Making School Funding Fair (and why it's not yet) with Zack Sheehan

If the state says you have to do something that costs $20,000, but the state only gives you $5,000...is that, well, adequate?

Liz asks Zack if school funding is fair in New Hampshire and Zack reminds everyone that renters are also impacted by property taxes.

Have an idea for the show? Email Liz: newhampshirehasissues@gmail.com

Become a supporter of the show

Links:

• New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project's website
• Zack's testimony about the state budget to the NH House Finance Committee
• HB 283 public hearing audio
• School funding, and lots more, still on the table at midpoint of NH Legislature's year (NHPR)
• School Funding Study (Carsey School of Public Policy)
• Adequate: How a State Decides the Value of Public Education (NHPR)
• Public Schools should have the resources they need (Reaching Higher NH)

Transcript

Zack  

I can't talk about school funding New Hampshire without talking about property taxes. And depending on the audience, depending on how nerdy I'm getting, I start talking about taxes, and you know, people's eyes glaze over. I get really into it.

Liz Canada 

The mere fact that you've said taxes means that I have to mark this episode as explicit. So thank you for that for New Hampshire. New Hampshire explicit,

welcome to New Hampshire has issues the podcast that dares to ask, should we have schools at all about that? Zack, what do you think? What would yours be?

Zack

What would be my tagline?

I mean, from my perspective, like the podcast that dares to ask, didn't we have figured this out by now?

Liz Canada   

Oh, that's a good one. Yes, the podcast that asks, shouldn't we have already figured this out, all right. Well, I am your host, Liz Canada, and I'm joined today with Zack Sheehan, the executive director the New Hampshire School funding fairness project. Welcome Zack, thank you for being here.

Zack  

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on excited to be here. I'm so

Liz Canada   

glad that you're here to talk about this,I'm a little bit out of touch with what is going on in terms of school funding and education in New Hampshire, except that we have the boys who are in middle school, so I am in very aware of the Middle School boy chaos. Zack, do you have any familiarity with middle school boy chaos? 

Zack  

I am a boy, and I was in middle school once, so I have a little bit of familiarity with that. And it, I, yeah, it's, it's chaos. That's a good way to put it

Liz Canada  

first hand experience. Okay, what advice would you give to me, the parent of middle school boys, what's, what's your biggest piece of advice from your first hand lived experience having been in middle school?

Zack   

Wow, no one has ever asked me that before.

Liz Canada   

I need to know. It's very hard to parent middle schoolers.

Zack  

Yeah. I mean, for me personally, was a helpful thing to just be doing stuff all the time. I was very active and so just tactile, moving around, trying things out, not taking things too seriously, but just kind of seeing what works, seeing what fit, and everything's awkward. 

Liz Canada 

Everything is so, so awkward. That is so true. They have, you know, all of their macho, cool guy, I'm super strong and super tall vibes. And then sometimes they're like, can you make me my breakfast, pouring in the cereal in the bowl and the milk? And I'm like, strong guy, big guy, but that's how it is. Sometimes they're, they're in that in between phase, right? So all that to say, I have some familiarity still with schools, but I feel like you have a lot that you can teach me about. What the heck is going on in New Hampshire right now? Can you tell me a little bit about the New Hampshire School funding fairness project? What is it that you all do?

Zack  

Yeah, so New Hampshire School funding fairness project. We've been around for about five years we kind of have a few main buckets. So one is educating people about school funding and property taxes. So we travel around the state, giving presentations and speaking on panels at different professional development, you know, seminars and opportunities that other organizations host, we have developed a school funding simulation exercise that we bring into into classrooms, actually, like civics classes, economics classes and and play it with students to kind of give them hands on experience on you write a school budget. Why is it feel unfair? Why do some people have different amounts of money so, kind of, like, a whole bunch of educational opportunities and programs we run to help people learn the basics of this, but then, kind of like, dig into, what does that mean? How do I feel about that? And then the kind of other side of that is, you know, the advocacy piece of it. So if I do my job well, right? Someone is like, Okay, I don't like that. I'd like the system to change. How do I do that? And so part of that is giving people a bunch of opportunities to connect with their legislators, to connect with local elected officials, to connect with each other, whether that's, you know, writing an email, attending a hearing to testify, writing a letter to the editor, you know. So it's kind of how to engage with folks in positions of power, and we kind of help support people, people doing that. 

Liz Canada   

So let's start with a really simple question, is school funding Fair in New Hampshire? 

