Please, Governor, Let’s Have an Honest Debate

By William L Chapman

Gov. John Lynch wants to amend the constitution so the state can target aid to needy communities like Allenstown, Berlin, Claremont and Pittsfield. He argues that "the best possible education policy" would allow the state "to consider the fiscal capacity of communities when distributing state education aid." But the governor says, "the Supreme Court has said we cannot do that."

He is wrong, and he ill-serves sound education policy-making by misrepresenting what the Supreme Court has ruled.

Nowhere in the Claremont-Londonderry decisions has the court ever stated, or even implied, that the state may not target aid. Indeed, as the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Costing an Adequate Education stated in its final report: the "Supreme Court itself has acknowledged that educational adequacy does not require identical resources from school to school or district to district."

Gov. Lynch likewise faults the Supreme Court for the flaws he sees in Senate Bill 539, which embodies the findings of the oversight committee. He asserts that this bill "ends up cutting aid to some of our most needy communities" because of "the constraints of the Supreme Court." Here, too, the governor is wrong.

To begin with, the governor mischaracterizes Senate Bill 539 as "an education funding plan." The bill, however, is titled, "an act relative to the cost of an adequate education and provision of fiscal capacity disparity aid." It puts into law the work of the oversight committee, which the Legislature established last year as part of the same law that, for the first time, defined the content of an adequate education. The charge to the oversight committee was to cost out an adequate education and report to the Legislature by Feb. 1, which it has done.

Senate Bill 539, as a matter of educational policy, approaches the cost of an adequate education at two different levels. The first, or what can be viewed as the base level, is the cost to educate any public school student. Senate Bill 539 refers to this cost as a "universal cost" since it applies to every New Hampshire student. The second level is the cost to provide additional educational programs to students with special needs. Examples include special education students, English language learners, and "economically disadvantaged" students. This second level of aid is referred to as "differentiated aid."

At both levels, Senate Bill 539 establishes costs on a per pupil basis. The universal cost is $3,450, while differentiated aid is set at varying amounts tied to the special needs of the student or the concentration of economically disadvantaged students in a school. As a result, the distribution of state aid is based on education cost factors and determined by the number of students in each school district and the special needs of those students. Every school district receives the universal cost to educate each of its students plus differentiated aid to educate those students with special needs.

To criticize Senate Bill 539, as Gov. Lynch does, because it would reduce aid "to some of our most needy communities" is highly misleading. Surely the governor knows that the reduction in aid has nothing to do with Senate Bill 539 and everything to do with the current education funding law. The Supreme Court, in the Londonderry case, ruled that law is unconstitutional because it does not define an adequate education and thus does not determine its cost. Last year the Legislature remedied the first flaw by defining an adequate education; Senate Bill 539 is intended to remedy the second flaw by costing it out.

While people may disagree with a per pupil universal cost of $3,450 or the costs set for the various programs that make up differentiated aid, Senate Bill 539′s two-level approach should be welcomed as a significant step forward in sound education policy making.

Finally, Gov. Lynch tries to support his case for a constitutional amendment by claiming that Senate Bill 539 "would re- create donor towns," which he knows has proven to be politically divisive and unpopular. But once again he is not being forthright with New Hampshire citizens.

So-called "donor communities" are communities in which the aggregate state education property tax revenue exceeds the community’s cost of providing an adequate education. The surplus state tax revenue is redistributed to communities with lesser property wealth. Two years ago the Legislature eliminated donor communities by the simple measure of reducing the state education property tax rate to an amount where the state property tax revenue did not exceed the cost of adequacy in any community. If the governor wants the Legislature to eliminate donor communities, he knows it has nothing to do with Senate Bill 539.

We have been at the debate over an adequate education and education funding for 15 years. If we are to find a solution that embodies Gov. Lynch’s stated goal of "the best possible education policy," it will require an honest debate based on the facts and law.

(William L. Chapman represented Londonderry and Merrimack in the most recent case decided by the state Supreme Court.)

Originally published by William L. Chapman For the Monitor.

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