UNKNOWN: 0:01

applause

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

I think that many people don't know that the structure of education funding in New Hampshire is that the state pays less than 30% of the cost of public schools. The federal government pays less than 10%. The question I'm often asked about where does all the lottery money go, 8% of the cost of public schools in New Hampshire comes from the lottery and that's included in the less than 30% that I just stated. So the bottom line is property taxes in communities throughout the state pay 65 to 70% of the cost of our very valuable public schools. We just had another court ruling come out Monday night of this week finding largely against the state saying that we are not meeting our constitutional obligation to adequately fund public schools and as other speakers noted that is most definitely not the first court finding. To date, the legislature has not succeeded at changing the structure of the education funding system to comply with those court rulings. Some of us are trying very, very hard. Others are not in favor of changing the way that it's funded. I encourage you all to reach out to me, to any other representatives or education funding committee members. to get the facts and pay attention to the way your representatives vote because it has become a very partisan issue and we're trying to get a way that all of us come together to approve the funding from the state.

SPEAKER_02: 2:09

You are extremely well-respected. People look to you for the answers. I am looking to you for the answers of what's going on in Claremont today.

SPEAKER_00: 2:20

I would love to say I have the answers, Liz. You do. I think you do. No? Well, I have some perspective. I wouldn't say I have all the answers. The number of people who have messaged since that meeting when I spoke and tried to clarify some things who said I was calming, I was like, Wow. I had no idea that that was what I was doing. I thought I was just providing information. Thank you very much. And then last night on Facebook, someone asked if I am the spokesperson for the Claremont School District. And I did, in fact, laugh out loud because no, but... And no thank you, probably, as well. Right. Dare I say, because there's no money to do so.

SPEAKER_02: 3:35

That's not. Right. Not something to necessarily fund in the school funding situation.

SPEAKER_00: 4:00

Right. which are the nine towns of Ackworth, Langdon, Lemster, Goshen, Washington, Springfield, Sunapee, my hometown of Croydon, and the city of Claremont.

SPEAKER_02: 4:17

You've said that before. I feel like this is not your first

SPEAKER_00: 4:19

time. I have. And I will say, I say it fairly regularly in that slightly random order. It's not alphabetical.

SPEAKER_02: 4:28

You represent the city of Claremont. Something's happening in Claremont right now. And I became aware of it where somebody sort of said it in passing. I was like, oh, can you believe what's going on? in Claremont. And then it took like five seconds to bring up, you know, a recent news article that said there's no money and the schools might need to not open for the fall. So a lot has changed in the last two weeks, in the last week, in the last 24 hours even. We're recording this on Thursday, August 28th. And Representative Damon, you're here because you're like in it. You've been to the meetings, you've been, you know, sharing your perspective. And And in the state house, as a state representative, you serve on the committee that is literally all about education funding. So I start with a simple question to you. What is going on in

SPEAKER_00: 5:21

Claremont? cash flow shortage and a multi-million dollar deficit. The actual amount is yet to be determined, but it's over$5 million. It may approach 10.

SPEAKER_02: 5:49

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

And it probably reflects the last two or three years, but since audits have not been done in a timely fashion, just plain haven't been done, that's part of how we don't know how bad the situation is. But it came to a crisis point three weeks ago. because the school board informed the community that they didn't know if schools could open because they haven't paid their debts and they didn't know if they would be able to meet payroll. They have not paid the state retirement system or school care, which is the health insurance program for the staff, and have many vendors that they're in debt to. And it just reached this critical point. And we are a state that has a constitutional requirement for an adequate education to be provided to all K-12 students. So the very idea that a school district could say, we don't know if we can open schools, this is unprecedented territory. It has never happened in New Hampshire. There have been school districts in financial distress and in debt, but not to this level. So that's the short version of it. Schools did open today. So freshmen at the high school and new students went back to school and everybody goes back Well, all the students go back to school tomorrow. Not all the staff goes back because there have been very significant cuts.

