The New Hampshire State Board of Education has approved the first of two parts of the controversial overhaul of the Minimum Standards for Public School Approval proposed by the Department of Education and blessed by Commissioner Frank Edelblut.
The decision follows months of sparring between the Board and the department on the one hand and professional educators — both teachers and administrators — on the other, punctuated by a critical legal analysis of the proposal by attorneys in the Office of Legislative Services (OLS).
Following the Board’s decision, Deb Howes, President of AFT-New Hampshire, issued the following statement: “It is really problematic that our State Board is attempting to vastly reshape public education through rulemaking in ways they couldn’t get lawmakers to do over the past two years,” she said, adding “If these rules are adopted as passed today, students could face larger class sizes, fewer course offerings and fewer qualified educators to help them learn and thrive. They should have taken more time and carefully considered the mountain of feedback they have already received from Granite Staters who value robust public schools for all before plowing ahead and voting to approve this proposal.”
Moreover, Representative David Luneau (D-Hopkinton), who serves on the House Education Committee and its Legislative Oversight Committee, reminded Drew Cline, who chairs the Board, that the Board’s authority to approve the proposed rules is subject to legislative review.
He referred Cline to the statute [RSA 193: E2-a, IV (a)] which stipulates, “The state board shall not amend any existing academic standards without the prior review and recommendation of the legislative oversight committee.”
The Board has yet to refer its proposal to the committee for its recommendation. Shortly after the Board approved the rules yesterday, Representative Rick Ladd (R-Haverhill) scheduled a meeting of the oversight committee for August 22. Once the committee makes its recommendation, the proposed rules undergo review by the OLS. They are held open for public comment and subject to a public hearing and then presented to the Joint Committee on Legislative Rules for approval.
The purpose of the ED 306s is to ensure that every student, irrespective of where they live or which school they attend, is entitled to the opportunity to acquire a constitutionally adequate public education, for which the State has a duty provide, as the NH Supreme Court held in the Claremont litigation. The OLS attorney found that the revised rules not only fail to serve their intended purpose but also in significant respects undermine the statutes the Legislature has enacted to define and deliver an adequate education and hold schools accountable for providing it.
The content of an adequate education is defined in statute — RSA 193-E;2-a — which lists the required curriculum for elementary, middle and high schools. However, the revised rules would turn these requirements from options to be determined by local school boards.
The OLS attorney suggested the proposed rules were at odds with statutes intended to comply with the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s order that the state must ensure every child an adequate education. “Throughout this proposal substantive requirements have been amended to be options as opposed to requirements. By changing the language of requirements to may it has created ambiguity in these rules,” the analysis reads.
Consequently, the attorney wrote “It is unclear how every educable child in the public schools of the state will get a constitutionally adequate education if each school board may or may not choose the curriculum suggested in this rule.”
Luneau described the proposed rules as an effort to deconstruct the system of public education without regard to the statutes, which define the content of an adequate education, as well as calculate its cost and ensure it is provided as the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ordered.
