A school funding power play

Tucked into HB2, the state budget trailer bill, is Section 426 — a provision that threatens both our public schools and our state Constitution. Section 426 is a “Legislative Declaration of Authority” that challenges decades of New Hampshire Supreme Court rulings, including Claremont I and II, which affirmed that the state — not local property taxpayers — is responsible for funding an adequate education. These rulings are essential for towns like Newport, Claremont and so many others, where low property values lead to high tax rates and under-resourced schools.

The language in Section 426 attempts to sideline the courts entirely, stating that “the legislature shall make the final determination of what the state’s educational policies shall be and of the funding needed to carry out such policies.” In other words, the branch of government being held accountable wants to strip the authority of the branch that enforces that accountability.

This isn’t just about school funding — it’s about separation of powers and the integrity of our Constitution. For years, the courts have been the only safeguard ensuring the state meets its obligation to children and taxpayers alike.

Sneaking this provision into the budget, especially after similar legislation was previously tabled, is a breach of public trust. Legislators and the governor should reject this language before it becomes law.

Call your legislator and our governor. Tell them to do their job, uphold their oath of office, and stop fooling around with our constitutional checks and balances.

Kathy Hubert

Newport

A better plan for Vt. schools

I loved growing up here and hope it will be viable for my children and grandchildren to call Vermont home. But, for the state to remain attractive, we must figure out how to improve the quality and affordability of our schools. To continue to operate an expensive system that does not generate the outcomes students deserve is a lose-lose scenario, and nowhere is this more apparent than for students with disabilities. As a school board member, I witnessed the inefficiencies of small schools and boards navigating the complexities of special education.

Luckily, the Legislature and the Agency of Education already have a tool to leverage to improve outcomes and reduce costs — Boards of Cooperative Education Services. BOCES can take on different characteristics depending on the needs of the member districts but the types of functions they can coordinate include professional development, applying for federal and state grants, addressing special education teacher and related services personnel shortages, providing or ensuring access to high-quality regional therapeutic settings, and procuring and providing training related to assistive technology. They could also provide guidance to parents navigating tuitioning options, a challenging proposition for many parents of students with disabilities.

Rather than mergers, we should invest our energies in creating BOCES to centralize specialized expertise and realize economies of scale for educating students with disabilities regionally. Dozens of other states utilize this approach, and we can implement it in a way that works for our unique context while also learning from the experiences of other states.

Lauren Morando Rhim

Norwich

The writer is an advocate for students with disabilities.

NH shortchanges schools

The New Hampshire Constitution says that the state will fund an “adequate education.” Our state government came up with: “Reading, Writing and Math.” Well, that would be true back in the ’40s or ’50s, but we all know what the State of New Hampshire mandates in order to graduate from high school; it is much more than “Reading, Writing and Math.”

In small towns across New Hampshire, public schools do more than educate — they bring the community together. But with rising costs and limited resources, rural schools are being stretched too thin.

The state hasn’t kept up its share of funding for public education, and that leaves property taxpayers to carry the load. In towns like mine, that’s not sustainable. We’re seeing hard choices — fewer programs, delayed repairs and increasing pressure on families already doing their best.

As the Legislature finalizes the state budget, I hope they’ll keep communities like ours in mind. We need more support from the state, not budget caps or policies that send public money elsewhere. Every student deserves a strong education, no matter where they live.

Charles Smith Jr.

Orford

The EFA cost-shift hits NH

I live in Warner, N.H., which is one of the seven towns of School Administrative Unit #65. I recently learned that more than 94 students in the district are now using school vouchers at a total cost to the Kearsarge district of $319,000. These are funds that need to be “replaced” by towns in the district to maintain the current level of our public education institutions. This is an additional cost to taxpayers. The seven towns in SAU 65 will need to make up the lost voucher dollars ($319,000) to maintain the proposed school budget each year. Currently, $27 million statewide has been redirected from schools to vouchers, so the Kearsarge region is not alone in seeing higher taxes as a result of school vouchers. Many towns (19+ to date) have declared opposition to school vouchers, yet they still exist.

Tax dollars are being diverted from school budgets for personal uses that have no oversight. The New York-based Children’s Scholarship Fund oversees the New Hampshire school voucher program and has yet to provide any data on how the funds are being used, any positive outcomes and if the funds are actually being used in New Hampshire. Why the concern? Vouchers can pay for almost anything that resembles education: ski lessons, horseback riding lessons, religious education, private school tuition, summer camp, etc. — all with zero oversight. I need to pay higher taxes so someone else’s child can ski at Pat’s Peak while my neighbor’s child still needs speech therapy that the SAU must provide. Hence the higher taxes; Kearsarge is “down” $319,000.

Warner’s state senator, Dan Innis, has championed the voucher program. He and other Republicans, including the governor, need to be held accountable. The Republican party is working to undermine public education.

Beth Lukaitis

Warner, N.H.

Listening session
on NH budget

Those of us who represent Upper Valley voters in Concord know that constituents have questions about what’s happening at the Statehouse as Gov. Ayotte prepares to enact New Hampshire’s next two-year budget. How will it affect them individually? What are some of the changes coming down the road for our towns and cities? What new policies are being proposed that will have a real impact on the lives of Upper Valley voters when, and if, they are signed into law?