SPEAKER_02: 7:17

The meetings that I have watched have included a really wide variety of people getting up to the microphone for public comment and sharing their perspectives at different stages of this process. As you said, this really came to light three weeks ago, at least to the public's wide awareness. And in each meeting that has followed, there's been maybe more and more people. At least that's how it's felt from an outsider perspective. The people who've shared public comment have been staff members, teachers, coaches, community members, parents, and students themselves. You've also shared public comment each time. What has been most surprising to you in the last three weeks?

SPEAKER_00: 8:06

That's a great question. Let me paint a bit of a picture. people do watch the live streams, but as is not atypical, essentially very few people present for a school board meeting, which I think is true in most communities across the state unless you've had a crisis or are having a crisis.

SPEAKER_02: 8:51

And true for not just school board, but select board meetings, budget recommendations committee, like all those local committees. Typically there's really nobody in the room but the people who are serving.

SPEAKER_00: 9:02

People are leaving it up to elected officials to do their job until that's not what's happening. So So a week later, the auditorium at Stevens High School was standing room only, I believe it holds 500 people, and it opens to the gymnasium, which had a large number, largely students, in their athletic uniforms and in distress. So we went from people are not particularly paying attention, certainly not present in person, to an outpouring of community concern, passion, worry, fear, anger, the whole gamut of So I think that is one of the very visible takeaways that the community is extremely concerned, as one would expect, and participating. The second observation I would make is that largely both of the very vigorously attended public meetings have been civil. In fact, there's been a lot of compliments to the schools. There have been mixed feedback to the board and administrators, but it has not been 100% negative. There are people who are angry and there were a few outbursts on Monday night this week, but largely very, very concerned, very, very upset, but a very civil process. And honestly, going into the first meeting, I'm not sure that I was confident that would be the case. Claremont has really shown itself to be a community, to be a community that cares deeply about the well-being of their kids and their school staff. And to show up and say so they're also really really impatient to know how the heck did we get here because this should never have happened

SPEAKER_02: 10:47

i wrote down some notes of folks you know as i was watching the recordings and the passion and love for the schools and for the district and for the community just comes across over and over again every student who got up there which is so incredible that students are getting up to the microphone in front of hundreds of people just pouring their hearts out. And every single student was essentially saying, please open our schools and please make sure that I can graduate or make sure that I can get the classes I need. Please put sports back on the table. They want their school. They want their schools and they care deeply about their schools. So that came across over and over again. But that question of like, how did they get here? How did they get here? How did this So

SPEAKER_00: 11:39

before I try to answer that to the degree that we have some knowledge but not complete at all. And the messaging of the last several plus years from people who want to create distrust in public schools and devalue them and create fear that weird things are happening in schools that are not happening there are wrong. The vast majority of New Hampshire kids go to public schools and succeed and do well and have people in the schools who care deeply about education for all children. And to hear the students support Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 13:08

That is a testament to the strength of public schools and to the families. That is a testament to the great work that happens in the actual community.

SPEAKER_00: 13:18

I think that's absolutely true. And I think it's important to note that there were students who are on a higher education college-bound track, and there were students speaking who are probably not on that track. And they all spoke effectively and from the heart and from their positive experiences. And it really is quite extraordinary in that regard.

SPEAKER_02: 13:40

I am biased as a former high school teacher that when I see high school students doing the things that I'm like, you are just crushing it. And you shouldn't have to be in this situation to start with. But whether they're going on to college or community college or the military or a job, you could just tell from those rooms and from those meetings that the students care deeply about their school and the community cares deeply about them. And that comes across. And so So I will just say that I am a bit frustrated to hear folks outside of Claremont speak ill of the school or the school district or whatever. Because I'm like, you're not even from there. You can't speak badly about a community that you're not even from. But let's set that aside for maybe later. Or not. Let's dig in. I'm very frustrated by people who...

SPEAKER_00: 14:33

Make judgment?

SPEAKER_02: 14:34

Yeah. I mean, I love making judgments about things. I am all about judging. things, but not school districts and school communities like that. Definitely not.

