Remember Ruth Ward, who helped repeal the only RSA that actually required schools to bring students to proficiency in reading and math?
She’s at it again. She has proudly announced a new bill that would allow the Claremont school district to collect its adequacy funds before attendance is confirmed, at the beginning of the year.
This is pay-and-pray funding, but in the purest form ever seen. Not only does it pay for attendance rather than (some vague notion of) achievement, but it pays for attendance in advance, before a single butt has hit a single seat.
Apparently, the district would treat this as a loan, which would be paid back with interest… but “at no cost to New Hampshire taxpayers”.
Say what? Did we find an interest tree, or an interest mine somewhere? Will we collect that interest from taxpayers in other states? Or does she not realize that Claremont taxpayers are New Hampshire taxpayers?
Here’s what she’s not trying to do: Hold the school district accountable, in any real way, for its demonstrated inability to teach kids even fundamental literacy and numeracy.
And like the Claremont school board, her top priority is “to ensure that Claremont students would be able to stay in school”. Not that they would learn anything, or have the opportunity to learn anything. Just that they have a place to go. We have a word for that: daycare.
That is, as she’s already demonstrated, she’s quite willing to throw out the baby (education) to save the bathwater (schools).
As the saying goes, with friends like these in the GOP, who needs enemies?