Zack  

Yeah, I mean, it should be a simple question, right? And I think you

Liz Canada  

tricked me there. It's like, yeah, okay, it is there. Okay, you tricked me there. And I think that, you know

Zack  

this, this is something that I kind of, more I've been doing this work, the more I learned that it's not a simple question, right? And I think it really gets back to What do you mean by fair, right? So I think when I think of the word fair, I mean that, you know, most kids in most places in New Hampshire have access to a really good education, really good public education New Hampshire. That's not really true, right? We have some of the best schools in the country, some best public schools in the country, on average, we have really good public schools. We fund them really well. But kind of the butt there to that around the fairness is that the some kids really don't have access to good schools. You know, it's referred to as the zip code lottery, depending on where you're born, which can't really choose where you're born, you can have access to pretty different school systems. And sometimes, you know, five miles away, it's a much better school, largely based just on geography. So the the short answer is, my opinion, no, it's not. It's not fair in New Hampshire, and it really doesn't take into account kind of differences we have in our state, which, you know, town to town, pretty big differences across the state. Even though we're a small state,

Liz Canada  

we're five miles away from another school that is radically different. Why are they so radically different between one another?

Zack   

The main reason is that we rely really heavily on local property taxes in New Hampshire. And so, you know the school funding fairness project, like, the reason that we exist, and the reason that we kind of run these issues, is because you can't talk about school funding in New Hampshire without talking about property taxes. And depending on the audience, depending on how nerdy I'm getting, I start talking about taxes, and, you know, people's eyes glaze over. I get really into it. It's going to get heated. It's going to get really scary for anyone fall in politics. Main reason is that when you rely on one funding source too much, right? It's really volatile. So in New Hampshire, 70% of all of our school funding for public schools comes from local property taxes. For reference, that is way more than any other state in the country in terms of how heavily rely on that one funding stream, 70%

Liz Canada  

so 70% Yeah, of our schools funding comes from global property taxes, right? Billy, oh, boy, yep. Okay, right, right.

Zack   

And you know, if you rent, you pay prop tax.

Liz Canada   

Oh, my God. Zack, I'm so glad you are saying this,

Zack   

just to be clear, right? Because the landlord is not out of the kindness of their heart picking up the property tax bill. They are passing that along to you just like any l expense. You know, that's not a knock on landlords, right? They're running a business, but just property taxes 100% impact rent. Everyone pays them. If you live in New Hampshire, if you pay for housing.

Liz Canada    

I can't emphasize enough how glad I am that you are saying these things out loud, because I have heard so many times from folks say, well, property taxes like, that's a lot of people's problem, but I'm a renter, it doesn't bother me. And I'm like, no, why do you think your rent is going up? So I'm really glad that you're saying this in that way. Yeah,

Zack    

you can track it pretty clearly. So anyone, if you pay for housing in New Hampshire, impacts you. But the point here is that, since you rely so heavily on property taxes, then relative property wealth of a community has a really big impact on your schools. So for example, I have to talk about is like a bank account. So think about, you know, up in the in the lakes region, Ossipee and Wolfboro, or they're right next to each other.

Liz Canada   

Okay, I'm terrible at geography. I will follow you as much as I can, right?

Zack    

So it's like, middle of the state, okay, Lakes Region. Got it, Lake winnipesaukee, 

Liz Canada

where the lakes are, Yep, got it, 

Zack 

Yeah, where lakes are. Wolfboro is, like, kind of the most, one of the most iconic, you know, Lake towns in the northeast, definitely in New Hampshire, yeah. And so, like, Wolfboro has a lot of property. A lot of the town is right on Winnipesaukee, and few the surrounding lakes as well. And so those houses cost a lot more, right? They're more desirable homes. You get homes, they're up in the many millions of dollars. So they have a much bigger bank account to draw from recipe, which is the next town over, right? So, you know, house in Ossipee, house in Wolfboro, they could be two miles apart. Ossipee doesn't have that amount of Lakeside lakefront property, so in general, their homes are just not as worth as much, not as many people want to buy homes in Ossipee as they do near the lake in Wolfboro. So Ossipee has a much smaller bank account, so 70% of the funding comes from that same revalue. Broach has a much easier time raising that money, and the impact is pretty significant. I mean, the tax rates in Wolfboro. Now I'm talking tax rates, not property tax bills, but you know, the tax rates generate a lot more money in Wolfboro, and the same tax rate two miles away in Ossipee doesn't generate nearly as much. Another way to think about it is, Wolfboro has, like, you know, a bank account, and their interest rate is 10% right? They get a really good return. ESPYS is a half a percent. So you have the same money sitting in there doing a lot more work in Wolfboro, a lot less effort than an Ossipee. They're, you know, same amount of money, not generating as much wealth. 

Liz Canada   

New Hampshire relies so heavily on property taxes for funding schools. We hear that other states don't rely so heavily. Why do we why is that the mechanism that we rely so heavily on fund our public schools?

Zack  

There's a number of answers to that kind of the largest elephant in the room, if you will, is because we don't have income or sales tax in New Hampshire. And since we don't have a broad based sales or income tax in New Hampshire, which a lot of other states rely on as kind of a large revenue source, the property taxes, you know, property values are the next largest source of revenue rely on. The other side of that answer is that. So we've talked about kind of how much funding comes from local property taxes. Property taxes. The state of New Hampshire, relative to state supporting our public schools, only kicks in about 20% of all the revenue for our schools, which is the smallest share by a long shot in the entire country. The next state is well over 30% at the bottom of the list. So we

Liz Canada   

rely the most heavily on property taxes compared to every other state. And our state at large, contributes Least amount comparatively to other states. Yep. All right, that's a whole lot of Yikes, right there. Two, two big yikes right there, yep, and

Zack  

two big like, you know, the highest on one end and the lowest on the other that you don't

Liz Canada   

not a great combination with those two things, no.

