For nearly 20 years, I have been the DJ of youth, middle school and high school cheerleading competitions in New Hampshire. It has been a privilege to be part of the athletes’ experience and to watch them grow up. It is obvious how much the sports programs mean to the kids.
This year, I’m watching those programs disappear. The Mascenic Regional School District has failed to pass a budget for the third year in a row, and the consequences are landing on our kids. Boynton Middle School is facing the elimination of its entire athletic program, not just its cheerleading team, and all extracurricular activities. A seventh grader in New Ipswich who just wants to play soccer is being told the money isn’t there. An eighth grader from Greenville who wants to take the stage in their final play in middle school is being told the money isn’t there.
But the money is there. The state government is spending it somewhere else.
The state is sending public dollars to private schools where $46,000 has gone to ski mountains and $16,000 to horseback riding facilities. These are tax dollars being spent on wealthy private schools while our kids can’t afford to keep their athletic programs running.
The total cost of Boynton Middle School’s athletics program is $82,600. That’s a rounding error in the state budget. It’s not a rounding error to a kid who won’t get to play sports this fall.
New Hampshire has one of the most inequitable school funding systems in the country. The state ranks near the bottom nationally in the share of education costs it covers, leaving towns and school districts to shoulder the burden through local property taxes. Communities that can afford to make up the difference supplement state aid with local dollars. Communities that can’t, or communities where taxpayers are simply tapped out, make cuts. The communities least able to fill the gap end up with the weakest schools, serving the kids who most need strong ones. It’s a cycle that consistently punishes the wrong people.
Mascenic has been caught in that cycle for three years running. Each time the budget has failed, it hasn’t been because voters don’t care about their kids. It’s because they’re being asked to cover a shortfall that never should have been theirs to cover.
A seventh grader in New Ipswich didn’t vote against the budget. She didn’t decide that New Hampshire would contribute less than most states to her education. She just wants to play soccer or act in a play.
The parents organizing fundraising committees and volunteering to drive kids to away games deserve real credit. That’s a community showing up for our kids under difficult circumstances the state has put them in. Boynton’s extracurriculars may survive this year through that effort and goodwill. The default budget will be back next year, and the year after that. Until New Hampshire treats adequate school funding as a genuine obligation, these communities will keep having the same impossible conversation, and kids will keep being the ones who pay for it.
New Hampshire lawmakers have a choice to make. They can continue expanding a voucher program that sends public money to ski trips and horseback riding lessons at private schools. Or they can treat adequate funding for public schools as the basic obligation it is. Right now, they’re doing one and calling the other unaffordable.
If our lawmakers can’t make that choice and fund our kids’ schools, then we need new representation who will put our schools and our kids first.
Carryl Roy is the Democratic candidate for State Senate District 12, an event DJ of over 20 years, and the chair of the Hollis School Board whose passion for education policy is driven by her deep ties to local youth sports and the Mascenic School District community.