Kris Bellerose is the Allenstown School Board Vice Chair. Peter Warburton is the Allenstown Superintendent within SAU53. Zack Sheehan is the director of NH School Funding Fairness Project. Other school districts interested in completing this exercise can email zsheehan@fairfundingnh.org. 

The NH Supreme Court determined in its Claremont decisions over thirty years ago that it is the state’s constitutional responsibility to ensure that every child has access to an “adequate” education and that the state must pay for it.

As a result, every year the state calculates a cost that it believes will be sufficient to provide an “adequate” education for all students in each town. The problem is that this adequacy amount is not even close to the actual amount of funding needed to run any public school in the state. Here’s an example.

The state claims that $2,418,121 is enough for an adequate education for every student in Allenstown for the current 2022-23 school year. Meanwhile, the voters of Allenstown passed a school district budget in March totaling $12,243,949, more than five times what the state had decided was “adequate.”

We collaborated with the NH School Funding Fairness Project to see what hypothetical cuts would reduce Allenstown’s actual school budget down to the state’s adequacy level.

Allenstown operates two schools: Allenstown Elementary for grades K-4 and Armand R. Dupont for grades 5-8. Allenstown does not have its own high school and pays tuition for 147 grade 9-12 students to attend Pembroke Academy.

For this year, Allenstown budgeted $2,204,603 for this purpose. Because we have no way to control line items in the high school budget, we decided to remove these tuition payments. The result: an “adequate” education in Allenstown would end at the eighth grade.

After this decision, $10,039,346 remained in the budget. We needed to reduce it by an additional $7,621,225 to meet the state’s “adequate” budget. Keep in mind that many of the hypothetical cuts below violate the state’s own minimum standards, federal and state law, local collective bargaining agreements, and current district policy.

We did our best to keep core teaching staff in this exercise but were forced to eliminate eight of 20 core classroom teachers. The elimination of these eight classroom teachers would leave classroom sizes of 29 students per class in grades K-4, and 37 students per class in grades 5-8, both of which violate state laws that govern maximum teacher-to-student ratios.

Following these cuts, we eliminated all busing (including special education busing); all English Language Learner support; all special education contracted services; all special education appraisal services; all special education out-of-district placements; all supplies, copier machines, liability insurance, plumbing and heating repairs; all educational materials (including new textbooks); all art, music, and PE equipment; all Chromebook technology and software contracts; all co-curricular clubs, sports, field trips, and student assemblies; grounds maintenance (including plowing); SAU 53 costs (including the superintendent and staff) and fees for audits and attorneys; all school board stipends and fees; all payments on the school building bond (resulting in default); all summer programs; and all food services.

After these cuts, we were still far above the expenditures the state says would be “adequate.” Next, we removed more staff in our two schools, eliminating the art teacher. music teacher, physical education teacher, behavior teacher, all substitute salaries, one of the two nurses, both guidance counselors, both street crossing guards, technology support personnel, the assistant principal, two secretaries, three of four custodians, two of 17 special education paraprofessionals (and reduced special education coordinator to half-time), special education speech/language pathologist, one of seven special education teachers, the reading specialist, the special education secretary, the library media specialist, the speech language pathologist, and reduced library aid to half-time.

After all these eliminations, we had cut our voter-approved school budget of $12,243,949 down to the state’s “adequate” budget of $2,418,121.

After the dust settled, what remained? First off, an “adequate” education for Allenstown students would end at 8th grade. Only 11 teachers, six and a half special education teachers, 15 paraprofessionals, one nurse, half a library aide, one custodian, one school secretary, and one principal remained for our 348 K-8 students.

How could we get any children to want to come to school where there are no clubs, no sports, no field trips, and nothing to get them energized to want to be in an Allenstown classroom?

How can anyone not see the absurdity of the state claiming this could provide an “adequate” education for our children?

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