Zack   

And so by having so little support from the state, local communities oftentimes are left up. Property taxes, the only revenue source they have, right? So need to, and they want to just, I want to make that distinction. Local communities need to fund their schools. They also repeatedly choose to invest in their schools. Nobody think about this is the state's giving so little support, and across the state, many communities, over the decades, people are showing up in saying, I will raise my own taxes in order to support my public schools, even if I don't have kids in the schools, because I think it's really important. Despite the lack of funding from the state. And so the lack of a broad based sales or income tax definitely exacerbates that. And in this state, we have a history, especially in the past 10 years or so, of frankly, cutting taxes pretty willy nilly for some of the folks who have the largest accumulation of wealth, some of the largest companies in this state. You know, your Walmarts, Amazons, these large international corporations have been getting a lot of tax breaks, so we're losing revenue that then kind of the reliance on local property taxes. 

Liz Canada  

Let's add to the Yikes. You've got highest reliance on property taxes compared to all states. You have the lowest contribution from the state to the local communities for their schools, and over the last few years, our state has cut the taxes for the large corporations, businesses that are the wealthiest in the state, which cuts off revenue for our state as well triple Yikes. Zack, you're bringing me all terrible news, all very, very bad, but I guess

Zack  

that's outlining. 

Liz Canada  

You just gave me three. I thought we were only covering one, but here we are. We've got three major yikes issues right there. Okay, some folks would push back and say, Well, should people who don't have children in schools have to pay for the schools themselves? Like, why should community members who do not have children in the public schools contribute towards public schools?

Zack  

It's something we we hear a lot. Despite the fact that we're an aging state, you know, we're getting a lot older. We have fewer and fewer students in this state. That means fewer and fewer taxpayers, kids actively in schools. There's still, like, huge support for our public schools. So while this is a sentiment that comes across, it oftentimes in the context of like, I, I've I like, I want to support our schools, but I'm struggling with my property taxes. I need relief. I'm caught in this kind of impossible situation. I should folks who don't have kids actively in public schools. For them, you know, public schools are the great equalizer, right? We had access to that, right, and our parents were paying for our schools while we were in schools, right? But the parents before them, right? Were paying, you know, people are paying to make sure that there was a school to go to, that there were teachers who had been there for a long time, who had built up a good curriculum, who had built up a good culture in the school. It's a, you know, just like other governmental structures and systems that are supported by taxes, right, there's, there's a lot of positive ripple effects of having strong public schools. It's critical that kids have access to really good education in the schools, but like extend well beyond the wall. I mean, think of the community events that are sponsored in schools, the sporting events that bring the community together. People often vote there. There's tons of services provided the schools, not just for the students. So it's kind of a community, well being element of a school, too. So from a kind of pocketbook perspective, I haven't used the word pocketbook in a while, but

Liz Canada  

throwback. I love it. I love it. My mom used to call it a pocketbook. I realized that that's not what everybody called that's great. 

Zack   

Or from a wallet perspective, if you want to be in this decade, schools also already have a huge impact on property values, even if you don't have kids in the public schools. Having strong schools is a I mean, this is across the board, strong schools help drive up and maintain the value of homes. So if you own a home and you live in a community, you want your public school being well, to be well regarded, to be well rated, to be maintaining teachers performing well for all those reasons. And you know, the kids that are going through our public school system are going to be your employers in five or 10 years. If you own a business, they're going to be running the stores that you go to. They're going to be the ones, you know, running for your local city council seat in 10 years, right? And then, like driving on economic development and other things that you might care about, preserving the park in your local community, and they're able to do that if they have access to a good education, and also then stay in the state. I think those things are intrinsically but something else I like to say is, you know, relative to the different education settings that students have, you know, town to town. And a lot of times we get this New Hampshire, where I might be talking to a community that's right in the middle of the road, Concord, for example, where I live, solid School District, pretty, pretty average incumbent for the state, pretty average property value. So we're kind of like, we're doing okay in the grand scheme of things, not super high, not super low, but it's beneficial to us that all of the surrounding communities have really good public schools too. Because guess what? Kids in Pittsfield, right, come and work in Concord is in Dover or the seacoast might work in Portsmouth too. So it's a small state, so that would benefit all of us to have kids have access to whatever career path, whatever schools they want to go to. So hopefully we'll stay here. It

Liz Canada  

seems like such a simple goal of like, wanting to have great public schools so that students learn the things they need to learn, build, you know, strong relationships and friendships and get to try out for teams that maybe they haven't been able to do because, you know, maybe the community doesn't offer it for like a rec league, but the school will have, I want students even when, you know, I didn't have before I had kids, or, you know, when the boys are graduates and so forth. I want the students who graduate from our schools to be the best they could possibly be, and want to feel great about the town they grew up in, and want to hang out around here, or move back, or whatever that's going to look like. I want them all to feel that way 