SPEAKER_00: 14:43

It's a deal breaker for me. Claremont is a old mill town that is recovering from the transition from mills and industry to technology and service and tourism. And the former mayor, Charlene Lovett, would describe Claremont just a few years ago as a city on the rise, which I think it is. You know, the old mill buildings are being redeveloped. The city has some gorgeous landscape. There's a fabulous effort to create it as a mountain biking destination. There's a lot going on. But outside of Claremont, I think the reputation of the community is of a less than successful, not economically thriving community. And so I think probably when people hear about this school situation, folks outside the community are hearing about it and layering it onto that incomplete or wrong perspective. I really have come to love Claremont so much. So much in my almost three years as a rep. It's a really wonderful place. So how did we get here? decades. And then we layer on top of that profound financial mismanagement and we layer on lack of supervision is not the right word, what am I looking for here? Oversight. Oversight, thank you. From the State Department of Education under the prior Commissioner of Education departed Mr. Adel Bluth, who put all his energy Reverse shout out. Right? Put all his energy or most of it into where can we educate kids outside of public school? Let's give voucher money to affluent families so their children can continue to attend the schools they already were attending, the families we're paying for.

SPEAKER_02: 16:51

And what you're alluding to is the school vouchers, education freedom accounts. There's a few episodes ago with Christina Pretorius where we talk about the majority of people who are getting those school vouchers are already in private schools. And now those are available to the wealthy No, that's

SPEAKER_00: 17:15

totally fine. And I would add into that, if you're not an affluent person, the voucher is not enough money to allow a lower income or middle class family to send their child to many schools that require tuition. You wouldn't be able to do it unless that school is heavily discounting, which they might be, some are. to achieve, take in the voucher money. But for the most part, it's funding well-to-do families. The voucher program is full. The Sullivan County GOP was marketing to Claremont families during the first school board meeting that they should sign up for vouchers and pull their kids out of the quote-unquote failing Claremont public schools without acknowledging that the program is full and has a wait list. So that doesn't make a lot of sense

SPEAKER_02: 18:08

they were doing that outreach during the first meeting when the announcement is coming out schools the school might not be able to open they're saying take your kids somewhere else correct

SPEAKER_00: 18:21

yeah a lengthy well-written document with some background that was not completely accurate at the time that it was written it said that there had been massive layoffs and at that point there had not been any layoffs there now have been significant layoffs and you know promoting family educating their kids outside the school system before we even knew what the impacts of this crisis would be on the quality of education.

SPEAKER_02: 18:46

Fast forward a

SPEAKER_00: 18:47

week later. They have a mission.

SPEAKER_02: 18:50

Fast forward to a week later when the families and students are in the meeting saying, we want our public school to open. We want to go to our schools.

SPEAKER_00: 19:02

Yeah. So schools are open, but 19 newly hired students faculty, their contracts were rescinded when they were already participating in orientation last week. And on Monday night of this week, 20 more positions were terminated, ranging from very needed custodians to behavior modification specialists, a whole variety of different kinds of necessary support staff.

SPEAKER_02: 19:34

All sorts of folks who make a school function

SPEAKER_00: 19:38

They make it function. They make it safe. They make it clean. Yep. And I do want to acknowledge that the school board has faced untenable decisions. What are you supposed to do when you simply don't have enough resources and you do want to open the school doors? So they've made very tough decisions in order to be able to open school. Right. And I don't want to ignore that reality. I don't envy them their challenge in the slightest. Right. And And we never should have let Claremont get to this place.

SPEAKER_02: 20:11

They had to make extremely difficult decisions, which is what their job is at this point as school board members. They have to make those tough decisions. And also, those decisions shouldn't have had to be made for other reasons.

SPEAKER_00: 20:25

Exactly. But if we had appropriate oversight at the state level, which most states do, when the school district wasn't completing audits in a timely manner the state would have been on the school district to find out what the problems were was it staffing was it incompetence was it negligence whatever to help the school district get up to speed so that they knew what their financial status was and it could be addressed and it's very interesting to me that we do that with charter schools in new hampshire charter schools are public schools but they operate under different governing structure and just the Yeah. Yeah. And now the school is open. It's doing very well. I think they're actually grateful that they've come through this and they're stronger than they were before. So if we can do that for a school that's educating 40 students, why on earth don't we have state oversight for the financial management and auditing of a school district that educates 1,700 students? I am pretty perplexed that we don't have this already in our operating practice. Well,

SPEAKER_02: 22:08

and I think it's, you know, the way that you described it about the charter school is seeing that there is a need for support. There's something is not going sort of up to standard. Something has gone wrong or they need direct support. And the Department of Education can come in and say, we have resources to help you. We want you to have a successful school. We are here to help you get to that level. And so it's not we're coming in and we're going to threaten you and bully you. But it's really about what is the philosophy of our State Department of Education? How can a State Department support the different schools to be as successful as they can be? And as I think I'm hearing you say, they were able to do that with the charter school, which is great, which is how it should be, but they aren't doing that with Claremont, the neighborhood schools, the school district overall.

