New Hampshire
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
In 1999, New Hampshire changed its school funding system to include a statewide property tax, in response to rulings by the New Hampshire Supreme Court in Claremont School District v. Governor, 635 A.2d 1375 (1993) (Claremont I), Claremont v. Governor, 703 A.2d 1353 (1997) (Claremont II), and Claremont v. Governor, 744 A.2d 1107 (1999) (Claremont III).
In Claremont I, the court held that the New Hampshire Constitution “imposes a duty on the State to provide a constitutionally adequate education to every educable child and to guarantee adequate funding” and remanded the case for trial. The court also noted that the legislature and the governor have the responsibility to define “the specifics of” an adequate education.
In Claremont II, the court declared the then current education finance system unconstitutional because it violated the state constitution’s requirement that all state taxes be “proportional and reasonable.” Under that system, taxpayers in lower wealth school districts paid as much as four times the local property tax rate of those in higher wealth districts. The court also ordered the state to follow a four-part remedy: define a constitutionally adequate education; determine the cost of such an education; fund an adequate education throughout the state; and ensure its delivery through an accountability system.
Compliance Proceedings
In 2001, plaintiffs returned to the Supreme Court, claiming that the state’s new funding system remained unconstitutional and that the state had not complied with the court’s 1997 remedial order. After briefing and oral argument, the court ordered the state to hold school districts accountable for both inputs and outcomes, in Claremont v. Governor, 794 A.2d 744 (2002). The state promptly enacted an accountability statute.
Londonderry v. State
Several school districts that lost revenue after the 2005 changes to the state’s school funding system filed suit, and in 2006, the trial court granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. On appeal, the supreme court affirmed the lower court’s finding that the state had failed to define an adequate education, ordered the state to do so by June 30, 2007, and stayed action on other issues because they flow from the definition.
The New Hampshire Legislature met the June 30 deadline. The new adequacy definition provides content standards that schools have to meet and requires all school districts to offer an opportunity to attend kindergarten to every student. Thirteen New Hampshire districts do not currently offer kindergarten to all students.
The legislation also directs a legislative committee to identify “enhanced needs” schools and propose additional resources for those schools. While the original definition proposed in the Senate would have required lawmakers to direct specific additional resources to “enhanced needs” schools, a compromise with the House scaled this back. In addition, a new committee, made up of lawmakers and a representative from the Governor’s office, issued a new study for determining the cost of an adequate education under the new definition on February 1, 2008.
On October 15, 2008, the New Hampshire Supreme Court dismissed Londonderry Sch. Dist. v. State, 958 A. 2d 930 ( N.H. 2008). The court terminated its jurisdiction on the grounds that the case was now moot since the particular statute that the plaintiffs had attacked in their 2005 complaint had now been replaced. Plaintiffs maintained that the revised funding system is still unconstitutional, but the court held that they would need to file a new action to litigate these issues.
RECENT EVENTS
Prompted by the Claremont decisions, lawmakers have, over the past fourteen years, voted on over eighty proposed constitutional amendments that address judicial review of educational funding issues. The attempt to gain legislative approval for an amendment, subject to voter approval, that would restrict the power of the courts in adequacy cases came closest to fruition in 2012, but ultimately failed to obtain the necessary legislative approval to put it on the ballot. On May 31, 2012, the Republican leaders of the two legislative houses reached a compromise with Governor Lynch, a Democrat, over the language of the amendment. After passing in the senate, however, the proposed amendment failed to receive the necessary three-fifths majority in the house in order to appear on the November ballot.
Dover Sch. Dist. v. State
In August 2015, the Dover School District sued the state failing to adequately fund its schools. The suit challenges a state statutory funding cap that limits year to year increases under the current funding formula to 108% of the prior year’s amount. Dover claims that the cap violates the Supreme Court’s rulings that students are entitled to “adequate” funding and that the cap especially detrimentally affects school districts with rising enrollments. It claims that about $14 million has been withheld from the city under that cap in recent years. According to the complaint, 79 municipalities in the state are detrimentally affected by this cap. Dover is asking the court to declare the funding cap unconstitutional to return the $14 million withheld under the cap to the city.
