The State of New Hampshire initiated a reconsideration of the ConVal funding lawsuit in NH Superior Court on June 26, paving the way for the case to be reconsidered in the higher court after a Superior Court ruled in ConVal’s favor last June, determining that the state is failing in its constitutional duty to fund an adequate education.
ConVal School District initially sued the state in March 2019, arguing the state was not providing enough funds. Mascenic, Monadnock and Winchester school districts joined the case. In June 2019, Cheshire County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff ruled that transportation costs, among other costs, are to be paid by the state per the state constitution. He ordered the state to pay the school district’s legal fees, and said it is the legislature’s job to fix the underfunding of education. The state had appealed the Superior Court decision later in June, but it was sustained.
In the most recent request to the NH Supreme Court, the State asked for a reversal of that ruling and a 15 minute oral argument for their case. Attorney General Gordon MacDonald and other state lawyers argued the trial court had deviated from standard procedure by denying the state certain requests they made, and speeding through the case. “The trial court placed this case on an extraordinarily expedited schedule,” MacDonald and others wrote in a statement. They also argued that the plaintiffs had not identified an actual deprivation of a fundamental right.
School district legal representatives were copied on the request, which does not set a time for the oral arguments to be heard by the state’s Supreme Court.
In 2019, the state was providing a base adequacy aid rate of $3,636.06 per student to districts throughout the state, a large shortfall from the $15,865.26 average cost to educate a student in the state in the 2017-18 school year.