Recently, I was having a conversation in which I had occasion to bring up RSA 193-H:2, which says:
Schools shall ensure that all pupils are performing at the proficient level or above on the statewide assessment as established in RSA 193-C.
Note that it says shall ensure, not shall try, or shall hope.
Note that it says all pupils, not just some of them — the ones who don’t have special needs or suffer from test anxiety.
People are usually surprised to hear that this law exists. I know I was when I first came across it. In this case, one of them asked:
Okay, but who has standing to sue the schools over this?
On the one hand, I think any resident taxpayer in a district has standing to sue that district, given the recent upgrade to Part 1, Article 8 of the state constitution:
[A]ny individual taxpayer eligible to vote in the State, shall have standing to petition the Superior Court to declare whether the State or political subdivision in which the taxpayer resides has spent, or has approved spending, public funds in violation of a law, ordinance, or constitutional provision. In such a case, the taxpayer shall not have to demonstrate that his or her personal rights were impaired or prejudiced beyond his or her status as a taxpayer.
But on the other hand, a lawsuit seems like a strange way to handle statutory violations. For one thing, even in the case of a successful suit against a school or district, you’d just have the taxpayers awarding their own money to themselves.
Statutes are supposed to be criminal, not civil.
Short of sending wayward administrators to jail, the State Department of Education has options for responding to these flagrant and ongoing violations of the law.
It can close schools, rescind accreditations and certifications, demand that administrators be replaced, and who knows what else.
It hasn’t pursued any of these options because no one has pushed for them. The taxpayers have given up, and the parents are more concerned about things like pornography and transgender sports.
But that could change. It should change.
Suppose the Department started receiving dozens or even hundreds of inquiries every day from people who were sick and tired of these violations.
While I can’t say for sure, I think that the current Commissioner would actually welcome a showing of public pressure to motivate and validate actions by the Department to bring these scofflaw schools to justice.
So, how do we get those cards and letters going?