Funding should not be the defining issue in public education. But it is, because the state government is addicted to federal funds and imposes endless mandates on school districts. Many of these mandates aren’t fully funded, in violation of Article 28-a Part 1 of the NH Constitution.
Taxpayers are screaming about skyrocketing property taxes. The elderly and those on fixed incomes worry they will lose their homes. Legislators agonize over falling test scores, which was guaranteed to happen when behavior modification and mental health intervention mandates took priority over academics. Parents are concerned about all of this and also for the physical safety of their children.
By rights, parents should be directing the education of their children. How else will schools respect their values? Before the separation of church and state, it was clearly understood. Then along came the concept of “non-sectarian” education, which was supposed to be agreeable to all. Public schools now promote a wide range of values from merely inappropriate to seriously disturbing, trampling many people’s rights of conscience. All education promotes values. The only question is, whose values: yours or those of a far away government bureaucrat.
There’s no political will to cut federal funding, so public schools are considered “unfixable.” Only a bailout will help. So, state legislators are going on a rampage to help students bail out of public schools that families find objectionable, whether it’s due to bullying or any other reason.
Regardless of family income, parents can now collect $5,000 per child to attend a private or home school of their choice. Proponents claimed that money will “follow the child” so it’s no big deal, but that wasn’t and isn’t true. About 80% of students collecting this money were already attending private or home schools. So it’s not actually a bailout: it doesn’t even use local funding. It’s a brand new state funded entitlement program. This “widely successful” program is busting the state budget. It’s projected to cost $113 million for the biennium, or $26.7 million over budget.
House legislators have also proposed a mandatory open enrollment program, HB 741, to allow students to bailout and attend any school district in the state. There’s no predicting the fiscal chaos this program will cause because there’s no deadline for applying to fill an empty seat in another school district. Once a student is accepted, the sending district must hand over at least 80% of its per student cost to the receiving district, even if 100% of that student’s funding was already budgeted for teacher salaries and other contracts. Thankfully, the Senate sent the bill to study: in reality, it’s just another unfunded state mandate.
Speaking of mandates, the Claremont school district is under water trying to cope with a $5 million shortfall. Instead of exempting the district from crippling mandates in order to balance its budget, the state is offering them a loan at above market rates. This bailout protects the state’s interest in enforcing its mandates and gives a blank check to tax increases. So much for local control and balancing budgets. One starts to wonder if the intention may actually be to bust budgets and destroy local control.
Why is it that open enrollment only allows students to switch districts, but taxpayers can’t? Why must taxpayers remain trapped in objectionable districts? Why not allow taxpayers to switch districts along with their children? That would make more sense. Belonging to a district of like minded people builds relationships and stronger communities. It also doesn’t bust budgets, because taxpayers fund, vote, and attend school in the same district. In fact, that’s the way things used to operate. It didn’t require moving to change school district affiliation.
Before the state forced districts to consolidate, NH had nearly 3,000 school districts. Taxpayers simply notified their town clerk in April if they wanted to switch districts, or create a new district. They paid their first property tax bill in June to their new district. In this case, the money did “follow the child” to the new school district. All this happened agreeably without state interference, because everyone understood the primary importance of respecting a parent’s rights of conscience. Parents, not the state, directed the education of their children.
Budgets weren’t busted because there were no state mandates. Districts either respected the values of their families or risked losing taxpayers. Local control had inherent checks and balances. Article 6, Part 1 of the NH Constitution was written to protect parents from state interference in the election of public teachers and the management of local school districts. See my previous Grok article on Article 6 for the details.
There would be no need for the state to bail out students or school districts if the state stopped interfering. Real local control would give parents and taxpayers a real choice. No one should be trapped in an objectionable school district.
The state can contribute to public schools without mandates. Cherish education without interfering.