Zack  

Exactly, and that's different for different kids, right? That's why it's so important to have a ton of options, right? For one student, that might mean access to 10 classes. For another, access to sports teams, right? Or arts programs, theater programs, or a Career Technical Center, where they can, you know, do metalworking and go into the auto shop. I went to a school that had a farm on the campus the public, wow, right? So they have a veterinarian program. That's so cool. It's like having access to, like, all these different paths, because kids are have a million different interests and strengths and things that keep them passionate. That's

Liz Canada  19:45  

great, and that's great that programs exist and that we want more communities to have more options like that, and that takes the investment and take some work, right? Why isn't our state contribute more. New Hampshire is an aging state. We should want to keep young people here, so that they have their families here, so that we can have more people. Why doesn't the state of New Hampshire contribute more towards the public schools in various communities? That is, that's a deep sigh You just gave you, that's a big sigh.

Zack  

You know, you're going to get a lot of different answers depending on different people that you ask. One is kind of, you know, in general, a smaller, more limited government. And despite the fact that we have a huge, literal government in 400 house reps so many, there's a, there is a New Hampshire kind of a, there's a lot to keep track of but like, there's a frugalness, kind of libertarian esque mindset, just in general our government, I think that has a piece of it. There's also this fierce, fierce dedication to not talking about sales or income taxes, and, again, reducing revenues from the state. So that kind of combination of factors results in education becoming almost just another line item in the budget that we just don't have enough money to invest in, which includes a lot of other really critical programs outside the space of education. And so I think that creates that. And then the one more kind of compounding factor is that we have really good public schools, New Hampshire on average. We have really good test scores on average. We have really good schools, programs, teachers, right on average. So it looks like, from the outside to a degree, that we're already spending plenty of money on our schools. Why would we need to spend more that one level deeper than you're saying we're spending money on schools. Is local property taxpayers. It's not the state. So, right? You

Liz Canada 

know the who's the we in that sentence, the way, is the local property tax, or renters? And the renters? Yes,

Zack   

I don't think that a lot of legislators and lawmakers over the years, right? Because it's been going on for decades. Don't think a lot of them looking at schools and saying they are not important, we're not going to fund them. Some do. That's definitely picked up in recent years. But I think larger it's that kind of like swirling context of like, we don't spend money on programs, we don't like to raise revenue, we don't want to talk about tax reform, and schools, on average, seem like they're doing okay.

Liz Canada  

What would fairness across the state really look like? Yeah, I

Zack 

think you know two main things, and this is where we just always talk about CO funding piece and the tax piece, right? So what would be fair is if every kid actually had access to adequate education, and that's a term we haven't talked about yet. But the the adequate education is this term from the Supreme Court rulings in the 90s, which to date, are some of the strongest Supreme Court rulings in the country about public education and the state's role in public education. I learned that recently, and I was quite surprised by it, but from a legal perspective,

Liz Canada  

I can't wait to pick apart the quit, which is like, my favorite thing to talk about, but we'll get to that in a second. Okay,

Zack   

so from a fairness perspective, what would look what would be fair is from the state to take into account different districts and different students need to succeed. And we know what that is spent. We've spent tons of money, tons of time in the state and around the country, researching, running analysis about what types of students need additional supports. What those supports are. We know there's incredible return on investment in terms of getting supports to students earlier. We know that sports increased participation. We know all of this stuff about what types of programs schools need, so looking at what schools are struggling getting them more resources to provide those resources that we know has that positive loop. Flip side of that also is from the tax perspective, from a fairness pieces, making sure who is paying for that, people that can afford to pay, that you can do that in a whole host of ways. You could do, you know, tax exemptions across the state for you know, for example, if your house is valued under $500,000 then you get a pretty big tax break on your property. Tax bill. Houses over $500,000 you don't get that tax break. You pick up a little more of the share you can have come play a role in that. If you bake under X amount, you get a tax break. So like both and it's making sure resources are taking into account what students and schools need to succeed, and then who is paying is also taking into account who can afford to pay.

Liz Canada  

Can we dig into the word adequate for a moment? Yeah. What does adequate education mean? Like feel such a low bar? Well, you just have to do these basic things. What does what mean in the in the school funding New Hampshire universe. 

Zack 

Yeah, so the word adequate comes from a New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling from the 90s. So there are these two rulings in the 90s called the Claremont lawsuits and super, super like elevator pitch, history of that bunch of school districts in the late 80s, right? It was actually Claremont High School. Stevens High School was at risk of losing their accreditation, and they were like, We cannot support school on our own as property taxpayers, the state should be kicking in more as a state responsibility, so they sue the state, saying you're not providing enough funding. Help us meet this obligation to provide this public education. the Supreme Court said, You know what? You're right, the state has this constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education for every K through 12 students. That's where this word came from, and they went on to say, but just be clear when we're saying adequate in this context, what we mean is really more than just reading writing and arithmetic. That's the quote from the lawsuit. So more than just reading writing and math. What we mean by adequate is whatever a student needs to thrive, whatever world they're graduating into. This is where they're writing this in the mid 90s, so where they're saying at the turn of the turn of the century, adequate can mean something different than in 2010,

Liz Canada   

than in 20. Get ready for Y, 2k, that's what you start thinking about. 

