WEST LEBANON — Upper Valley school districts that supported a legal challenge to New Hampshire’s school funding system say they’re dismayed by a state Supreme Court ruling remanding the case to a lower court and delaying a decision on the current system’s constitutionality.

Officials say “property-poor” districts continue to struggle to pay for teachers, maintain buildings and hire buses under the current system, despite a set of court rulings from the 1990s that enshrined New Hampshire’s obligation to provide every student with an adequate education.

The financial burden, they say, falls on property taxpayers and is unlikely to get easier while the lawsuit works its way back up to the high court.

“Every year this goes on there’s additional struggle placed on some of our property tax payers,” Newport Superintendent Brendan Minnihan said during a phone interview Tuesday. “And there’s the potential for disparities that could take place between children across the state.”

Newport — along with the Mascoma Valley, Haverhill, Piermont and Claremont school districts — signed onto a 2019 brief supporting three Cheshire County districts that challenged the state’s funding formula.

The Contoocook Valley, Monadnock, Mascenic and Winchester school districts argued in a lawsuit that the roughly $3,600 that New Hampshire offers to students doesn’t cover the actual costs of education, which should include transportation and facilities.

In reality, it cost an average of $18,900 to fully educate a child during the 2017-18 school year, the schools argued.

While Cheshire Superior Court Judge David Ruoff ruled in favor of the districts in 2019, he declined to order the state to pay about $20 million they said was owed. Both the state and schools then appealed, leading up to Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling where justices said a full trial is needed to adjudicate the matter.

Mascoma Superintendent Amanda Isabelle said she had hoped the court would deliver an opinion that could usher in an overhaul of New Hampshire’s education funding system.

Instead, she said, justices placed the possibility of funding reform “back in limbo.”

Isabelle noted that the current funding system and its over-reliance on property taxes disproportionately affects communities without wealthy tax bases. Hence why Canaan’s tax rate — $34.40 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value — is among the highest in the state.

Timothy Josephson, a Canaan resident and vice chairman of the Mascoma Valley Regional School Board, also said he was disappointed that the court failed to conclude the state’s decades-old debate over school funding.

“They kicked the can down the road,” said Josephson, a former Democratic lawmaker.

In Claremont, School Board Chairman Frank Sprague said he hoped the Supreme Court would deliver a victory for those seeking to change the state’s funding formula. But even if the court had ruled in his side’s favor, he said, getting the Legislature to agree to a new formula — and a new tax structure — would prove difficult.

“The third rail of New Hampshire politics is taxes,” Sprague said.

He asserted Gov. Chris Sununu won reelection in 2020 partially by criticizing Democratic opponent Dan Feltes’ paid family leave proposal as an income tax.

Meanwhile, a group of property-rich towns, including Lebanon, recently formed a lobbying effort aimed at stopping bills that would see their tax dollars funneled to less well-off communities.

The Coalition Communities 2.0 recently hired law firm Bernstein Shur to represent them in Concord, with longtime Republican consultant Jim Merrill leading the firm’s efforts.

“You could already see the battle lines being drawn,” Sprague said.

Political hurdles and politicians’ reluctance to advocate for new taxes are why Minnihan, the Newport superintendent, said he’s pessimistic that problems in the school funding formula will be solved.

“I’m not sure there’s an appetite to do something bigger,” he said. “But one can hope.”

In the meantime, Minnihan worries that taxpayers’ generosity toward funding schools locally might wear out as they await tax relief that may never come.

“Citizens of the state have chosen time and time again to put their money into their schools,” he said. “I do worry that’s being eroded.”

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.