The COVID-19 pandemic has tested institutions across New Hampshire in ways we never would have imagined a year ago, none more so than our public schools.
Students, families, educators, and administrators have had to adapt to constantly changing circumstances and to institute new ways of learning, often with little time and fewer resources. As a Granite State native, a longtime member of the local business community, and the parent of seven public school graduates, I know firsthand the importance of a quality education and am proud of the resilience and dedication our schools and schoolchildren have shown.
Because of that background, I am also, unfortunately, far too familiar with the painful and painfully frequent spending cuts and property tax hikes that have been synonymous with our public school system for decades now. I am deeply concerned that we are about to let that history repeat itself yet again.
Due to the pandemic and changes in law, public schools across the state face a possible loss of $90 million in state education aid in the coming year. In my hometown of Newport, the loss is expected to be about $1.2 million. As a result, we could see a local school property tax rate increase of roughly $3 per $1,000 – or almost $600 for a family with a home worth $200,000. Such an increase could come even though many communities across the state have already cut school spending to the bone.
Sadly, this story is by no means unique. The drop in state aid will likely be felt by families, not just in Newport, Claremont, or Charlestown, but in every corner of the state and could force more than 20 cities and towns to raise local property taxes by $2 per $1,000 or more in the months ahead. Of course, if you’ve followed this issue closely, as I have, it will come as little surprise that most of the communities who face the steepest potential hikes are those already forced to rely on sky-high property tax rates to ensure their children receive the education they need to succeed and to thrive. For instance, since it stands to lose more than $700,000 in education aid and since its assessed property value is so far below the state average on a per pupil basis, Allenstown would need to resort to a local property tax increase of more than $2.30 per $1,000 to make up the difference.
The pandemic has been kind to no one. Families and businesses across the state are making tough choices, as they struggle with fewer hours and smaller paychecks or fewer customers and declining receipts. A further increase in property taxes, even if they were to go to something as vital as education, could prove devastating to households’ budgets and companies’ bottom lines.
Consequently, preventing these kind of property tax increases must be among Gov. Sununu’s and the Legislature’s top priorities in the coming weeks. The surest way to do that is to bolster state education aid, preserving New Hampshire’s recent progress in providing additional assistance to those communities where it is needed most and insulating school finances from the impact of the pandemic. Efforts to reduce business taxes or to drain funds away from public schools via a dramatic expansion of vouchers – two ideas that seem to fixate the governor and his legislative allies at present – would only add to these difficulties. They would turn the stream of funds flowing away from local schools into a torrent and leave local property taxpayers high and dry.
A report conducted for the recent Commission to Study School Funding summed up the problem we face clearly and succinctly. It found that New Hampshire’s school funding system is “inequitable from both student and taxpayer perspectives” and that the “districts serving the highest proportion of students who are economically disadvantaged spend less, on average, compared with districts serving the fewest such students,” while those “districts with the least property wealth per student impose the highest local education tax rates to be able to fund their children’s education.”
To ensure quality schools and affordable property tax bills for everyone in New Hampshire, it’s long past time for our elected officials to find a fair and sustainable solution to this problem. The first step is to keep it from getting worse and to stop yet another round of state-induced local property tax increases.
(Kathy Hubert, a lifelong Granite Stateer and longtime resident of Newport, is one of the former owners of Hubert’s Department Stores. Among her civic and community endeavors, she is a member of the board of directors of the N.H. School Funding Fairness Project.)