On Sept. 21, the Commission to Study School Funding approved the draft report of the expert retained by the University of New Hampshire. The commission responsibility is to determine if school funding is adequate and if the reliance on property taxes is fair and appropriate to satisfy that responsibility.
The expert report satisfied neither goal: school funding adequacy or school funding fairness.
What the report did was match the predetermined agenda of the political interests controlling the financial underpinnings of this state, both Republican and Democratic.
One, the expert report determined that existing funding is adequate. The metric chosen for this is suspect. The expert used student testing but did not explain why this is a relevant metric nor did the expert support this critical opinion with data on who and how many took the test.
Two, the expert uses the property tax as the funding mechanism without detailing the tax impacts on each town.
When will things ever change for homeowners crushed by property taxes?
ARTHUR B. CUNNINGHAM
Hopkinton