In October 2015, the office of the Attorney General of New Hampshire, announced that they would not defend the state cap on funding in the Dover litigation the office does not believe that it is constitutional for the state to provide districts less than lawmakers have determined that it takes to provide an adequate education.. However, both the House Speaker and the Senate President have intervened in the case to defend the cap statute. Senate President Chuck Morse stated that “Any law the Legislature passes and votes on should be defended.”
In September, 2016,Judge Brian T. Tucker upheld the district’s claims in City of Dover v. State . The decision may mean an immediate extra $1.4 million for Dover, and a potential boost for other communities with caps on the amount of “adequacy funding” they receive.
The Court held that placing a cap on the amount of increase that a school district may receive in a particular year is unconstitutional because:
Curbing the amount of the grant deprives Dover of the full amount of what the legislature deemed necessary to sufficiently fund the opportunity for an adequate education in Dover...When this occurs, the school district is left short of funds to pay the cost of an adequate education and either must make do with the amount of state aid allotted or make up the shortfall on its own. Either outcome violates Part II, Article 83, because the state ‘has the exclusive obligation to fund a constitutionally adequate education’ and may not shift any of this constitutional responsibility to local communities….
The Court issued a permanent injunction against any future withholdings, although it denied the district’s claim to recoup funds withheld since 2009.
ConVal Sch. Dist. v. State
Alleging that the state’s $3,636.06 base cost per pupil in its state aid formula if correctly calculated would amount to $10,843.60, the ConVal school district and three other New Hampshire school districts, in March, 2019 filed complaints in Cheshire County Superior Court challenging the methodology the state uses in calculating the base per pupil amount and requesting higher payments for the current school year and future years.
In June, 2019, Cheshire County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff held that the New Hampshire’s current per-pupil funding levels are “unconstitutional as applied to the Petitioning school districts,” and that the state legislature must re-analyze the actual cost of providing New Hampshire students an adequate education. Contoocook Valley School District [ConVal]v. State..
The New Hampshire Supreme Court had previously ruled that New Hampshire students have a constitutional right to a State-funded adequate public education. Londonderry Sch. Dist. v. State, (2006); Claremont Sch. Dist. v. Governor (1993). In the present case, the court rejected the State’s argument that students in the petitioning school districts are, in fact, receiving an adequate education because local taxes are adequately supplementing state funding. Judge Ruoff emphasized that “The fundamental right articulated in Claremont II encompasses more than simply receiving an education that meets the definition of adequate education; it is a right to a State-funded adequate education.”
The current base adequacy amount was established by a report of a Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Costing an Adequate Education in 2008; inflationary adjustments to their findings have been made since that time. Petitioners challenged the Committee’s determinations in regard to actual costs for transportation, facilities, teacher pupil ratios, teacher benefits, nurses, superintendent services, and food services.
After analyzing the process the Joint Committee utilized to make its cost determinations, the court held that “the Joint Committee’s costing of an “adequate education” did not comport with the State’s definition of an “adequate education,” and that it was inconsistent with Board of Education regulations and sound judgment. In particular, the court held that the State was unconstitutionally failing to fully fund transportation costs for all students, unconstitutionally failing to fully fund facilities costs and unconstitutionally failing to fund the costs of teachers at proper teacher-student ratios. In doing so, it rejected the state’s motion to dismiss the case and granted, in part, the Petitioner’s motion for summary judgment by invalidating the core cost analysis statute. The Court declined, however, to determine itself the cost of an adequate education and left that task for further legislative action.
In March, 2021, the New Hampshire Supreme Court reversed judge Ruoff’s decision and remanded the case to the Superior Court for trial. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision held that the lower court had relied on "legislative history," rather than the actual text of the relevant state statute, and that the judge failed to take into account other information that the Legislature may have considered in determining the actual appropriations for these districts.