SPEAKER_00: 23:05

Correct. And I think it is important to inform that we asked Department of Revenue and Administration for a list of schools that have not submitted audits to them because the schools are, by statute, supposed to submit audits to DRA. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 23:23

So

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

that is

SPEAKER_02: 23:23

already something that is a requirement.

SPEAKER_00: 23:25

You know, the statutes are kind of muddy. In one place it says that school districts may... Our laws? Right? So in one place it says districts may do an audit. which means you don't have to do an audit. You can choose to. May, which is like a wink. And in another place, in the municipal part of the statutes, it says that municipalities will do an audit and submit it to DRA, and school districts are considered one of the entities that are defined as a municipality. I learned this week. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_02: 23:58

Cue the more you know banner.

SPEAKER_00: 24:00

Be a state rep. You can learn so much. You will, every day. So DRA tells us, and they provide us, in a very efficient fashion, thank you, a list for each of the last three academic years of the districts that have not submitted audits. And they carefully acknowledge that not submitting an audit doesn't mean you didn't do one. It might mean you just failed to submit it. So we have some homework to do to find out which is which. But there are a lot of districts that have not submitted audits for the last academic year. And when you go back to 2023, Claremont is one of a dozen districts that have not submitted audits to DRA. Seeing that yesterday, for me, it was a validation of what I've been saying, which is that any district is vulnerable to what has happened in Claremont. If you didn't hire the right business administrator, if you didn't have adequate oversight of that business administrator's work and you didn't have timely reporting and you had marginal funding to begin with, which is almost every district in the state of New Hampshire for that last category, You're just one additional massive expense away from this happening. Heaven forbid your roof collapses. People with children who have more significant special needs move into the district and your special education costs become much greater than you budgeted. Any number of variables could mean that you don't have the dollars you need. And if you already didn't have financial oversight and adequate accounting, then what? Where's the next

SPEAKER_02: 25:40

Claremont?

SPEAKER_00: 26:07

I am very frustrated by that reality. Most states do have statute that offers some approaches, and I will very definitely be bringing some legislation forward so that hopefully we will succeed at putting some statute in New Hampshire. Let's try to prevent this from happening in the future, but we also should be prepared to help other districts more effectively than what has happened so far. That said, I did receive notice this afternoon of a meeting next Tuesday at which the Commissioner of Education is intending to report on what the state might be doing to help Claremont. So I wish that meeting was now. But that's good that there's going to be some further conversation. I have absolutely no doubt that our new Commissioner of Education, Caitlin Davis, cares about public schools and wants students to thrive in whatever setting they are learning in. And really has had this big crisis fall in her lap when she's about a month into the job. So, you know, here you are, go to work. And at the same time, it is urgent that we address this immediately for Claremont. School's open, but nobody knows how long it can stay open without adequate funding.

SPEAKER_02: 28:01

Can we talk about that phrase of adequate funding more broadly a little bit?

UNKNOWN: 28:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 28:09

Sure. We don't have to. We can definitely talk about adequate funding.

SPEAKER_02: 28:16

Because that word Claremont, that location, people were to look it up on the old internets. It's a pretty important city in terms of school funding overall. Like this didn't come out of nowhere. This is something that has been happening for decades.

