Republican lawmakers in the State House are executing a well-orchestrated effort to
dismantle and destroy public education in New Hampshire. And it’s working. But who
pays the price? Most often it’s your kids.
Sadly, students today aren’t doing so well. Student test scores have fallen by about a full grade level in both math and reading, nationally and right here in New Hampshire. All the while, schools have responded to a pandemic that sent students home and drove experienced teachers out of the profession, an opioid epidemic that took away a generation of parents, a flood of screens and AI that new evidence suggests is eroding attention and social skills, and rising costs that have made it harder for people to feed their families.
Public schools didn’t create these problems, but schools have to live with the consequences that come from them, in a state with steadily shrinking support. Republicans should be ashamed of how they have left students behind.
If you listen to how these challenges are discussed in the halls of the State House, you would think there was only one cause: the public schools themselves. But let me pose a set of questions: What if these declining scores have little to do with our teachers? What if public schools are not the cause, just the easiest target? And what if these challenges would have been far worse without the work of public school educators, who have been the levees holding back the flood?
As mayor, after seeing the struggles that our educators, students and schools experience, I was motivated to act. This spring, I formed a taskforce to study this problem. This group, consisting of city, school and community leaders, began the hard work of enacting change in our schools to better address the challenges we face. We are examining the school day, school calendars, grades, credits, student groupings, internships, community involvement, you name it!
As exciting and engaging as our work has been, we still exist within the bounds and borders of New Hampshire and are beholden to the limitations the state puts on us, and the state has not made it easy for public schools. If we truly want to help students and fix our schools, we need the state to change its decades-long course of dismantling public education.
First and foremost, the state needs to take a hard look at how it pays for schools. New Hampshire embarrassingly ranks dead-last in the nation for the share of public school funding that comes from the state. A vast majority of funding comes from local property taxpayers like you, which is why property taxes are going up, and why the quality of a child’s school so often tracks with the wealth of the town they live in.
The limited funding from the state is harming schools, and taxpayers and districts are fighting back in the courts. In July 2025, in a case brought by 18 school districts, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that the state’s funding was unconstitutionally low. The court affirmed that an adequate education costs at least $7,356 per student; even though the state’s base aid today is about $4,266. But the state has failed to close the gap, and rather than meet the bar set by our state’s highest court, New Hampshire Republicans have lowered it.
The priorities of lawmakers speak volumes. Rather than support our schools, the state has allowed the Education Freedom Account voucher program to run vastly over-budget, costing you more than $60 million this school year alone. The majority of participants in this program are already in private school or homeschooling, meaning the money spent on these vouchers is new spending, not savings. Public dollars should stay in public schools, especially when our schools are struggling with funding.
And now the state wants to cap what communities can spend. Question 2 on the ballot for the general election on Nov. 3 is a political ploy that, if approved, would impose strict restrictions on local schools. Caps like this can harm schools and do not lower your property taxes: they take away important local control that you rely on, and they do nothing to make special education, heating oil or health insurance any cheaper. The state should take real action to lower rising costs for you, rather than override local control.
Teachers cannot pass laws to fix our state funding formula. They cannot solve the opioid epidemic. They cannot undo a pandemic or regulate Artificial Intelligence. What teachers can do — and are already doing — is show up every morning for your kids, as well as the students being raised by grandparents, the students who are still catching up from the pandemic, and the students showing up hungry because their families had to choose between heating oil and groceries.
But what I worry about most is whether the State of New Hampshire will do its part and begin to rethink its role in the lives of our students. Now more than ever, we need to come together as a state and work to fund the schools our students depend on. And working together does not mean that the state can sit it out and shirk its responsibilities. The state needs to be a partner in this — no more decreased funding, no more expensive programs that pull money from schools. No more pulling the sandbags from the levee and acting surprised when the water comes rushing through.
Matt Gerding is the Mayor of Somersworth and teaches science at Somersworth Middle School.