The Students First Act states that, seven days before the voters adopt a school budget, districts must post line graphs showing 10-year changes in their cost-per-pupil, average teacher pay, and administrator salaries. These graphs “must be posted in at least 3 appropriate places, 2 of which must be places of business or other public locations.” The third location can be a newspaper or the district website.
With budget votes approaching, some school districts in New Hampshire are violating the Students First Act.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
📝 Review the law here.
📩 Contact your school board and ask where the report is physically posted. The law requires the charts to be displayed in two physical public locations.
📈 Verify that your school is posting accurate graphs. Check for graphs that look like this example here.
👀 Some ways in which school districts are cheating and manipulating the data:
- Including only several years of data on the charts, rather than the required 10 years.
- Distorting the y-axis of their graphs to downplay the increase in administrator pay and per-pupil cost. Here are the y-axis requirements
📣 Ideally, creating enough public attention about faulty charts will pressure school districts into complying with the law without anyone even needing to go into court.
⚖️ However, if you find that your school district is in violation of the law, you have the right to go into court and block your district’s upcoming budget vote until they comply with the law. Your attorney’s fees must be paid by the district if you prevail.
🚨 Note: after receiving formal legal demands from Cornerstone on behalf of clients in the districts and speaking with our legal counsel, Epsom and Northwood, two districts which were posting misleading graphs, corrected their reports and posted corrected versions in compliance with state law. This victory is an example of how simple involvement in your local governance can have a big impact, leading to greater accountability and transparency from government agencies to those they serve.
