BY TIMOTHY LAROCHE
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CLAREMONT — Nearly 30 years after the Claremont School Board first took the helm of a lawsuit challenging the state’s education funding formula, lawyers are seeking a new legal challenge.
In response the continual loss of state aid and growing educational costs, attorneys involved in several lawsuits against the state say they are eyeing a new challenge against the state’s formula for funding public schools.
The talks allude to the possibility of reopening the legal battle that resulted in the Claremont Decisions of 1993 and 1997 — New Hampshire Supreme Court decisions that affirmed the state’s commitment to funding education. One of the attorney’s involved in the cases, John Tobin, began talks with the Claremont School Board on Wednesday to garner support for a possible new lawsuit.
“A city like Claremont works really hard and taxes itself higher, but because the tax base is really low, it can raise less money and how profoundly unfair that is,” Tobin said. “It’s laughable when the average costs of providing an education to a kid in New Hampshire is $15,000, but the state only says it will cost $3,600.”
According to Tobin, disparities in education funding have grown since he began working with the Claremont School District in 1995. Now, with the phasing out of state stabilization grants, taxpayer costs to fund rural school districts are steadily rising, leading to what the New Hampshire Public Policy Institute called in June 2017 an impending “rural crisis.”
Several schools districts have already expressed some interest in compelling the state to provide additional funding to schools in “property poor” municipalities, he said. Despite the Claremont decisions affirming the state’s role in providing an adequate education, lawmakers have pushed most of the burden of school funding to municipalities.
In Claremont, the result has been a rapidly increasing school budget. Last year, in a bid to hold operations steady amid the loss of state aid, district administration initially proposed spiking the school budget by nearly $1.7 million. Ultimately, the school board negotiated a decreased budget resulting in several layoffs to achieve a $21,000 reduction from the previous year.
“We no longer have to convince the court that it’s the state’s duty, we just have to show that the state is not complying with that duty,” Tobin said. “The result of them not complying are these terrible unfair tax rates.”
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