The Court further held, however, that the plaintiffs had a right to a full evidentiary hearing on their general claim that the actual amounts determined by the legislature have failed to meet its obligation to fully fund an adequate education as required by Part II, Article 83, of the New Hampshire Constitution. Accordingly, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with the high court's ruling.
A trial was held in May, 2023 and in November, 2023, Judge Ruoff issued an extensive decision that carefully considered in detail actual school district expenditures and the justifications for them. Rejecting the state’s calculation of a base adequacy rate for 2023-2024 of $4100 per student, the Court determined that the base adequacy aid rate should be at least almost double that amount:
What is the base cost to provide the opportunity for an adequate education 239 years after that fundamental right was ratified in our Constitution? The short answer is that the Legislature should have the final word, but the base adequacy cost can be no less than $7356.01 per pupil per year, and the true cost is likely much higher than that. At a minimum, this is an increase of $537,550,970.95 in base adequacy aid to New Hampshire Schools.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court rejected many of the assumptions that the state had used in calculating the base adequate amount, like the use of first year teacher salary rates rather than average teacher salary figures and a teacher/student ratio based on theoretical maximum class sizes rather than actual average class sizes. Judge Ruoff also determined that it was reasonable for school districts to include health insurance and other employee benefits in their fringe benefit calculations, and for all schools to provide students the services of a school nurse and that reasonable costs for facilities and transportation should be considered part of an adequate education. In sum, Judge Ruoff stated that the evidence established that no school could provide the opportunity for an adequate education if it had to rely solely on the state’s $4100 base adequacy aid figure. The state appealed Judge Ruoff's decision to the New Hampshire Supreme Court and that court has stayed the implementation of the trial court's decision pending its ruling.
Rand v. State of New Hampshire
At the end of June, 2022, taxpayers in several low property wealth New Hampshire school districts filed a complaint in the state superior court, Grafton County, alleging that the current state system for funding public education violates the state constitution and prior decisions of the State Supreme Court.
In 1997, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held in Claremont v. State that the state had an obligation under the state constitution to fund an adequate public education and that “To the extent the State relies upon property taxes to fund a constitutionally adequate public education, the tax must be administered in a manner that is equal in valuation and uniform in rate throughout the State.”
Plaintiffs in the current case claim that the state legislature has determined for these constitutional purposes that the average cost of an “adequate” education in New Hampshire currently is approximately $3750 per student, even though the state education department’s figures show that on average, the actual expenditure per pupil in the state is about five times that amount. Because the state property tax that is supposed to cover the cost of an "adequate education” is geared to this artificially low adequate cost figure, plaintiffs claims that he vast majority of actual education costs are borne by local property taxes and that “[b]y primarily relying on local property taxes with hugely disproportionate rates because of greatly varying property wealth, the State violates [the uniform rate] precept of Part II, Article 5 of the New Hampshire Constitution.
Plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction requiring the state to revise its cost determinations and to discontinue its reliance on local property taxes to meet the State’s constitutional responsibilities.
In late November, 2023, on the same day that he issued his ruling in the Con Val case, Cheshire County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff issued an order granting the Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment in this case. The Court ruled that the state’s current system of allowing wealthy school districts to retain local tax receipts for a statewide education tax that exceed the amounts needed to meet their adequate education funding requirements, in effect, lowers the effective tax rates paid by taxpayers in these communities; this impermissibly results in a violation of Part II, Article 5 of the state constitution.
Judge Ruoff ordered that commencing with the next budget cycle in 2024, the State is enjoined from permitting communities to retain excess school tax funds or offsetting the equalized tax rate via negative local tax rates, and that any school tax funds generated by a community which exceed the amount of adequacy aid to which that community is statutorily entitled must be remitted to the state to be used for supporting adequacy funding.
The state has appealed this ruling to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.