AFT-NH Testimony on HB1 and HB2
From Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH
Thank you, Chairman Weyler and Members of the House 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 close to 30,000 students in public schools, all of them entitled to a robust public education, which is their constitutional right as Granite State citizens.
I am here today to express our opposition to the Governor’s budget as presented in HB 1 and HB 2. It is often said that a budget is a statement of values, yet this budget does not protect or adequately support the needs of most Granite State students, their families or local property taxpayers. Our public schools, which serve nearly 90% of students in our state, and our public universities are pathways to opportunity for our 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 students, this budget chooses to focus its limited revenue on helping just a few, while leaving so many behind.
The New Hampshire Constitution places such a high value on educating the children of the Granite State. In Part 2, Article 83, the NH Constitution guarantees each Granite State child 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 it is 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 last month.
Yet this budget does not significantly change the ratio of school funding, which currently relies on 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 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 any students 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!
While funding for overall public education does not go up in this budget, funding for special education grants to meet extraordinary needs does get a needed increase. Unfortunately, that increase only covers what was needed 2 years ago. We have seen the price of all goods and services continue to rise over the past 2 years. What the Governor has included in this budget will not stop the divisive situations we have seen play out in New Hampshire school districts where teachers, paraeducators, music, arts, sports and other extracurricular programs and course electives are cut when faced with unanticipated cost of supporting the learning needs of a students or a small number of students who require a complex network of assistance to access their public education.
The point is all students, including those with special educational needs, have a right to access their public education, because they are all our students, and the future of the Granite State. Just like every single public school student has the right to a robust public education. And that is where this budget fails our state. It meets past needs, not current or future needs and therefore does not prioritize the actual needs of students in our schools today.
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, making them available to any family in the Granite State regardless of income if the students are leaving a public school or public charter school. 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 since it is spending of choice on a program that the legislature chose to enact while it still has not fulfilled its Constitutional duty to Granite State students to fund a robust public education in every school district. This is wrong and the additional $2 million this year and $17 million next year proposed in the Governors’ budget must be incorporated into the overall funding of public schools instead to uphold students’ constitutional rights to a robust public education.
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 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 tax subsidies 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