Zack 

Exactly they said like we don't know what students will need in 30 years to thrive in whatever path in life, but whatever that is that they need, that's what we mean by adequate. So it's really, like, super future oriented, very expansive. It was not they really should have picked a better word is, I guess, the punchline, right?

Liz Canada  

It's just comical. That's just adequate for the future where ever changing, it's going to change the worlds that they're growing up in, the communities that they're going to go live in, the jobs that are going to be part of their reality for when they're done with high school like that, will all change, and it continues to change, definitely, right?

Zack 

So really, like they said, we were going to pick this word adequate, but then we don't actually mean the definition adequate. We're going to give you a different definition. I mean, I think it's like, you know, it's excellent and expansive education, right? Is really the heart of what they meant by by adequate.

Liz Canada  

It's okay. It's what they chose. And we still talk about it in the future here, in 2025 after they they ruled this so long ago, is there a magic number that would say this the amount that would be for an adequate education if you give this much money, if you support your schools with this much money in your district, hooray, you've provided an adequate education. Is there a magic number?

Zack  

I don't think there is. And in part that goes back to kind of the earlier question about like, what does fairness look like? Is there's a it's a different amount for different students in different communities, because we have to take into account where people are at right now, kids come into schools with different levels, you know, needing support structures at home. We know the income of parents has a huge impact on where students show up to school, so like taking all that into account. So some students need more services that cost more money, right? Some students don't need as many services. And so there is a pretty good range, but we also know that. We know what that ranges, right? And so we know the factors that require more funding that will help those students achieve at the same level as their peers and have the same opportunity. There's, you know, another, another answer says there's two court cases pending right now. Right one is the ConVal lawsuit brought by Contoocook Valley School District and 20 think other school districts saying we're not sure what adequate is, but the bare minimum is $10,000 per student. Now the state provides between five and $6,000 on average, so they're saying bare minimum is 10 and that case has been going on for five and a half years, and we're waiting for Supreme Court ruling. There's another lawsuit that's saying we think the minimum is closer to what the average school does is which is $20,000.

Zack    

The bare minimum is 10, and that case has been going on for waiting for a Supreme Court ruling. There's another lawsuit that's saying we think the minimum is closer to what the average amount spent by schools is, which is $20,000 per student, taking into account that there's varying levels of need. So there's kind of like two areas of thought there what, what the actual number is, but we also have a lot of data that shows that the dollar you invest in a community invested where there's higher levels of need that has a has a large impact. And so we know, kind of like where to direct that money to have the biggest impact as well.

Liz Canada    

So one of those lawsuits, the school districts are saying, the bare minimum, we think you the state, the state of New Hampshire, should provide so that it doesn't come down on local property taxpayers. The bare minimum should be about $10,000 and you're only giving us about $5,000 Yep. Is that right? Yep. So for anyone out there who's listening, the state of New Hampshire is contributing a very small amount towards your schools. Cannot emphasize it enough,

Zack    

and every single school district in the state is spending at least $15,000 per student. So the state's saying on one hand, Here's your check for $5,000 that is enough for adequacy. You have determined our own formula. Here's your money for adequacy, 5000 bucks per student. Yet every single school district in the state, the most conservative, the most liberal, the rural districts, the districts and cities, is spending at least three times, oftentimes four or five, six times as much. So in essence, the state is saying you all are spending on stuff that's not required, does not need to be provided to provide adequate education. So this kind of like the state's right, or every single school district is right about what it actually costs to run schools

Liz Canada  1:56  

right. Courts have issued these decisions saying state of New Hampshire do better, right? The legislature is responsible to create the mathematical formula provides the which then decides how much money school districts get. And the legislature has not met that where it needs to be, which is why there are still these other laws, more lawsuits happening over and over again. You're giving me a lot of Yikes. Zack, I would say I'd love to hear that. It's good, it's important. It's important. What's the likelihood those things change? It's been decades of these court cases from New Hampshire. Why hasn't it changed yet?

Zack    

It's not fixed yet because politics,

Liz Canada    

Plot twist didn't see politics getting any play in this school funding conversation.

