The vote took place on a Tuesday, just like the majority of events in New Hampshire do: in a school gym with folding chairs, under slightly humming fluorescent lights. The town had decided to eliminate its school budget by the time the total was announced. Don’t cut it. Don’t make it tighter. Reduce its length until it is near the bone. Cuts totaling three million dollars, a closed school building, and a faculty lounge that has reportedly been becoming more and more empty ever since.
These days, you see things like this in Rochester. It was evident in Concord, where students stood up during meetings to inquire about the specific implications of the proposed cuts of seventeen million dollars for their AP classes. It is evident in the Newfound Area district, where teaching positions could be quietly eliminated without a vote by anyone thanks to the default budget, a peculiar New Hampshire mechanism meant to keep towns under the tax cap. The same calculations are being made in the Jaffrey-Rindge district. Laconia is, too. Speaking with those who have worked in these schools for twenty years gives me the impression that something is breaking that will be difficult to fix.
The consequences are not dry, but the mechanics are. Local property taxes are the primary source of funding for New Hampshire’s public schools. The state’s Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that this system is unconstitutional, and the Legislature has spent a generation refusing to change it. Four different bills that would have returned more of the burden to the state were rejected by the House in February. HB 1835, one of them, would have encouraged the state to cover 80% of the true costs of special education. Less than 10% is currently covered by the state. Districts either eat the remainder or don’t, after which they make cuts.
Teachers take notice. It turns out that teachers observe a lot. When the photocopier budget is reduced, the music program loses a section, or the principal begins discussing “right-sizing,” they take notice and depart. One town over can occasionally pay a little more for a district. For Massachusetts, where the math is easier, on occasion. Sometimes completely leaving the field to work in real estate, insurance, or anything else that keeps a household afloat. It’s difficult to ignore the sheer number of seasoned educators who used their institutional memory to keep a building together.
The odd thing is that none of this is taking place in private. It takes place in public, at town meetings and budget committee hearings that are open to all. Parental choice, budgetary restraint, a resuscitation of the so-called “divisive concepts” law, and a procedure for removing books from school libraries are among the Republican majority’s clear priorities in Concord. Democrats condemn it. Statements are released by the advocacy groups. The cycle is repeated. When the targeted aid cap takes effect next year, Manchester is expected to lose nine to ten million dollars in state funding annually, and a bill to repeal it was proposed.
From the outside, none of this may appear to be a crisis for some time to come. Class sizes increase, electives are eliminated, and a new teacher with two years of experience takes over the AP class because no one else is left. Schools have a way of quietly absorbing damage. Parents adapt. Test results become softer. The people who could have alerted them have already moved on by the time everyone notices collectively.
Observing this from a distance gives me the impression that New Hampshire is slowly testing itself, and the results won’t be known for another ten years. Teachers who are currently departing are not waiting to find out. That math has already been completed.
