Ted Morgan is a retired professor of political science living in Tamworth.

This spring’s town meeting season saw what is becoming a regular showdown between irate, tax-burdened citizens and school boards struggling to maintain education programs in an era of state and federal government cutbacks.

Some with limited incomes can no longer pay their property taxes and face the likelihood of losing their homes. Renters, too, are increasingly pinched by rental rates that average $1,790 per month statewide.

As a result, school budgets have been cut, often producing loss of staffing and educational programs.

For example, in the town of Conway, school board members needed to eliminate eight staff positions after voters defeated budget recommendations for the second year in a row. In Manchester, to align with the mayor’s budget, the school superintendent recommended cutting 38 teaching and staff positions and limiting special education programs. As she put it, “I don’t think that any of the reductions that are on this list are in the best interest of students or staff.”

This crisis is the product of several factors that have been around for many years, made significantly worse by the recent extreme slashing of federal programs by the Trump/Musk initiatives. New Hampshire‘s tax structure is more dependent on local property taxes than any state in the U.S. And, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, New Hampshire has the 18th most regressive tax system in the country, meaning people with lower incomes pay a higher proportion of their income than wealthier people.

The other outcome has been the state’s long-standing failure to live up to its constitutional mandate to provide all New Hampshire children with an adequate education. Indeed, the two systems, unfair taxation and unfair school opportunities, go hand in hand.

Because of our overreliance on property taxes to fund education, local school quality varies widely, simply because of the town or city’s property valuation. Communities with significant resort properties and second homes can tax themselves at much lower rates while spending far more on local schools than towns that lack this kind of property value.

Moultonborough is a classic case of the property-rich district: low tax rates, high spending on well-equipped schools. 431 students are enrolled in the Moultonborough school district. The education tax rate is $2.61/1000 and the district spends $35,664 per pupil.

Pittsfield is the opposite: low property wealth, high tax rates, and much lower spending on schools. With 530 enrolled, Pittsfield spends $21,649 per pupil and, at $9.31/1000, the education tax rate is much higher.

Portsmouth and Londonderry are examples of larger communities with the same inequalities. This kind of inequality means New Hampshire children in property-poor districts are deprived of the educational opportunities their peers in property-rich towns enjoy.

While the average level of state and local funding for education ranks 8th in the nation, the distribution of school funding ranks 43 out of 48 states and gets an F from the Education Law Center. Districts with high poverty levels get $2600 per pupil less than districts with low poverty levels.

The 1996 New Hampshire Supreme Court decision in the Claremont case declared that the state must ensure that all New Hampshire children have an adequate education and must pay for it. Both political parties have fundamentally neglected their constitutional obligation ever since Claremont; as a result, the ConVal and Rand lawsuits are now pending in the courts.

The state’s long-standing over-reliance on property taxes also reflects the very long tradition, going back to William Loeb in the early 1970s, of New Hampshire’s archaic “pledge,” rejecting any broad-based state income or sales tax. Both Democratic and Republican politicians have taken the pledge. Quite clearly, a flat-rate income tax, with waivers for lower-income populations, could be combined with local property tax reductions to remedy the worst unfairness of both tax and schooling inequities — if only state officials had the integrity to step up for fairness.

However, the Republican-controlled state government is doing the exact opposite of fairness. It has already been demonstrated that the state’s voucher system has cost New Hampshire taxpayers $76 million, and the vast majority of beneficiaries have been families who already had their children in private schools. Worse, HB 115 calls for “universal vouchers” beginning in 2026, meaning even the wealthiest families would reap the benefits of taxpayer contributions.

The public has been registering active opposition to HB 115. With effective organization and the active participation of broad segments of the public, it may be possible to end New Hampshire’s unfair tax and schooling systems. Doing so might also begin to reverse the long-standing pattern of higher-level governments putting greater financial burdens on lower-level governments, all while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest members of society.

In the absence of an aroused public, however, the New Hampshire way will continue to deprive many children of an equal chance in life. It will continue to burden fixed or limited-income property tax payers, including paying for subsidies for the rich.

For more information on New Hampshire’s school funding, read The Last Bake Sale: The Fight for Fair School Funding, by Andru Volinsky, the lead lawyer in the Claremont case.