The Commission to Study School Funding appears set to challenge the so-called “first-last dollar” rule by which the New Hampshire Supreme Court has arguably required the state to fund the entire cost of a constitutionally adequate public education.
In 1993, the court ruled the state is obliged to provide an adequate education and “guarantee adequate funding” to districts. Since then, the court has clarified and reaffirmed its opinion, never so bluntly as in 2006, when the justices wrote, “whatever the State identifies as comprising constitutional adequacy it must pay for. None of that financial obligation can be shifted to local school districts, regardless of their relative wealth or needs.”
In the 2018-19 fiscal year, total school expenditures amounted to $3.3 billion. The American Institutes for Research, consultant to the commission, used data from the state Department of Education to calculate the cost of funding an adequate education in every school district was $2.9 billion.
At a Sept. 29 meeting of the panel, state Sen. Jay Kahn, D-Keene, who chairs the commission’s Adequacy Work Group, put it, “We’ve priced it. With the amount of money we are currently spending, we can achieve the average outcomes in every district.”
But attorney Bill Ardinger, a member of the panel, turned to the first-last dollar rule, calling it “horrible policy.”
He said that if the total cost is $3 billion, “then the first-last dollar rule says, “’OK, the $3 billion is the state’s budget obligation, not the current $1 billion.’ If that’s where this goes, it breaks. It doesn’t work. If what we have to do is have 100% of our total spend be state budget dollars, we’re broken.”
Ardinger warned “there is zero chance you can get that through the Legislature. It would crack the rating agencies’ view of the state budget.” He said the $3 billion would represent ”almost a 180% increase in state spending.”
Massachusetts, Ardinger said, has “a great progressive distribution,” with the state contributing 38% of the cost of funding public schools and local property taxpayers, including a mandatory minimum contribution, representing the largest share.
“If the first-last dollar rule allows that,” Ardinger said, “then we can focus on $2.9 or $3 billion as the total spend target, but we’re not gutting New Hampshire and New England’s tradition of a very important role for local taxes. I think that’s what’s at stake.” — MICHAEL KITCH
