Could school building aid be ranked?

New Hampshire has helped pay for public school construction since 1955 without limits on who could get aid, but the rising costs of projects coupled with tight finances could force the state to prioritize who gets money.

The House is to vote early next year on a pair of bills that would create a ranking system similar to one used by Maine to determine which projects get state aid. Senate Education Chairwoman Nancy Stiles, a Hampton Republican, is introducing a similar bill in the Senate.

The bills' goal is to target state aid to communities with the greatest need, something Democratic Gov. John Lynch has been calling for to ease the cost to the state while helping poorer communities renovate and replace schools.

"Establishing criteria is going to help assure school districts that need the money will get it," said state Rep. Gary Richardson, a Hopkinton Democrat.

The ranking system would end the state's current blank-check approach to funding local aid requests. The state would instead choose projects that meet criteria being developed by the Department of Education over the next two years, adds state Rep. Randy Foose, who worked with Richardson and others on one of the House bills.

Criteria would include unsafe conditions; obsolete, inefficient or unsuitable facilities; enrollment shifts; and any other conditions the state thought necessary, which could include whether the community had maintained older buildings partially paid for with state aid. Projects deemed worthy of aid would be ranked.

Critics say denying construction support to all could run afoul of the state's mandated duty to provide a constitutionally adequate education to students.

"You're making the availability of discretionary dollars determine aid, not the need," said Mark Joyce, executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association.

One bill would cap aid at $50 million per year, but most of that money would be used to pay the state's roughly $540 million share of 360 existing projects, said state Rep. Lynne Ober, chairwoman of the special House Committee on Education Funding Reform. That would leave only a few million dollars for new projects over the next few years.

It will take 30 years to pay off the projects already in progress, but as the state pays the debt, more money would become available for new projects, she said.

Under the current construction aid system, the state pays a share each year of the principal borrowed to build or renovate a school and stretches payments over the life of the school bond. The state's share ranges from 30 to 60 percent of the principal.

Under the proposed system, the state would pay its percentage up front so local taxpayers did not have to borrow as much or pay interest on a larger bond. The state's share could change before a final amount is agreed upon, supporters said.

Supporters believe something needs to be put into place before a four-year moratorium on aid for new school construction ends next year.

But Joyce said the proposal is similar to what led to a lawsuit by five poor towns that resulted in landmark state Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s, which required the state to provide all public school children with an adequate education. After the rulings, the state began providing a base amount per pupil to all communities, funded by state taxes and a new state property tax. The school aid distribution formula did not include a factor for school construction because the state already had a building aid program.

Joyce also said the state can't create criteria so narrow that it excludes worthy projects from the list.

"Need needs to be defined broadly. It can't simply be that a school must be a fire trap before it gets any building aid," he said.

State Rep. Rick Ladd, a bill sponsor, acknowledges the list of communities requesting aid will grow if the state does not appropriate enough money to pay for the projects, but insists a ranking system is needed as a first step toward replacing the state's large number of aging school buildings. One funding alternative would be to add money per pupil in the state's general school aid distribution formula, he said. But Ladd worries that rather than set aside the money for construction, schools would spend it. (next page »)