power to revoke educators’ teaching licenses if they agreed with the parents; thereby threatening the livelihood of those teachers. 

HB 1162 was introduced in 2024 to repeal this law and I was proud to vote in favor of it.  Republicans, however, continued to support the Divisive Concepts Law on the books and this bill was killed in the House by them on March 14; 183 in favor to 192 opposed. 

Luckily, a federal judge struck down the law shortly thereafter.  In his decision, the judge held that it violates the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.  

Unfortunately, the NH Department of Education – of course – appealed that ruling and the Republican State Representative who sponsored the original bill (HB 544) said on social media that the judge who ruled on this case “just put stopping Critical Race Theory back on the ballot in November.”  Here again, your vote matters

NH Deserves Better!

Public education in New Hampshire is under attack and that attack is led by Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut who was appointed by Governor Sununu and whose term ends next summer.  If Kelly Ayotte is elected Governor, there is a good chance she will renominate Frank Edelblut for another term.  That’s why it’s so important that we elect Joyce Craig as our next Governor.  Joyce is on the record as saying she will not re-appoint Edelblut. 

Commissioner Edelblut has been aided and abetted in his attack on public education by Republicans in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.  As long as they are in the majority those attacks will continue. 

NH Deserves Better – Not only should we stop attacking and barely funding what it not even an adequate education, we should be striving to provide all our children with an exceptional education that teaches them how to understand and learn from the past, think critically and for themselves and become full and contributing members of our community. 

We need to: