Franklin’s School Board is calling for changes to the state’s school funding system, hoping that it would bring more money to the city schools and lower property taxes for residents.

On Tuesday, the Board passed a resolution to ask their representatives in the New Hampshire State Legislature to support changes to the state’s school funding system that were proposed in Gov. Chris Sununu’s FY 2024 and 2025 budget.

School Board Vice Chair Delaney Carrier proposed the resolution, saying that the funds the district receives from the state aren’t enough.

“This is such an important issue for our community, and I’m really glad the board got behind this,” Carrier said. “I introduced this resolution because our students and taxpayers need help, and the people we have elected to represent us in Concord need to know that and need to make some kind of change to fulfill the state’s responsibility to fund education.”

On Wendesday, the New Hampshire House voted to pass two bills that would increase public education funding to charter and public schools. One would establish two additional aid grants for schools based on the percentage of Free and Reduced Lunch students, while the other would establish an additional grant for the tuition of chartered public school students paid by the state. Both bills now head to the House Finance Committee for further review.

The way New Hampshire pays for public education has been a subject of debate for decades. As the vast majority of the state’s education funding comes from property taxes, critics say schools in “property-poor” districts are not equal with schools in “property-rich” communities, which violates the state Constitution. In the landmark “Claremont” court rulings of the 1990s, the school funding system was found unconstitutional and the state government was deemed responsible for funding an “adequate” education for every student and education taxes must be levied at a uniform rate around the state. Several pending lawsuits continue to challenge the property tax-based system, including the “Con Val” suit filed in 2019, that argues the state’s per-pupil funding isn’t enough, and another lawsuit filed in 2022 argues the system relies too much on local taxpayers and not enough on state funding.

The city of Franklin’s total 2022 property tax valuation was $624 million, according to the NH Department of Revenue Administration. For context, Nashua has the largest valuation at $6 billion, and Ellsworth has the smallest at $19 million, excluding townships.

“The city of Franklin and its students and taxpayers are harmed by New Hampshire’s school funding model, relative to students and taxpayers in other communities,” the resolution reads.

The district is expected to receive about $9 million in funding from the state for the school year, which board members say is more than $10 million short of Franklin’s operating budget.

“We can’t run the district on what the state is sending us, it’s not ‘adequate,’ as they call it,” Carrier said. “The courts have said time and time again that this is the state’s responsibility, but for years and years there hasn’t been the follow-through to actually make it happen. That needs to change, and I think this resolution is a sign to everyone in Concord that Franklin needs and wants that change.”

Sununu included a plan in his proposed budget to increase the amount that the state contributes to education and reduce the amount that local property taxpayers contribute. The plan is to increase the base aid rate the state gives to districts per student by 25% and the Free and Reduced meal aid rate by 30%. The budget would also phase in targeted aid to “property-poor” towns to increase school funding by 2% annually.

The New Hampshire House will vote on the governor’s budget by April 6 and the state Senate will vote by June 8.

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