Elected representatives from Lebanon, Hanover/Lyme, Enfield, and Canaan will tackle these questions at a Listening Session from 10 am to noon on Saturday, June 21 at Lebanon’s First Congregational Church. The church is at 10 South Park St., in downtown Lebanon, next to the new fire station.

This is a challenging year on many levels. State revenues are down and investments are being curtailed. Yet we are still in the midst of a housing crisis, more basic services are needed, and a number of legislative proposals, if enacted, would result in sweeping changes in public education, taxation, zoning, local control, and other areas.

There’s a lot to talk about, and we want to hear from you. Please join us on June 21 for this no-holds barred Listening Session at Lebanon’s First Congregational Church.

Laurel Stavis

West Lebanon

The letter also was signed by state Sen. Suzanne Prentiss and state Reps. Susan Almy, George Sykes, Laurel Stavis, Thomas Cormen, Russell Muirhead, Mary Hakken-Phillips, Ellen Rockmore, Terry Spahr, David Fracht and Thomas Oppel.

Writers on death and dying

Before, during and after the recent death of my father, I was helped along by the insights and principles I’d taken from two books: “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Dr. Atul Gawande and “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion.

I strongly recommend these books, especially “Being Mortal,” to anyone who will die one day or who loves someone who will.

I also recommend them particularly to medical professionals. It seemed like many who cared for Dad at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Jack Byrne Center for Palliative & Hospice Care last month had read Dr. Gawande’s book. Or, just as likely, they developed skills as compassionate communicators in difficult medical settings on their own. Either way, it helped us so much. Thank you.

No matter your age, we are all aging. As editors of “The Oldster” often say, “every contributor to this magazine is the oldest they have ever been.” Talk to your loved ones about what matters to you if your time becomes short or you face a tough medical decision.

One more thanks to my friend who lent me “Being Mortal” last year, and to everyone who has been so kind since Dad’s passing, especially to my brother, Charlie, and me. It has meant the world.

Maggie Cassidy

White River Junction

Do not obey in advance

I am writing about your excellent editorial concerning Dartmouth president Sian Beilock’s refusal to sign the open letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities protesting the Trump administration’s attack on higher education (“Dartmouth should join the fight”; May 3). Like your editorial board, I don’t know if her refusal is due to cowardice or a to a directive from a possibly Trump-leaning college board of trustees. Perhaps a combination of both. I cannot improve on your analysis, but I do hope President Beilock reads your editorial and summons the courage to do the right thing. The very first words in Yale professor Timothy Synder’s book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” are “Do not obey in advance.” Sadly president Beilock has done just that. But it’s not too late. If she chooses she can lead Dartmouth into this epic fight against government oppression of higher education.

Thomas Watkin

Bradford, Vt.

A nation of kings

The “No Kings” protests of June 14 are interesting to me. I can’t really figure out what they’re about. Are they statements of concern over what appears on the surface to be the slow death of our supposed democratic republic? Are they protests of support for those being persecuted by Trump’s fascistic and xenophobic policy agenda? Are they simply expressions of frustration given the sheer existential gravity of a society in seeming decline?

Regardless of why people are taking to the streets this time, I would argue that the “No Kings” moniker is a tad ironic. You see, America doesn’t just have one king, it has tens of thousands. These kings roam the halls of Wall Street, populate the digital offices of Palo Alto and Seattle and San Jose; these kings live in the penthouse apartments of the Upper East Side, the beachside homes of Malibu and Santa Monica and the sprawling ranches and ski chalets across the country. These kings drive Teslas and Hummers, dine at the best restaurants and travel the world as first class passengers on their private planes.

Yes, Donald Trump may be a narcissistic madman and an incipient dictator, but he’s only one of myriad kings in a country in which wealth dictates who wins and who loses, who lives and who dies.

Dan Weintraub

White River Junction

A biased view of genocide

The Valley News recently published a Washington Post op-ed, “Why it’s wrong to call Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘genocide’,” that was so terribly biased as to be almost laughable. The authors, Norman Goda and Jeffery Herf, claim that Israeli acts don’t count as genocide because they don’t fit the legal definition. They erroneously claim that the UN Convention on Genocide requires the physical destruction of a population.

In fact, the UN definition includes the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” including by “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The Israeli intent is clear. On May 6, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in speaking about the current Israeli cabinet-approved war escalation plan, declared that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed.” While Goda and Herf recite only the Israeli government arguments over the definition of genocide, a group of independent UN experts concluded last month that the Israeli attacks constitute a “relentless destruction of life in Gaza” and “one of the most ostentatious and merciless manifestations of the desecration of human life and dignity.”

But Goda and Herf don’t stop at definitional quibbles. Although they disavow Israel’s genocidal acts, they gallingly claim that the Palestinians should be the ones accused of genocide since they are responsible for the deaths of their own people, and that those who accuse Israel of genocide are antisemites who “threaten diaspora Jews.” They claim that British and American reports of targeted killings by IDF soldiers of children and journalists are false, while also claiming that Palestinian casualty figures can’t be trusted, despite UN and independent NGO assessments that the figures are under-reported, not exaggerated. If Israel really cared about accurate reporting in Gaza, it would allow international journalists access, rather than barring them from the territory and targeting their Palestinian colleagues.

SCOTT BROWN

Hanover