AFT-NH Testimony on HB1 and HB2
From Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH
Thank you, Chairman Gray and Members of the Senate Finance Committee, for taking my testimony.
My name is Debrah Howes. I am the president of the American Federation of Teachers -NH.
AFT-NH represents 3,500 teachers, paraeducators and school support staff, public service employees and higher education staff across the Granite State. We work with students in preK through grade 12 public schools, as well as public and private universities in the Granite State. We also provide vital services to residents in towns and cities across the Granite State. WE are proud Granite State residents, voters and taxpayers.
On behalf of our members and the people we serve, I am here to express my opposition to portions of the House passed budget HB1 and HB 2. It is said that budgets are a statement of priorities. That is especially true in times when revenues are scarce. For that reason alone, priorities must remain laser focused on meeting the state’s constitutional duties and providing assistance to those who most need it.
This budget does not protect or adequately support the needs of most Granite State students, their families or local property taxpayers. Our public schools serve more than 160,000 students, or nearly 90% of students in our state. It also shortchanges the students at our public universities, which are pathways to opportunity for many of our public school students, their chance to learn and work towards a brighter future, to the benefit of their communities and the Granite State. Rather than meet our state’s obligation to those many students, this budget chooses to focus its limited revenue on helping just a few, while leaving so many behind.
As guaranteed by the New Hampshire Constitution and affirmed by decades of NH Supreme Court rulings, each Granite State child has the constitutional right to the opportunity for a robust public education through public district schools and places the responsibility for paying for that education squarely on the state. I use the word robust because the court has made clear the term “adequate” used in the constitution does not have the commonplace meaning of just barely enough, but rather an education sufficient to prepare the student for working life, further studies and full civic participation in the community after finishing school. In fact, we saw the overwhelming support for keeping public education robust in a hearing in this very hall to pare back the subjects covered by the definition of adequate that was held in February. Granite Staters clearly want public education to include core as well as challenging academics, art and music, physical education, STEM, be taught by certified teachers and with well trained paraeducators to support student learning.
Yet this budget does not significantly change the ratio for school funding, which currently relies about 70% on local property taxes, a little over 20% on state revenue and about 9% from federal grants, at least for now. Local property taxpayers are shouldering the bulk of the burden for a state responsibility, which results in an extremely unequal opportunity for that robust public education.
What this looks like in our schools is that in some districts students can take many electives as well as Advanced Placement classes, which are not only engaging and academically challenging content but count for college credit. For example, in Nashua, students can enroll in Advanced Placement courses in US Government and Politics, Macroeconomics or Physics. Yet in some other high schools in the Granite State, the district can’t even pay enough to fill high school math positions with a permanent teacher! Instead, they rely on using a virtual class with a teacher who may be a subject matter expert but is unable to meet the learning needs of any students who need to review lesson material they do not grasp the first time, differentiate lessons to accommodate students with individualized learning plans or assist students coming from different language backgrounds. All students who meet prerequisites have a right to enroll in any class in a public school and the teacher needs to be able to meet their learning needs. This is not equal access to a robust public education. It is not even equal access to a basic education!
The state budget needs to ensure that all public schools are able to offer a robust education the is each Granite State student’s right, not just some.
This budget does however include expanding a program that is not a constitutional requirement, school vouchers, where taxpayer money is used to fund parents’ private educational choices. This expansion would make school vouchers available to any family in the Granite State regardless of income. There is a nominal cap on the number of vouchers, but it is automatically raised if the total number of vouchers gets within a certain percentage of the cap, so that is not really a limit to the expense of the program.
We already have school vouchers for low and moderate income families. Why are we expanding this program to make it universal? Why in a state with limited revenue, in fact in a state that has gone out of its way to reduce the amount of revenue available to pay for anything and downshifted state costs onto local property taxpayers, are we spending any money on a voucher program that is not required by our constitution while we are starving our students in public schools of the resources they need to learn and thrive? Why are we taking money from people who don’t have it to give to people who don’t need it?
The proposed increase in the voucher program is spending of choice. The constitutional duty is to meet the obligation to fund a robust public school education for Granite State students through every public school district.
Finally, the cuts to the University System of New Hampshire, which receives the least amount of state support of any public university system in the country, are directly impacting the education students receive. Our State Universities have long been a stretch for many Granite State families to afford because of the lack of state support and the need to raise so much of their operating budgets through tuition and fees. With the cut proposed by the in the Governor’s budget, cutbacks are getting down to the level that impacts programs of study and what choices students have for classes. This is particularly true for Plymouth State, our smallest university, which serves the largest proportion of in state students, many of them the first in their family to attend college. Keeping funding at the University System level will allow them to continue offering the programs that their students need and help keep this generation of Granite Staters in our state as they study, graduate and launch their careers here.
A budget is all about choices. Especially in times of limited revenue, when any spending that is not absolutely necessary must be put off until a more prosperous day. The responsibility here is to meet the state’s constitutional duty to all public school students to fund a robust public school education in every school district, level fund the State University System of New Hampshire to keep Granite State university students in state. We also should not be instituting an income based fee, in fact some could call it an income tax, to allow families with low to moderate income to keep basic health care for their children. And we most certainly should not be doing that at the same time as we are giving a taxpayer funded coupon to use on tuition, supplies, ski passes, travel soccer, summer camp, or a whole wide array of items to any family regardless of income level through universal school vouchers.
We urge you to keep these considerations in mind as you work on HB1 and HB2.
Thank you,
Debrah Howes
President, AFT-New Hampshire