New Hampshire School Districts Spar at Supreme Court Hearing Over School

This article was originally published in New Hampshire Bulletin.

New Hampshire’s Supreme Court has long been clear: The state is constitutionally required to provide an “adequate” education to its resident students.

Now, the court is being asked to clarify that requirement. Last week, the court heard oral arguments in a pivotal case, Contoocook Valley School District v. State of New Hampshire, that could define whether the state is currently providing enough.

The lawsuit has been brought by a group of school districts that say the current funding formula does not provide enough state funding for them to provide the bare minimum to run their schools without additional local funding, and that the shortfall is unconstitutional.

Education is at a Crossroads: Help Us Illuminate the Path Forward. Donate to The 74

The three justices present Tuesday – Senior Associate Justice James Bassett and Associate Justices Patrick Donovan and Melissa Countway – asked pointed questions of both sides, making their leanings difficult to scrutinize.

Here are three takeaways from oral arguments:

Table of Contents

Plaintiffs: $4,100 per student is not sufficient

At the core of plaintiffs’ arguments to the court is the contention that the state’s school funding formula does not provide enough in per pupil funding to meet its obligations.

Currently, for those school districts that are not able to raise enough revenue from the statewide education property tax, the state provides about $4,100 per student, and additional aid for students that are lower income, have special education needs, or are English language learners.

But when the ConVal case went to trial, plaintiffs presented expert analysis suggesting that $4,100 does not come close to covering what is needed for an adequate education – the bare minimum to meet the state’s needs. Instead, the number is closer to $10,000, the analyses found.

The analyses helped drive the Rockingham County Superior Court’s ruling in November 2023 that the $4,100 “base adequacy” amount should be raised to at least $7,356 per pupil. In that ruling, Judge David Ruoff noted that the minimum threshold he was setting was likely not enough to actually provide an adequate education, but that it was intended to be an absolute floor.

This month, the attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Tierney, argued to the Supreme Court that the superior court’s ruling was correct and rooted in accurate numbers .

More in U.S.

“The overwhelming evidence is that the state’s funding of base adequacy is woefully inadequate,” Tierney said. “It doesn’t even come close.”

The state has disputed those analyses, arguing they are incomplete because they included only the base adequacy funding in their determinations and excluded the other sources of state funding for schools – including aid for students with special education needs and lower income students.

Plaintiffs counter that pegging the analyses to base adequacy payments is appropriate because the case is focused on whether the state is providing enough funding to meet its constitutional obligations for all students, and the base adequacy formula is the only relevant metric.

State: Cost should be limited to what’s required in statute

Central to the state’s contention that the superior court’s ruling was wrong is the idea that Ruoff went too far in his definition of what the state should be funding at all.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Anthony Galdieri argued that the question of what the state is constitutionally required to fund has already been answered by the Legislature in statute.

Back in 2006, the Supreme Court held in Londonderry School District v. State of New Hampshire that the state’s school funding statutes at the time failed to define what constitutes an adequate education, and directed the Legislature to do so.

In response, lawmakers passed language in RSA 193-E:2-a that lays out the subject areas that school districts must provide – from English to physical education – and directs lawmakers and the State Board of Education to approve detailed rules to specify what those content requirements should entail.

That is the statute that courts must use to determine whether New Hampshire is fulfilling its school funding obligations, Galdieri argued last week. Anything not specified is extraneous and not constitutionally necessary, he added.

Defining adequacy strictly by that statute would mean the state is on the hook only for expenses directly related to providing those educational programs. That would exclude transportation costs, administrative costs like superintendent salaries, and building expenses, Galdieri said.

“The court needs to recognize that when the Legislature is going to define this and it has a mandate from this court that says ‘whatever you define, you pay for,’ and a trial court comes in and says, ‘Well, we’re going to read into that all the things needed to operationalize a school’ … it does not come from the plain text of these statutes,” he said.

The plaintiffs strongly disputed that interpretation and countered that schools need to have those services in order to provide a meaningfully adequate education.

“It was something that all of the witnesses, both from the districts as well as the state witnesses, agreed: that both factually and lawfully, all of those components need to be provided in order for districts to provide education in math or science or English or whatever the other subject areas are listed in statute,” Tierney said. “Those things – a heated building, transportation, principals for every 500 students – that’s both factually required in order to have a school and it’s also lawfully required by the laws of the state.”

The big question: Is intervention appropriate for the court?

A broader argument made by the state is that the Rockingham County Superior Court should not have waded into the arena of setting a minimum level for school funding at all.

Galdieri said the state’s separation of powers should prevent the courts from directing funding levels from the Legislature. For that reason, the plaintiffs’ case should be found “nonjusticiable,” Galdieri said.

And he said while state courts have in the past required the Legislature to pass laws increasing the state’s contributions to education, the court has never dictated how lawmakers should do it. In his ruling last year, Ruoff had improperly done so, Galdieri said.

“The danger of this decision is it effectively constitutionalizes the concept of base adequacy,” he said.

Galdieri added: “The danger with that is if the court goes ahead and constitutionalizes that … essentially, the Legislature is hamstrung.”

But Tierney rejected the idea that the superior court had violated the separation of powers doctrine. The court merely set a floor for funding, but still provided lawmakers flexibility, he argued.

“The trial court did not order the Legislature to take one option or another,” he said “… The order made very clear that all options are open to the Legislature, but what is not open to the Legislature is to continue to underfund at less than $7,356 per pupil.”

New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com.

EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel