On Sept. 23, I testified before a legislative committee in Concord about the high and unbalanced costs of out-of-district education and the burden it puts on local districts like Claremont.
When it becomes necessary for a student to be placed in an out-of-district residential educational program, local school districts pay most of the cost. That has been the case under New Hampshire law for a long time, because New Hampshire’s legislature has chosen to delegate the state’s responsibility for special education to local school districts. Not all states do this (in some states, all special education is state funded and offset by federal grants), but this is New Hampshire’s way.
In recent years, a growing phenomenon has added significant costs to cities and towns like Claremont. Sometimes, the decision to place a student out-of-district comes from state agencies (specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services) and the court system. School districts like Claremont’s have very little input in these decisions but are still responsible for paying the costs of educational services. This is unfair to the school districts, unfair to the town or city, and most importantly unfair to the taxpayers.
This happens a lot. Statistically, lower-income communities have higher rates of disability and higher rates of child protection or juvenile justice involvement with families, and those same lower-income communities receive the most out-of-town placement bills. This forces towns with the least money, like Claremont, to pay the most out-of-district costs due to court-ordered residential placements.
Call it what you want, but this is effectively a hidden tax. Someone else decides where to send a child, and the citizens of Claremont pay the price. Of course we want what’s best for our students. We can all agree that every student deserves an adequate and appropriate education. But there is an injustice in how this is being done across the Granite State — this hidden tax that hits communities like Claremont while leaving places like New Castle, Rye and Hanover mostly untouched.
When a student is sent to an out-of-district residential program, local districts are required to pay that program three times the average cost of educating a student locally before any meaningful state aid kicks in. In reality this doesn’t always end up being the actual limit; some costs are disallowed from reimbursement for technical reasons. That means districts end up paying between $64,635 and $100,000 per student per year. Until that’s paid, the state doesn’t pay anything for the decision a state agency and state court decision made.
How does New Hampshire help communities like Claremont pay these bills? The state sends our school district $6,580 per student with an IEP, plus federal special education grant funds of less than $1,400 per student. This leaves communities like Claremont paying a minimum of $55,000 and often closer to around $90,000 in unfunded, mandated special education costs for placements the state made. And remember, this is per year, and it resets with each school year.
The math is broken in favor of the Department of Health and Human Services and the courts. These students deserve an education that meets them where they are. They deserve a child protective system and juvenile justice system that gives them a chance at a better life. They didn’t ask for this. But for the state to make decisions that result in what could be both a sudden and crippling financial impact on a school district, town and taxpayer is unfair. Just one unexpected out-of-district placement can have a dramatic unanticipated impact on a town’s annual school budget.
In Claremont, we expect to have about 10 court-involved out-of-district placements per year. That’s $600,000 to $1 million every year in local taxes. And again, when Rye, New Castle or Hanover set their tax rates, they usually don’t have any of these costs adding to the local tax burden.
We might agree with the state about when a student is best served elsewhere.
But we shouldn’t agree that this system makes sense or is fair to property tax payers. It isn’t, and I am urging the state legislature to look closely at this issue during the upcoming legislative session.
Timothy Broadrick is the superintendent of SAU 6 in Claremont.