This article was originally published in the New Hampshire Bulletin.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court has long been clear: the state is constitutionally obligated to provide an “adequate” education to the students who live there.
Now the court is being asked to clarify that requirement. Last week the court heard oral arguments in a crucial case, Contoocook Valley School District v. State of New Hampshire, that could determine whether the state is currently delivering enough.
The lawsuit was filed by a group of school districts who say the current funding formula does not provide enough state funding to provide the bare minimum to run their schools without additional local funding, and that the shortfall is unconstitutional.
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The three judges present Tuesday — Senior Associate Justice James Bassett and Associate Justices Patrick Donovan and Melissa Countway — asked pointed questions of both sides, making their positions difficult to examine.
Here are three lessons from the oral arguments:
Plaintiffs: $4,100 per student is not enough
At the heart of the plaintiffs’ arguments before the court is the assertion that the state’s school funding formula does not provide sufficient per-pupil funding to meet its obligations.
Currently, for school districts that are unable to generate sufficient property tax revenue for statewide education, the state provides about $4,100 per student, and additional aid for students with lower incomes, special educational needs or who are learning English.
But then the ConVal When the case went to trial, the plaintiffs presented an expert analysis showing that $4,100 does not come close to what is needed for an adequate education – the bare minimum to meet the state’s needs. Instead, the number is closer to $10,000, the analyzes showed.
The analyzes contributed to the Rockingham County Superior Court ruling in November 2023 that the “basic adequacy amount” of $4,100 must be increased to at least $7,356 per student. In that ruling, Judge David Ruoff noted that the minimum threshold he set was likely not sufficient to actually provide an adequate education, but that it was intended as an absolute minimum.
This month, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Michael Tierney, argued in the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court’s ruling was correct and based on accurate figures.
“The overwhelming evidence is that state basic adequacy funding is woefully inadequate,” Tierney said. “It’s not even close.”
The state has disputed these analyses, arguing that they are incomplete because they included only basic adequacy funding in their decisions and excluded the other sources of state funding for schools – including aid for students with special educational needs and students with lower income.
Plaintiffs counter that tying the analyzes to basing adequacy payments is appropriate because the case focuses on whether the state is providing sufficient funding to meet its constitutional obligations for all students, and the basic adequacy formula is the only relevant benchmark .
State: Costs must be limited to what is required by law
Central to the state’s claim that the Supreme Court’s ruling was wrong is the idea that Ruoff went too far in his definition of what the state should fund in the first place.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Anthony Galdieri argued that the question of what the state must constitutionally fund has already been answered by the Legislature in law.
In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled Londonderry School District v. State of New Hampshire that the state statutes for financing schools at the time were unable to define what constituted an appropriate education, and that the Legislature was mandated to do so.
In response, lawmakers adopted language in RSA 193-E:2-a that outlines the subject areas that school districts must offer — from English to physical education — and directs lawmakers and the State Board of Education to adopt detailed rules to to specify what those topics are. must entail substantive requirements.
That’s the statute courts should use to determine whether New Hampshire is meeting its school funding obligations, Galdieri argued last week. Anything unspecified is extraneous and not constitutionally necessary, he added.
Strictly defining adequacy under that statute would mean that the state would be liable only for expenses directly related to the provision of those educational programs. That would exclude transportation costs, administrative costs such as superintendent salaries and construction costs, Galdieri said.
“The court has to recognize that when the legislature is going to define this and they have a mandate from this court that says ‘whatever you define, you pay,’ and a court comes in and says, ‘Well, we’re going to get in reading that everything is necessary to make a school operational’… it does not come from the plain text of these statutes,’ he said.
The plaintiffs vigorously challenged this interpretation, countering that schools must have these services in order to provide meaningful appropriate education.
“It was something that all of the witnesses, both district and state witnesses, agreed on: that both factually and legally, all of these components must be provided for districts to provide instruction in math, science or English. or whatever the other subject areas are listed in the law,” Tierney said. “Those things – a heated building, transportation, principals for every 500 students – that are both actually required to have a school and also legally required by the laws of the state.”
The big question: is intervention appropriate for the court?
A broader argument from the state is that the Rockingham County Superior Court should not have entered the arena of setting a minimum level for school funding at all.
Galdieri said the state’s separation of powers should prevent the courts from determining funding levels from the Legislature. For that reason, the plaintiffs’ case should be considered “non-justified,” Galdieri said.
And he said that while state courts have in the past required the Legislature to pass laws increasing the state’s contributions to education, the court has never dictated how lawmakers should do that. In his ruling last year, Ruoff had done this incorrectly, Galdieri said.
“The danger of this decision is that it effectively constitutionalizes the concept of basic adequacy,” he said.
Galdieri added: “The danger of this is that if the court goes ahead and constitutionalizes that… essentially the legislature is paralyzed.”
But Tierney rejected the idea that the higher court violated the separation of powers doctrine. The court set only a minimum amount for the funding but still offered flexibility to lawmakers, he argued.
“The court did not order the legislature to choose one option or the other,” he said. than $7,356 per student.”
New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Dana Wormald: info@newhampshirebulletin.com.