Zack    

No. But seriously, it's there's this arc right of how systems like this get changed. In the school funding case in New Hampshire, it's lawsuits are brought by districts that think their constitutional rights are being violated in New Hampshire, we have a history of the court saying, Yeah, you know what? You're right. You're about your your constitutional rights are being violated the state, whether because they're taxing unfairly with relative to schools or they're not giving enough money to schools. But we have this separation of powers right different branches of government. The courts say, hey, legislature, you need to go fix it. That's your job. You're the body that writes laws, that raises money, that directs spending. The legislature largely has been saying, Thanks, we're not going to do that in a serious way. Come at us. Courts, you can't tell us what to do. I'm oversimplifying, but the history has shown that that has been the ebb and flow court ruling, such as saying, we'll do a little bit here, but we're more concerned about our election next year, or we're more concerned about this issue. Instead, we're going to direct funding there. So the kind of like, well, what needs to change? Or like, what's that missing piece is, is people getting involved? Is civic engagement? Is legislators feeling like they need to take this issue seriously? So then they actually show up to the table and say, Oh man, this is a really complicated issue. Do I think fair looks like? What do I think adequate education looks like? What do I think success looks like? How do I protect the property taxpayers in my community, while also making sure that kids have access to an excellent education? But they don't feel motivated to show up? Then, like, honest and curious attitude about how to fix this problem, then they just won't. So the kind of missing element there is making sure that they feel pressured or supported, or somewhere in between that spectrum, to take this issue seriously. And you know the that that will have factorial impacts, and that this is the issue that people in the community like are educated on and really care about and want to hold them accountable

Liz Canada    

for school budgets that happen in school districts, right? Like we have our elementary schools, we have our middle school and high school, or, you know, are part of their own sort of school district here, right? We hear talk about like we're going to vote on the school budget, and the budget is going to be this amount of money, and we have to go to the we have to vote and approve the budget. Think a lot of people might wonder, what the heck is in a school budget? Like, is it just teacher salaries? Like, is that what we are paying for? What is actually in school budget?

Zack    

That's a good question. Short, everything you need to run the school, your salaries pick up a good portion of that, just like any you know, most places, salaries are a large portion of your budget. But you're also looking at bond payments if you've built a new school in the past 2030, years, right? Or like, if you're going to build new school, health insurance, transportation, contracting out services that you might not have the staff for. Sometimes that can be special education services or health related services, maintaining your sports fields, you know, paying, you know, other coaches and kind of outside staff relative to the other infrastructure around schools. So kind of like everything in anything, your utility bills, right, your heat, your electricity, make sure HVAC, speed, textbooks, Chromebooks, right, all of the things you need to run the school isn't captured in that in that school budget,

Liz Canada   

you mentioned the Chromebooks. the boys have their individual Chromebooks for school, and I watch how one of them grabs it, puts it down on the table. And I was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, you got to be careful with that Chromebook. So I imagine, like, that line item probably also has to be adjust, not adjusted. But like you think about not just buying all the Chromebooks, but also repairs of things, right, needing new materials. You know, textbooks become outdated. All of that affects the overall school budget in the district that I live in, because we do have the Chromebooks for every student, which is a terrifying experience to watch as a parent

Zack   

as they take another backpack, absolutely. And, you know, 10 years ago, maybe some districts had Chromebooks. Now, maybe more do. But, you know, and then, like, upgrades to your IT system, you're seeing more instances of school districts being targeted by cyber attacks and ransomware. We've had that happen New Hampshire and around the country. So like now, you have to buy a whole software package or contract out with a with an IT firm To upgrade your security. So it's like every little thing you need to run an institution is, is in that school budget,

Liz Canada   

there have been some towns that have voted to reduce their budget, right? What happens when a community cuts a school budget from what's being proposed by the school board? 

Zack    

What happens when people maybe show up at a town meeting day, this happened in March and say, I see the 10 million budget, I'm going to make a motion to make it $9 million we see with that happen a lot is that oftentimes it's coming from a place of frustration, relative to people feeling like they can't afford their taxes, right, right? But we've also seen more the past few years is that state level lawmakers are telling people explicitly, their school districts are just wasting a lot of money. There's plenty of room to cut. They're kind of coming up with these intentionally bloated budgets, so therefore you need to go to your town meeting and cut them, and then, you know, they'll just cut this, this fluff that they have in there. I'm oversimplifying, but no,

Liz Canada  

I'm pretty sure they've said those exact words. I'm pretty sure we can run the tape and say, then say those things,

Zack    

yeah, yeah. Repeatedly said, you know, if you're upset about your school, about your property taxes, we can't do anything at the state level. That's a local decision. You need to go cut your local school board, your local school budget. So we've seen kind of more folks being told this. People the local level say, Hey, I'm hearing all this stuff like my school board's wasting money. I'm going to go organize some people show up to town meeting day and cut our budget. We saw this happen in Merrimack Valley, right right near where I live, in Concord. We're successful in cutting their budget. Now the school board and the administration need to go back and rewrite their budget with this amount. Now they're the ones. Have to figure out where are we going to find that money? What we've also seen is that the people pushing these cuts have no idea impact that that will have. Literally, they're quoted saying, Yeah, they just, they just need to cut all the administrative stuff we don't need. No, they don't make specifics. They don't understand what it is. They're not saying cut this program. And so in May rack Valley and the Jeffrey Ridge school district and a few others Manchester has been exploring this. Things we start seeing that are that are looked at, need to be cut, are the things that people don't want. It's sports. Oh my god, it's charging parents to for their kids to participate in sports. All three of those districts I just mentioned are considering that they might not move forward with it, but they're saying it's a line item that we not legally required. It's not required by state standards or laws. Obviously, everyone, most people, like their sports teams, but we're going to have to cut there. It's looking at cutting teachers right a lot of times. How you eliminate teaching positions. You eliminate critical staff. It's cutting funding for after school programs. It's cutting your arts, your theater, your music, right? Those are all of those in all the categories are required areas. It's cutting AP classes. If you have a teacher that's teaching just AP classes that's not required by state law, right? So it's cutting these things that people don't really realize is going to be the impact of reducing the budget,

