New Hampshire House Democrats reacted to the leaked “segregated schools” chat the way modern politics trains people to react: treat a sloppy phrase as a full confession of racial intent, denounce it as a moral abomination, and then declare the conversation over.
Democratic leader Alexis Simpson called segregation “a living scar,” “built through violence,” and said it has no place in the legislature. (Concord Monitor) Rep. Dave Luneau called the comments “disgusting.” (Concord Monitor)
Here’s the tell: this response is not primarily about improving education. It’s about turning a politically inconvenient debate into a moral panic.
Yes, the phrase was reckless. The Concord Monitor notes that “segregated schools” typically refers to racial segregation. (Concord Monitor) If you’re a public official, you do not casually juggle a word like that and then act surprised when people hear the historic meaning.
But Democrats are using that predictable reaction as cover. The real story is that we already “segregate” kids in multiple ways, and Democrats defend the kind that quietly sorts children by class and home life.
We already segregate students by ability, all day, every day (and usually for good reasons)
The modern public-school system separates kids constantly: reading groups, leveled math, honors, AP, vocational tracks, special education placements, and intervention blocks. That is segregation in the literal sense: sorting.
We do it because pretending every child has identical needs is how you manufacture failure at scale.
So when Democrats suddenly treat “separation” itself as morally unspeakable, they aren’t making a principled argument. They are making a selective one: separation is fine when the system does it, and “evil” when families do it.
The segregation Democrats defend is the one enforced by the housing market
If you want to talk about segregation, start where it actually lives in New Hampshire: property-tax-driven school funding and residential sorting.
NHFPI reports that local property taxes accounted for 61% of public school district revenue in 2023–2024, and that about 70% of local public education funding comes from property taxes when you include the Statewide Education Property Tax raised and retained locally. (New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute)
Translation: we already run a system where your educational “community” is heavily determined by where you can afford to live. If that isn’t class sorting, language has no meaning.
“Paying twice” is not a slogan. It’s the structure.
When a parent pays private-school tuition, the property tax bill does not step aside out of courtesy. It still contains education components, including a local school portion and a statewide education portion (Lebanon’s tax breakdown is a clear example). (Lebanon, NH)
So yes, for many families, “choice” means paying once out of pocket and again through taxes. You can argue that’s the price of civic membership, but don’t pretend it isn’t real.
And here’s what Democrats never quite say out loud: this setup makes real choice easiest for families with financial slack. That is class segregation with better branding.
The biggest “segregation” effect is home life, and taxes won’t erase it
Now for the part everyone tiptoes around because it sounds impolite, even when it is obvious.
Kids do not arrive at school as blank USB drives waiting for the district to upload “equity.” They arrive with a home environment already in motion.
Some children show up having been read to for years, with routines, conversation, attention, expectations, and a house where books are normal. Many of them are already decoding words, or close to it. That advantage is not mystical. It’s measurable.
- Research consistently finds the home literacy environment predicts children’s language and reading development. (PMC)
- OECD work using PISA data notes the number of books at home is a strong predictor of academic performance and years of schooling, and reports sizable reading-score differences linked to access to books. (OECD)
- The American Academy of Pediatrics emphasizes that shared reading supports early brain development and school readiness, with benefits that compound over time. (AAP)
Here’s the blunt truth: you can tax those parents heavily, and the core advantage still remains.
You cannot tax away a parent who insists on bedtime reading. You cannot property-tax a kitchen-table conversation. You cannot confiscate a home where adults track homework, notice trouble early, and treat education as a serious household priority.
Could higher taxes reduce some families’ time and bandwidth? Sure, at the margins. But the underlying point stands: differences in home life are stubborn, compounding, and not solved by calling everyone into the same building for seven hours a day.
So what should we do with this reality?
First, stop blackwashing the debate. Democrats can condemn clumsy rhetoric without pretending that moral outrage is an education plan. The Concord Monitor story itself acknowledges Noble claims she meant political segregation, not racial, even while noting the term’s usual racial meaning. (Concord Monitor)
Second, if you actually care about equity, target the real drivers:
- early literacy work that starts before kindergarten (including getting books into homes)
- tutoring and reading support that is frequent, structured, and boring in the best way
- policies that acknowledge class sorting baked into property-tax dependence, instead of pretending “public school = integrated by default”
A society that wants equal opportunity has to grapple with the fact that the earliest and strongest “school district” is a child’s home. That will still be true no matter how theatrically politicians weaponize a loaded word.
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