New Hampshire education funding is already adequate, Republican bill asserts

Republicans have a message for the New Hampshire Supreme Court: The state is already spending enough on its public schools.

In the months since the court ruled that New Hampshire is unconstitutionally underfunding public education, Republican lawmakers have objected to the order, calling it judicial overreach and an unfair account of the funding the state currently sends to schools.

Now, they are putting legislation behind those words.

A pair of bills moving through the House and Senate this year would redefine what counts as “adequate” education funding and who must pay. House Bill 1815 would assert that the obligation to provide a constitutionally adequate public education is a shared responsibility between local school districts and the state — not just a burden on the state.

That statutory change, if upheld by state courts, would introduce a new interpretation of the state’s school funding obligations laid out in the Claremont Supreme Court decisions of the 1990s. And it would present significant legislative pushback to the 2023 superior court and 2025 Supreme Court rulings that found the state is not adequately funding public schools and must increase its contributions. Senate Republicans have introduced an identical bill, Senate Bill 659.

Republicans say sending a clear message in statute is necessary to re-establish the Legislature’s control over state funding to schools.

“I think basically what it says is, ‘You, court, got it wrong. You didn’t give us the proper role that we have. You really ought to think about this again,’” said Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Windham, former Supreme Court chief justice, and author of HB 1815, speaking at a House Education Funding Committee hearing Friday.

But Democrats and school funding advocates argue the two bills are an attempt by the Legislature to evade its responsibilities and more than three decades of court rulings.

“This bill, in a really large way, pretends that the constitution doesn’t exist,” said John Tobin, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Claremont lawsuits, who testified against the bill.

Speaking to the Education Funding Committee, Tobin said the Claremont decisions made clear that Part II, Article 83 of the state constitution creates an obligation for the state to “cherish” public education by funding it, and that school funding must be provided via taxation that is proportional and reasonable for residents. Currently, with towns setting vastly different local property tax rates to fund schools, the system is not proportional, Tobin said.

HB 1815 would effectively re-frame school funding as a policy choice for the state, and not a constitutional obligation, and would adopt language to preserve the status quo, Tobin argued.

If signed into law, the bills could affect future court rulings around school funding. In 2025, the Supreme Court ruled, 3-2, in favor of school districts in Contoocook Valley School District v. State of New Hampshire and ordered lawmakers to increase its funding. But a second lawsuit, Rand v. State of New Hampshire, is expected to appear before the high court in the next year.

HB 1815 and SB 659 could affect how the Supreme Court views the state’s approach to funding in Rand. And the bills could spark further litigation if plaintiffs in the Contoocook Valley case, known as ConVal, assert the Legislature is not following the Supreme Court’s order.

In a rare move, the New Hampshire Department of Justice, which has represented the state against both lawsuits, endorsed Lynn’s bill. Assistant Attorney General Sam Garland testified in favor of it Friday, arguing it provides “needed clarity” to the definition of adequacy in state statute.

“What it does do is bring precision that isn’t in the language as it currently exists,” Garland said.

But former Democratic Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky, an attorney who co-represented the Claremont plaintiffs with Tobin and currently co-represents the Rand plaintiffs, reacted differently.

“Shame on Bob Lynn,” Volinsky said in an interview. “He should know better that you can’t change the constitution by statute.”

Beyond the creation of shared funding responsibility, HB 1815 would make two other changes to adequacy funding statutes in New Hampshire.

The bill would specify that the state’s adequacy funding obligations apply only to academic programs.

And it would expand the definition of state adequacy funding to count not just the $4,351 “base” adequacy payments that go to each student, but also the additional thousands of dollars per student in “differentiated aid” payments to cover lower income students.

Critics of the 2023 Rockingham Superior Court ruling in ConVal — in which Judge David Ruoff lambasted the state for spending around $4,000 per student in base adequacy payments and ordered the state to pay at least $7,356.01 per student — have argued that Ruoff unfairly left out those differentiated aid payments from his analysis. If differentiated aid is included, the state spends more than $7,000 per student already, those critics say.

Garland argued those tweaks would help clear up two questions the Supreme Court faced in its 2025 ConVal decision: What is included in the definition of an adequate education, and which state funding streams should count toward its cost.

And while Department of Education Commissioner Caitlin Davis did not take a position on the bill, she did testify to say that differentiated aid has long been considered part of adequacy by the department. When the ConVal case went to trial at Rockingham Superior Court in 2023, Davis’ predecessor, Frank Edelblut, faced sharp questions in court over how the department defines adequacy; Davis echoed Garland and said the bill would give clarity.

Above all, Lynn and other supporters say HB 1815 is meant to re-establish legislative supremacy over schools and reinforce that school districts are subdivisions of the state.

Lynn argues the current system, in which the state is constitutionally responsible for adequacy payments but has no control over local districts’ hiring and spending decisions, is an unfair mandate on state taxpayers; but by splitting the adequacy responsibility with school districts, the bill creates a more fair division.

The bill has drawn controversy: 1,033 people have submitted online testimony opposing it, while eight people say they support it.

Speaking at the hearing, opponents said the bill would allow lawmakers to shirk the responsibility to fix the state’s unequal local education property tax system, in which towns with weak property tax bases must set high tax rates to keep their schools open, while wealthier towns can set lower tax rates and afford better services. In Sunapee, residents pay $5 per $1,000 of property valuation, while in neighboring Newport, the tax rate is $15.95 per $1,000, and the school district budget has struggled, critics noted.

And the bill’s opponents said by redefining adequacy as a collective effort of both school districts and the state, HB 1815 was diluting the meaning of the adequacy requirement. Sharing the responsibility could allow lawmakers to reduce the amount the state currently sends to local districts and retreat from its funding role further, Tobin argued.

“There’s some wonderful language in here about shared responsibility and integration and flexibility, but there’s nothing in here that delineates in any way a bottom line for the state’s responsibility,” Tobin said.

Throughout the hearing, it was clear Republicans and Democrats fundamentally disagree about that balance. Asked by Rep. Hope Damon, a Croydon Democrat, whether his bill would increase state funding to schools, Lynn said “no.” Asked whether Lynn believed the state is currently adequately funding education, he said “yes.”

Pressed by the 2025 court ruling to take action, Republican leaders in both chambers have embraced Lynn’s approach. In January, Senate President Sharon Carson introduced SB 659 as a late-filed bill, calling it the “exact bill” as HB 1815. Lynn’s bill is the product of a study committee convened by Gov. Kelly Ayotte in 2025 to devise a response to the Supreme Court’s July ruling, Carson told the Senate Rules and Enrolled Bills Committee at the time.

“I want to applaud the Governor for being very proactive in addressing this issue,” Carson said. “So we’re going to bring it forward.”

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for more information.

“As we all know, the Legislature is really the laboratory of ideas, and this is an idea,” Carson said. “And I hope that we have a great, robust discussion on education financing.”