By Patrick Adrian
Staff Writer
NEWPORT — Claremont, Fall Mountain, Hillsboro-Deering, and Newport were among a number of New Hampshire school districts to join as plaintiffs in the Contoocook Valley (ConVal) School District’s lawsuit against the state over the issue of inadequate education funding.
The Newport School Board voted unanimously 4-0 on Thursday to join the suit against the state.
“We’ve got to put our money where our mouth is at this point,” said Newport School Board Chair Jenna Darling. “It’s time to do something.”
Newport School Board members Linda Wadensten and Rhonda Callum-King said Newport spoke emphatically in support of joining the suit, saying they wanted Newport to join as plaintiffs initially but missed the deadline.
“[The grievances] have gotten so far now . . . that [the state] is running out of excuses,” Wadensten said. “I think it is kind of a gift that they are letting us join in now.”
Newport is currently identified in the plaintiff’s complaint as “a named participant,” not an “active participant,” Wadensten said.
A named participant means that Newport publicly supports the plaintiff’s complaint but does not contribute to the legal fees. The downside, according to Newport officials, is that named participants are not guaranteed a portion of any monetary settlement.
The cost in legal fees to join the suit is currently unknown. Newport Superintendent Brendan Minnihan said he believed that other active plaintiffs in the suit, not including ConVal School District, have been paying between $10,000 to $20,000 per year so far, though that cost expects to drop as more districts join the pool.
Similar lawsuits, including the landmark Claremont suits in the 1990s, have frequently resulted in favorable rulings for the local districts, though the state legislature and executive branch have yet to produce a funding solution satisfactory to the school districts.
In 1993, the New Hampshire Supreme Court found that language in the New Hampshire Constitution guarantees students a right to a public education and placed the obligation on the state to ensure that provision. In 1997 the state Supreme Court found the state’s school funding system to be unconstitutional and ordered the legislature and governor to define the components and cost of an “adequate education” and pay for them with the taxes that were equal across the state.
New Hampshire schools spend an annual average of $16,800 per pupil, according to EducationData.org. In contrast the state contributes approximately $3,700 per pupil to local school districts in Adequate Education Aid. The local districts raise the majority of their operating revenue through localized property taxes, a system that weighs heavily against communities with lower property values.
Claremont School Board Chair Frank Sprague echoed a popular comment by former Claremont Superintendent Middleton McGoodwin, who frequently criticized New Hampshire’s system for determining educational opportunities according to “a child’s zip code.”
“It’s really about having access to equal opportunity,” Sprague told The Eagle Times. “It just isn’t right that in communities like ours we have to repeatedly cut the school budget to keep people in their homes.
In contrast, Sprague has seen resources in property-rich school districts that would be unimaginable in a majority of New Hampshire communities because wealthier communities can spend considerably more with a lower tax rate than property-poor ones.
To Sprague, this lawsuit is an ongoing effort “to put pressure on the state.”
The priorities of Gov. Chris Sununu and the Republican-led legislature further illustrate the state’s lack of regard for school funding reform, according to Sprague. These priorities include: a push to further cut the state’s room and meals tax, a major state revenue source, and SB 130, a controversial voucher bill that would transfer state funds to local schools to families who withdraw their children from the public schools to homeschool or sent to private school.
The ConVal School District case, which began in 2019, was recently returned to Cheshire County Superior Court by the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court did not dismiss the case but ordered more fact finding regarding the components and costs to deliver an adequate education to facilitate the court’s review.
Mininhan said this tracking of actual costs distinguishes the ConVal School District case from previous suits.
Unlike previous lawsuits, the ConVal School District case is expected to establish a dollar-amount needed to deliver an adequate education, thus advancing the argument that New Hampshire’s contribution fails to meet the constitutional requirement.
“ConVal [School District] has been saying to look at the minimum standards and see what that cost actually amounts to,” Minihan said. “And when they do that they [may be] looking closer to about $9,000 or $10,000 per pupil [for the state’s contribution].”
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