Liz Canada    

urging families to participate in sports at their schools just puts more on the parents who are like, yep, gotta feed these two boys already. They're giants. They eat everything in sight. And so like adding more costs to families. Go like, that's really, that's really rough. This gets back to wanting a community to have strong schools, so people want to move to your community so that you can have a thriving community, right? So the sports programs, the arts programs, the AP programs, all of that makes your town and school district attractive, like people would want to go there, and when you start cutting them, right, that's not to have a great impact, I imagine, on those communities.

Zack    

No, I mean, just whoever's listening, even if you don't have kids in the school, think about the type of school you'd want to go to or the thing they think back of, like, what, what positive pieces of your school you enjoy? Right? For some of you that might touch some of those elements, but like, it's hard to think that you would would have had a better experience if we start cutting some of these pieces.

Liz Canada    

Well, those cuts were sort of proposed differently at the state level. This year, I remember hearing about a bill. I saw it posted online all over social media. This may shock you. Zack, but there are people in my life who don't follow politics, and so when they talk about something that's happening at the state level, I'm like, oh, like, it's really gotten traction, if you're talking about it with me, some of these folks said, Liz, I saw this online that they're trying to get rid of arts and foreign languages and theater in schools. And there was a huge public outcry

Zack    

to that. That was a specific bill, House Bill 283, that was proposed this year. And the rationale for proposing this bill was in law in New Hampshire, New Hampshire has to pay for an adequate education in the law, means an opportunity to learn this list of stuff, and then they list out a whole bunch of things in the law. It's English, math, science, social studies, and there, you know, there's more nuance in there, civics, Holocaust and genocide studies, it's theater, art, physical education, technology, like a list like 15 areas say how much those costs, by the way, but it says students need to have access to this robust list of courses and curriculum and subject areas. And so this legislator said, Well, I don't think our schools are doing a very good job in reading writing and math, so therefore we must be spending too much time on this other stuff. I think reading writing and math are more important than foreign languages. For example, you literally said this, so we should just cut all those other things so schools Stop messing around with these, these peripheral subjects, and just focus on reading writing and math. 

Liz Canada    

Well, as a former English teacher and as a parent of two middle schoolers, I can tell you, the kids love only reading writing, and they don't want to do anything else. When they're at school, they're like, give me more math and reading and like, Yes, I'm sure that is exactly. I hear that all the time too. That's what the youths want more reading writing was a viral

Zack    

amount of engagement with that particular bill, I mean, off the top. And I think what it was is that people, it was such a simple bill to said, we're just going to cut all this stuff. And people like, Wait, hold on. I like that stuff. And it was very clean. People are busy. Not everyone's involved in politics. No one has time to keep up with this. Yep. You know, very few people are paid to watch these hearings, but you start to just lay out the simple pieces of just going to cut this stuff and be like, wait, wait, that's what makes an education worth having. That's the pieces that get a kid to come to school, go to their art class, and then hopefully they can if they're struggling, then they're also going to attend the class where they're going to get better at reading, math or writing, right? But they're there for the art, there for the sports. And I think that that just is such an obvious thing. When it was said out loud in a clean, clear way, this stuff doesn't matter, or reacted very viscerally to that, and we've seen that all over the state, also, when the cuts have been proposed that would have been devastating to a degree. It breaks through the noise. It breaks through the daily routine of folks lives and like, hold up, hold up for it so important. Language is important. Art and music are important.

Liz Canada   

And so many of them didn't have kids. I'm sure, I'm sure there were a lot of people who were signing in to say, and I say this because some of the folks who were not really into politics who talked to me said, No, I don't have kids, but I remember how much I love those things. Of course, I think kids should have that,

Zack    

right. And also something else I found really encouraging about that was it was both kind of like the frustration or the anger, but also so many people spoke just about the positive impact of public schools, and how these this diverse range of offerings was critical to providing the public school so it was a very like in defense of good schools we have in New Hampshire sentiment also, or the schools are struggling, but have these elements, and These are really critical pieces to have in their schools. And so I found that very kind of heartwarming too, just hearing a bunch of different people's perspective running the gambit of people of directly in schools, also parents of kids in schools, also people who were teachers 30 years ago and were like, here's the impact that these classes had on my students.

