The lead attorneys in the ConVal school funding lawsuit were among the speakers who presented their take on the recent state Supreme Court decision at a public webinar presented by the NH School Fairness Funding Project July 16.
On July 1, the court ruled that the state government must nearly double the base education adequacy payment it spends per student. The decision affirmed Rockingham County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff’s 2023 decision to set a minimum adequacy payment of at least $7,356, rather than the current $4,182.
However, the court did not require the change to take effect immediately, as a lower court had directed.
“Really what this is about who is paying for education in our state. No one is saying we should increase spending; it’s about who is paying for it, and it’s about trying to shift the burden from local taxpayers to the state, which are required by the constitution to fund an adequate education for every student,” said Zack Sheehan, executive director of the NH School Fairness Funding Project.
The project considers the ruling “a major win for public education.”
Sheehan spoke about reactions to the decision, taking issue with Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s statement after the decision that “The court made the wrong decision,” as New Hampshire is in the top 10% for school funding.
Sheehan said “the issue is who is paying.”
“Yes, New Hampshire does spend a lot on education. We are in the top 10% for spending, and we have excellent schools—but it is local property owners who are paying for most of it. It’s not the state,” he said.
According to NH School Fairness Funding Project, 61.72% of education funding in the state comes from property taxes. New Hampshire ranks 50th in state funds spent on education.
The recent judgment is in alignment with numerous school funding lawsuits in New Hampshire dating back to the 1980s, in which the state has repeatedly been found to be in violation of its constitution requiring the state to fund an adequate education for every student.
Attorneys Michael Tierney and Elizabeth Ewing, who have been involved in the ConVal case for the past seven years, said they have worked with about a dozen other attorneys on the case, including Dean Eggert of Wadleigh, Starr & Peters, who represents ConVal.
“The most instrumental members of this case are all the superintendents and business administrators and school employees who have worked tirelessly for the last seven years to make sure had all our t’s crossed and our i’s dotted,” Tierney said.
The case, which was initiated by former ConVal Superintendent Kimberly Rizzo Saunders in in 2018, grew to include 19 school districts, including Mascenic, Monadnock, Hillsboro-Deering, Manchester and Nashua.
“This case started with just ConVal, but by the time we got to court in 2021, we had urban school districts, we had rural school districts, we had large school districts, we had small school districts. Education funding affects everyone in the state, and the state was not meeting its constitutional obligation to fund education for anyone in the state. This decision is huge, because it affects everyone,” Tierney said.
Tierney said that most-important element of the recent decision is “the re-affirmation of the Claremont and Londonderry decisions, which give students the right to a fully funded state education.”
“The NH Supreme Court has clearly held that New Hampshire has a constitutional obligation to fully fund education for every child in the state,” Tierney said.
School districts have long argued that the amount of funding provided by the state is not adequate because it does not cover non-teaching staff such as nurses, counselors, custodians and administrators, the cost of buildings and maintenance or transportation, even through transportation is mandated by the state.
Tierney noted that the Supreme Court upheld that “the courts can properly determine the components and costs of an adequate education in order to determine if constitutional obligations are being met.”
“The Supreme Court made very clear that all of these components are necessary for children to obtain an adequate education in our school districts,” Tierney said.
Regarding the Supreme Court not upholding the trial court’s decision that the state pay the additional aid per student “immediately,” and not attaching a deadline, Tierney said, “The court noted that in similar cases in other states, states were given up to a year from the Supreme Court’s decision to figure out how to pay the increased amount.”
The Supreme Court also remanded for the trial court to determine what amount of the attorney’s fees the state should pay for.
“The state never provided evidence that the amount they were providing was enough — not once, in seven years, did they present that evidence,” Sheehan said. “The Supreme Court pulled that out again and again — they basically said to the state ‘You don’t know what the cost of an adequate education is, and you don’t know how to go about finding it.’”
The Supreme Court ruled that “it is impossible for the state to satisfy its constitutional obligation of determining an opportunity for adequate education.”
“So far, the Legislature has been ignoring this ruling. They tried to impeach the judge for the ConVal and state ruling, they have tried to pass budget caps, and they tried to change the definition of a adequate education. Over 30,000 people signed in in opposition to this bill, from every state and town in New Hampshire,” Sheehan said. “The people of New Hampshire care about public education. ”