'Donor towns' are part of new education bill

The following article appeared in the Union Leader.


This is socialism, if our legislators cared about the education of our children they would not be pandering to the government school employees. Education tax dollars should follow the child not the institution and education control should be kept at the local level not the state level where educrats only have to go to one source (the legislators) instead of the people of their community to request more dollars to satisfy their greed. Public schools are government schools and just like the government their is massive corruption and waste of our tax dollars.

For another source about this bill visit nhcitizen.org


'Donor towns' are part of new education bill
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Friday, Feb. 29, 2008


CONCORD – A $914 million school funding plan was unveiled Thursday that also would create a new, separate aid program for the poorest towns to mitigate aid losses under the new formula.

The property-poor towns could share another $50 million to $60 million. Details on the distribution are still being worked out, but many would lose aid otherwise, said state Sen. Iris Estabrook, the plan's prime sponsor.

"This is not adequacy aid and will be to the discretion of the Legislature where the rest is not," Senate Majority Leader Joseph Foster, a co-sponsor, said of the new aid program.

Estabrook based the basic school aid plan largely on recommendations by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Costing an Adequate Education that tied funding to education policy, not a community's property wealth as current law does. A hearing on the plan is Tuesday.

Property wealth was left out of the committee's deliberations, but now will become part of the debate over whether the plan does what it is supposed to do - help communities provide an adequate education.

Besides costing poor towns money, the basic distribution formula would require more than three dozen property wealthy communities to send $16 million to the state for redistribution. Wealthy towns have fought just as hard against being "donor" towns over the years as poor towns have fought to get more aid.

The plan is the latest in a long series of attempts to comply with a state Supreme Court mandate. The court has repeatedly ruled that the state must define an adequate education, determine its cost, pay for it and hold school districts accountable for delivering it.

The Legislature defined adequacy last spring and the joint committee worked for months on determining its cost. The committee released its report Feb. 1, but did not come up with a final cost.

Estabrook's plan would distribute $3,450 in base per pupil aid to every town - about $675 million of the $914 million. The rest would be distributed as targeted aid to the poorest schools and for non-English speaking students and those with disabilities.

The plan sets the base per pupil aid amount by using average salaries for teachers, principals, guidance counselors, administrative assistants, library media specialists, technology coordinators and custodians. It assigns a dollar value for each based on class, school or district size. A dollar value also was added for specialty teachers for programs such as art and music.

A dollar value also was added for instructional materials, computers, professional development, facilities and maintenance, and transportation.

It would use a series of thresholds to determine which schools had the highest concentration of poor kids to qualify for additional aid. The aid would be distributed based on the school's total population instead of just extra money for every poor child. The plan provides up to double the base aid amount to schools and basing poverty on the number who sign up for free or reduced price school lunches.

The plan also would distribute $675 per non-English speaking pupil. Schools would get $1,798 in additional aid for disabled students getting extra help but who remain in the classroom. They would get $3,610 more for disabled students taught in self-contained classrooms.

The plan requires that the needy schools spend the extra aid on state-approved services, such as full-day kindergarten, reduced class size or after-school homework help.

The aid plan would not take effect until the 2009-2010 school year.

Another Senate bill would give school districts an extra year before requiring them to offer kindergarten. The Legislature included public kindergarten as a requirement for all schools in the definition of an adequate education. The law gives the 11 districts without kindergarten until September 2008 to offer programs. The bill includes money for temporary classrooms for three years.

The Senate has a March 20 deadline to send bills to the House. If the Senate passes it, the House would have until May 15 to act on it. Lawmakers hope to adjourn on June. 5.

Meanwhile, the Senate last week sent the House a proposed constitutional change that would mean yet another rewrite of the school aid system if voters approved it. The amendment would let the state single out the neediest towns for school aid. Gov. John Lynch has lobbied hard for the amendment.

Lynch and amendment supporters believe the state should send all or most aid to the poorest towns -- which means towns in the middle and upper end of the property wealth spectrum would get little or no money.

"To put in place the best possible education policy, the state must be able to consider the fiscal capacity of communities when distributing state education aid. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has said we cannot do that. The result is a plan like this one, which takes aid from the most needy school districts," Lynch said of Estabrook's plan.In repeated rulings, the court has said the state can't do that. The court said the state must pay for what it determines an adequate education costs. The court also said the state can provide more aid on top of adequacy.Total state aid has remained unchanged for a decade despite rising school costs. The state currently distributes $897 million in aid with the state property tax contributing 40 percent.