Qualifiers abound in a new report mapping out the Granite State’s educational landscape.
From 2008 to 2012, New Hampshire was one of 16 states to invest more dollars per student amid the Great Recession, adjusted for inflation — but ever since, those investments have declined, then stagnated.
Since the state’s Education Trust Fund exists separately from the General Fund reduces the likelihood that competing expenses will take priority over education — but the expansion of Education Freedom Accounts presents one “crowd-out risk factor,” according to New America’s Education Funding Equity Initiative.
The organization’s report, ‘State education budgets in turbulent times‘, assessed the educational systems of each New England state across four parameters: their funding models; their vulnerability to external threats, like changes in federal policy; in-state risks and the safeguards against them; and their resilience to economic downturn.
The state’s Adequate Education Aid formula contributes a foundation amount for each student, providing supplemental funding for those with higher needs. The state expects districts to collectively raise $363 million through property taxes, and its reliance on local revenue has increased over time, according to New America.
School district budgets in New Hampshire totaled $3.78 billion in 2023, or an average of $23,822 per pupil. Of that funding, 28% came from the state, the lowest share of per-pupil investment across all 50 states. Across the country, states provide 45% of school funding on average, according to the report.
Per-pupil funding dipped during the Great Recession, but the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided an infusion of federal funding that allowed it to rebound by 2012.
“New Hampshire’s education funding structure may have protected the education budget from severe cuts during the Great Recession, but it has not guaranteed spending growth or funding equity in the years since,” the report reads.
The state’s tax revenue streams, in general, took seven years to recover from the recession, longer than the national average of four-and-a-half years, an analysis that “does raise concerns that corporate income tax revenues could struggle to recover in the event of [a future] economic downturn, an issue magnified by the state’s growing reliance on this revenue stream,” according to the report.
The state’s rainy day fund of $245 million can cover its operating expenses for 44.5 days, slightly less than the national median.
Another risk looming over the state’s public school funding is the recently expanded school voucher program, or Education Freedom Accounts. Without income limits on voucher eligibility, and with both models drawing from the same coffer, the tension between public and private education heightens, the authors warned.
“As spending on school vouchers increases, the pool of money available for public education shrinks, since both are paid out of the Education Trust Fund,” the report states.
For a full budgetary picture of the state’s evolving educational landscape, visit https://www.newamerica.org/insights/state-education-budgets-in-turbulent-times/.
