So ConVal School District has sued over education funding. A copy of the lawsuit can be found in this New Hampshire Public Radio article.
Essentially, ConVal urges the State Supreme Court to reprise its ongoing role as State Supreme School Board and order that the State has to use ConVal’s formula to determine the “cost of an adequate education,” which would nearly triple of the amount of State funding due ConVal.
I have not seen any estimates of the Statewide cost of the ConVal formula. But I think we can say with some confidence that it would, at a minimum, require a drastic increase in the rate of the statewide property tax.
ConVal’s lawsuit is ludicrous. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows a judge to choose between competing education funding formulas. How to determine how much to spend on public education is a political question, not a legal question.
The proper way for ConVal to have proceeded would have been to have its State Representatives and/or State Senator introduce its funding formula as a bill.
ConVal’s lawsuit presents a golden opportunity for Governor Sununu to argue that the Claremont line of decisions should be overruled.
But he won’t. For two reasons.
First, he and his coterie will look at the lawsuit in terms of how it affects his reelection or potential run for the United States Senate: “Governor, the Democrats would be able to say you oppose an adequate education if you say that Claremont should be overruled. Could hurt our poll numbers.”
Second, many, many Republicans do not want Claremont overruled. They believe in big, centralized government -which is anathema to the base of the Party- and Claremont gives them the cover to have big, centralized government while telling the base it’s all the Supreme Court’s fault.