Liz Canada   

Is there an easy fix to any of this, like any part of this issue of school funding, fairness, funding in general, budgets, like, is there an easy fix?

Zack    

No, there's not an easy fix. From, like, a policy perspective. Well, I have two answers. It's not easy from a policy perspective. It is incredibly complicated. States that have tried really good things on paper that haven't worked out as well. There are plenty of states that have really good models to follow, right? There's there's plenty of evidence out there of ways we could go about improving how we fund our schools, no, no, no end of answers. But it's complicated, right? And other states won't work in they do might not work in New Hampshire, one to one, right? Right? So it's complicated from a policy perspective. The easy fix part is legislators felt like this was a top priority issue. They would show up to that table and actually figure out how to do it in New Hampshire, which will be

Liz Canada    

complicated, right? The New Hampshire way. We love to talk about how things are done, the New Hampshire way,

Zack   

but they're only going to do that if they feel pressure, feel like their constituents care about this and want them to take this as a top issue. So the easy fix that perspective is ask your legislator what they're doing about school funding and property taxes. You can disagree with things. I've been like you. Does not have to be only ask them if you agree with everything the school funding fairness project stands for, right, and it's right. Are you showing up to town meeting because you're drowning in your property taxes and you've been in the same house for 40 years, and your property value just went up, you know, 100% in the past five years. Bring that perspective. Say I'm drowning. I don't want my schools to suffer. What are you doing like my lawmaker? My legislator, to address this, that's the easy fix is just let them know that this is an issue that you care about and you expect them to take seriously and figure out not easy answer to it

Liz Canada   

was a great way to put it though of like, I'm drowning in property taxes, but I don't want my schools to suffer, just most people. Yeah, what you going to do about it to your state lawmakers? Good way to pose it.

Zack   

And you don't have to have the answers. If you have some ideas, great. Share it with them, right? And Paul's actually in as well, and call me. I'm happy to talk, and always happy to take more ideas, but like expressing that you expect them to take this seriously. It does that does make a difference. It does have an impact. It builds a different environment for people to show up,

actually ready to talk through some of the some of the potential solutions.

Liz Canada   

Lawmakers need to know that this is an issue that folks care about and that they support their public schools. I think you've been making the point throughout this of like, it's not property taxes versus schools. It's like, I love my house, I love my family, I love my neighborhood, and I love my schools. I want all of these things to thrive. Doesn't have to be one thrives and so another suffers. They can all work together at a figure than New Hampshire way. I want them all to thrive. But also, if the state invests in each of those elements, then they continue to thrive. Yep, that's right. So it is a it is a positive cycle, right? They invest in schools that reduces some of the burden of property taxpayers. Right? Your schools are better. Your home value goes up, your community thrives, etc, etc. The state then gets to keep more workers, gets to generate more revenue, like everyone,

Zack   

everyone benefits in these in these scenarios, 

Liz Canada 

what has been sort of the biggest surprises for you now, talk to people about this, like, what? What do folks say? 

Zack   

One of the big takeaways is, pretty much at every presentation we do, of someone ask, okay, well, if the state gives more money, we're going to lose local control, because money, more money always comes with strings attached. Okay, okay, every single presentation event we do, we get that, and it's presented as a challenge, almost, right? Well, you're saying the state should give more money, and then therefore we're going to lose our ability to debate this stuff locally go through our own budgeting process. Hmm, and thing I find so interesting about that, and the answer I generally give is, well, just to be clear, right now, state passes laws every year mandate that you do things at the local level that cost money and they don't pay for it. So they're already saying, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this. You got to do this. We're not going to provide any more funding. That's one piece. Also back to our Wolfboro and Ossipee example, Wolfboro and Ossipee both want to increase their teacher salaries to retain their teachers, right? And they both, the communities both are on board with that something they both prioritize. Both want to raise their teacher salaries by the same amount. For Wolfboro, impact on their property taxes, let's say, is 50 cents per 1000, right? So an increase, but not a massive increase, using the same salaries for the same set of teachers in this scenario, and Ossipee is a $2 increase on their property tax bill. So who actually has the control there and the choice to make that decision, Wolfboro can weigh that with a little more of a logical like, oh, this. This feels good. I think we can do this. Espy might come down to a little more of a can I afford to stay in my house if we pass this right? And so right now, back to who pays. Some people have control. Some communities have more control to have these debates, in these discussions than others. I always find that to be a really interesting question. People think it's more funding equals less control. I would argue, more state funding actually increases control, because now you can maybe have a little more breathing room in your property taxes to then think through, how do we want to invest in our schools? Do we want to offset property taxes? Where's the happy medium? 

Liz Canada 

Zack, thank you so much for taking time to talk about school funding, school fairness. Funding fairness, school funding fairness. Thank you so much, Zack for for coming on and talking with me about this. I really appreciate

Zack   

it. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I'm glad you're doing this podcast. I'm going forward to listening to the other episodes that come out

Liz Canada  

all the issues of New Hampshire

Zack  

I've heard one at a time

Liz Canada  

just a few!