A group called the New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project got an idiot judge to rule that New Hampshire’s funding of special education is constitutionally insufficient. This echoes the Claremont rulings and Con Val, all of which are themselves unconstitutional demands by a branch of government with zero authority to speak on the issue.
Courts have no authority to decide what taxpayers will spend to fund anything not explicitly outlined in law (or outlined in laws that are themselves unconstitutional). The problem is, surprisingly to some, that no one in the Courts or the legal profession in this state approaches the level of a constitutional scholar. It isn’t taught or required. And we don’t have to look far to grasp the issue.
New Hampshire State Constitution. Article 83
Knowledge and learning, generally diffused through a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; and spreading the opportunities and advantages of education through the various parts of the country, being highly conducive to promote this end; it shall be the duty of the legislators and magistrates, in all future periods of this government, to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries and public schools, to encourage private and public institutions, rewards, and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and economy, honesty and punctuality, sincerity, sobriety, and all social affections, and generous sentiments, among the people: Provided, nevertheless, that no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination. Free and fair competition in the trades and industries is an inherent and essential right of the people and should be protected against all monopolies and conspiracies which tend to hinder or destroy it. The size and functions of all corporations should be so limited and regulated as to prohibit fictitious capitalization and provision should be made for the supervision and government thereof. Therefore, all just power possessed by the state is hereby granted to the general court to enact laws to prevent the operations within the state of all persons and associations, and all trusts and corporations, foreign or domestic, and the officers thereof, who endeavor to raise the price of any article of commerce or to destroy free and fair competition in the trades and industries through combination, conspiracy, monopoly, or any other unfair means; to control and regulate the acts of all such persons, associations, corporations, trusts, and officials doing business within the state; to prevent fictitious capitalization; and to authorize civil and criminal proceedings in respect to all the wrongs herein declared against.
June 2, 1784
Where is the New Hampshire Seminary funding for the Fairness project? Not once, in any decision in which the word “cherish” is cited as an excuse to order taxpayers to pour money into failing schools, do seminaries similarly benefit.
Might it therefore follow that if cherishing means money and cherished seminaries get no money, schools can be cherished in equal sum. Zero. Nothing. A situation reinforced by the word monopoly, later in the same article, which is prohibited. There can be no state-sanctioned funding monopoly, a circumstance the Legislature has tried to address with universal education funding, but that still misses the mark.
If we are to cherish anything, it ought to be a debate about the taxpayers’ obligation to support learning, not public schools. There is a shared social interest in educating future generations to be productive members of society. Public schools haven’t done that well in decades, while receiving exponentially more dollars to produce increasingly fewer literate graduates. More money, more dummies.
Teachers and administrators who like to say they also pay taxes (with our taxes, by the way) clearly cherish money and benefits instead of “the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and natural history of the country.” Are they not constitutionally obligated to “to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and economy, honesty and punctuality, sincerity, sobriety, and all social affections, and generous sentiments, among the people.”
They are not teaching them to abhor the monopoly of which Public Education has long been, and whose defense is a never-ending axe ground by the Democrat party.
And what about the built-in contradiction that we must cherish seminaries, which are “schools of theology, theological colleges, or divinity schools, ” educational institutions for educating students in scripture and theology, but for which no tax dollars may be raised. If cherish does not mean taxpayer money for seminaries, it can’t possibly mean money for schools.
The courts say otherwise, as noted by that recent decision regarding special education, which is nowhere mentioned in Article 83.
Superior Court Judge David Ruoff in New Hampshire ruled that the state’s special education funding is “constitutionally insufficient.”
The argument is that,
Everyone deserves an education that’s of equal quality to those around them,” Poirier said. “Students with special needs often need more support, and because of that, it’s usually more expensive for the government. But I think that it’s unjust for those students not to be getting the education that they deserve.”
I can say with some certainty that nearly everyone is getting the same lousy education, such that kids who are not special needs are graduating without being able to read or do math at grade level -making them special needs adults who are the evidence that money has nothing to do with learning.
Taxpayers need to cherish learning, not public schools, and the Legislature needs to do more about it than sneaking a line or two into the budget bill.
Accordingly, the legislature now deems it necessary to definitively proclaim that, as the sole branch of government constitutionally competent to establish state policy and to raise and appropriate public funds to carry out such policy, the legislature shall make the final determination of what the state’s educational policies shall be and of the funding needed to carry out such policies.
You could start by mailing a copy of that to the judge who says special ed is underfunded. Hey, thanks for the heads up, but that’s not your job.
