New Hampshire state education policies, including its voucher program and school funding formula, received legal pushback this year from teacher unions and taxpayers. At the individual school level, focus on social and emotional learning ramped up in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many schools experienced staffing shortages and difficulty hiring for support staff positions.
In many respects, the year in education was tumultuous and 2023 may shape up to deliver more of the same.
Staffing shortages and hiring difficulties, felt by industries nationwide, visibly impacted New Hampshire schools this year, chiefly for support staff positions like paraeducators and bus drivers. While nearly every school district has noticed hiring difficulties to a certain degree, the smaller, rural and low-income school districts were the hardest hit.
Unlike other industries that saw unprecedented turnover during the pandemic – often called the Great Resignation – New Hampshire school districts were spared from massive waves of teachers quitting. The challenge has been finding enough candidates to fill the positions generated by routine turnover. Burnout and exhaustion since the COVID-19 pandemic has led more teachers to retire early. Increased responsibilities, worsening student behavior issues and short-staffed work environments have been a tipping point for many.
“I remember saying ‘I need a divorce from my job,’” former Hollis English teacher Heidi Foster recalled earlier this year. “Physically, emotionally, psychologically, I cannot keep doing this.”
For many support staff members like paraeducators, who are paid the lowest salaries in the district, the job isn’t financially feasible. And when wealthier school districts offer more competitive salaries and benefits, it draws employees away from the lower-paying districts, leaving gaps in their wake.
It’s a problem that a new legislative study committee, which formed this year, is looking to address. The Committee to Study New Hampshire Teacher Shortages and Recruitment Incentives, comprised of two state senators and three state representatives, began work in August, seeking to learn more about the causes of teacher staffing shortages in New Hampshire and to identify potential retention and recruitment solutions.
“The question is, what is happening out there to make a teacher say ‘I’ve had enough’?” Committee member Rep. Mel Myler said in August.
The Monitor examined the scope of the teacher shortage and retention solutions in New Hampshire as part of its 2022 “Schools Under Stress” series.
Many schools placed renewed emphasis on supporting student mental health and academic growth this year in the aftermath of remote learning. They used federal COVID-19 relief dollars to hire social workers, reading and math interventionists, and launched summer learning programs, prompted by the high levels of academic and social and emotional learning loss observed among students.
A new online dashboard launched by the NH Department of Education in October allows users to track how public schools are spending their federal COVID-19 relief funds that were allocated to districts over the past two years. Spending categories range from staffing to student wellness and social-emotional learning, to technology and food service.
The state also rolled out some programs this year, including a 2022 contract with Tutor.com, a Leaning into Literacy program and a partnership with Prenda, a private organization offering tutoring pods for students.
“On the 2022 assessment, we began to see the results of our recovery efforts, but not yet back to pre-pandemic levels,” Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said in a statement in December. “It is more important now, as it has always been, to support all students so that they can thrive and achieve their aspirations.”
To support student mental health, some student groups like the Franklin High School Robotics Team have also taken on their own advocacy work, raising awareness about student mental health among their peers. Others are pushing for peer-to-peer counseling programs like the Dover Mental Health Initiative, to better support students.
The decades-long debate over New Hampshire’s school funding formula ramped up this year, with a new school funding lawsuit filed in June. The lawsuit, launched by six residents, argues that New Hampshire relies too much on local taxpayers to provide the funding necessary to give students an adequate education, and as a result school funding is not proportional across towns, as required in the 1997 Claremont rulings. The taxpayers asked to immediately block the state from setting the SWEPT rates for the next year, claiming the rates aren’t constitutional, but their request was denied by a judge in December.
Several local plaintiffs, including Penacook residents Jessica Wheeler Russell and Adam Russell and Hopkinton resident Jim Lewis, have spoken about their own high tax rates, and how the financial burden has been driving some of their neighbors away.
“It’s really difficult to listen to your neighbors talk about how they might have to leave their house because they can’t afford it anymore,” Wheeler Russell said this summer. “Your community is breaking apart at the seams because of this. Sometimes it’s really hard to watch.”
The lawsuit joins the already pending “ConVal” lawsuit filed in 2019, in which school districts argue that the funding the state provides per pupil – which was around $3,636 in 2019 – isn’t enough, and doesn’t take into account the costs of transportation, teachers and facilities.
The Education Freedom Account, or school voucher program, grew in popularity this year. Enrollment in the program, which allows low-income students to use state funding to pay for private school, doubled since its first year, going from 1,635 students in fall 2021 to 3,025 students in fall 2022. The program is expected to offer grants to families totaling $14.7 million this school year.
“While it has exceeded our expectations, it is exciting and encouraging to know that New Hampshire families now have the opportunity to determine the best educational pathways for their children, and that economically disadvantaged students will also have various options to fit their personal learning needs,” Edelblut said in September.
But the program has been a controversial one since its inception due to the use of public funds for private schools. Not everyone is pleased with the direction the program is going. Deb Howes, the president of New Hampshire’s AFT-NH teacher’s union, filed a lawsuit in December asking for an injunction to stop the state from funding the Education Freedom Account program. In the suit, Howes argues that the voucher system of using public money to fund private schools violates the state Constitution.
“The state specifically earmarked this money for public education,” Howes said earlier this month. “Public school students are losing out on millions of dollars that are needed to fix leaky old buildings, purchase and maintain modern computer equipment, buy books and materials published at least in the last decade to support student learning and provide more social and emotional assistance and other needs that will help students excel.”
A lawsuit over New Hampshire’s “Freedom from Discrimination in Education” statute remains pending after it was filed in December last year. The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU, the American Federation of Teachers New Hampshire, the National Education Association New Hampshire and local school diversity coordinators, takes on a law that passed in 2021 which bars educators from teaching that a person in one protected class is inherently superior, racist or oppressive, even unconsciously.
In oral arguments in September, plaintiffs argued that the law is too vague for teachers to be expected to follow it, and that it violates the 14th amendment. Critics have said the law has a “chilling effect” on educators, who are steering clear of lessons about racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination for fear of running afoul of the law.
“This law creates an environment where teachers are afraid to teach certain topics to students about race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other identities. All children suffer from this censorship,” plaintiffs Andres Mejia and Tina Kim Philibotte, school DEIJ coordinators in Exeter and Manchester, said in a statement in May. “Students from historically marginalized backgrounds are especially robbed of the right to see themselves and their lived experiences reflected in their education. As a result of the law, student voices are silenced and diverse identities denied because these students don’t get the chance to engage in meaningful conversations about their own lives.”