SPEAKER_00: 28:33

It's kind of ironic that the first school system in New Hampshire to have this level of fiscal crisis. Mm-hmm. And in both cases, the court again said the state is not meeting its constitutional obligation to adequately fund education. So just not to get in the weeds, but when I explained this in Claremont last week, and every time I explain it somewhere, I'm very aware there are a lot of people who don't know. So in New Hampshire, the state pays less than 30% of the cost of public schools. That includes about 8% of the cost of public schools comes from the state. from the lottery. People think that the lottery pays for public schools. A little bit, that's true. Not on the grand scale. There's a little bit of funding from the federal government, 8 to 10 percent. Not what they're supposed to do by statute, because we've had IDEA, the law that mandated special education to be the quality that it should be. It's now 50 years old. The federal government was supposed to pay for that. They never have fully paid. They pay less and less, basically, leaving it to the states. who are now leaving it to local districts. So we end up with somewhere between 65% and 70%, two-thirds of the cost of public education is paid by local taxpayers through their property taxes. And we live in communities that vary tremendously in the tax base. So if you live in a community like Claremont that doesn't have a large, abundant tax base, you have a high tax rate in order to raise enough money for your public schools People are already paying a very uncomfortable amount of taxes versus a community that has a lake or a mountain or a seashore or other depth of wealth so that the tax rate is low but they raise more money per student, a lot more money per student, than the Claremonts and the Newports and the Manchesters and the Rochesters and the Franklins and the Berlins. This is not a system that makes any sense. Our kids are going to get educated wherever they live and then they're going to go out in the world and be with the rest of the world when we do a great job educating kids in one town and the town next door doesn't have enough money to do it as well that isn't fair to either of those sets of kids and as someone said in a meeting I was in today I want public education to educate all the kids because I'm getting old and all the people who take care of me and provide me services are getting old and retiring and I need educated people to replace them right rant over

SPEAKER_02: 31:39

No, I think rant just gearing up, frankly. I think we're just ramping up. The court cases, as you said, over and over again, have said, New Hampshire State, you are not doing your job of funding schools equitably, fairly, in a way that is not significantly making it harder for Claremont to be able to fund their schools versus, I'll use my own town, Exxon. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 32:39

So when the Conval ruling came out on July 2nd, and WMUR asked Jason Osborne, the majority leader, what his party was going to do about the ruling, he had a one-word answer. He said, nothing. And the governor's remark on the Conval case was the court got it wrong. So the majority part of the legislature is not interested in fixing education funding. And I think it's important to note that collectively in New Hampshire we raise enough money for schools. If you put together all the property taxes that go to public education throughout the state with the other funding sources, we raise enough money. We just don't distribute it fairly. We don't help it work for people in property-poor towns. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_02: 33:33

Because we make it a local issue. We say, you community, you've got to figure it out by yourselves. That is how our school funding structure really is. It is reliant entirely on your community. The state's portion of how the state pays for it, how it raises the money to give to the towns and cities in large part comes from property taxes. That is also where the state's portion comes from. It is also from Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 34:11

And property taxes are a regressive form of taxation. you are working extremely hard. I think that there is a myth that low-income people are not trying enough. Sure, are there some people that that applies to? Of course. But the vast majority of people who need more support from government services are trying very, very hard to be self-sufficient. But they're not working in occupations that pay a living wage. We don't have a livable minimum wage in New Hampshire. None even close

SPEAKER_02: 35:10

$7.25 is our minimum wage I just talked about that with Christine Stoddard on the episode about Medicaid$7.25 which

SPEAKER_00: 35:20

is wild it's just incomprehensible yeah and even if you account for the fact that sure lots of businesses pay more than that in order to try to have enough employees sure they're not paying a livable wage it

SPEAKER_02: 35:33

costs a lot to live in New Hampshire spoiler alert everyone it costs a lot to live in New Hampshire it costs a lot to So this is how we got into this mess. It's like this decades of inequitable funding. It sounds like some folks who are in the majority in the statehouse are saying they're going to do nothing to change what's happening right now. What is your response to that?

SPEAKER_00: 35:59

You know, in life, I really always have been a person who leads with compassion and kindness and tries to think what it's like to be in somebody else's shoes. I didn't grow up affluent. I grew up lower middle class, but in an intact, hardworking family with great values. I've been very fortunate in my adult life to live a very comfortable life, work hard, have a great husband who worked hard also, enjoy raising our kids. The reality to me that people of means would think that they don't need to share their well-being with people who are not of means. It's just not a value system I can understand. We are incredibly short-sighted as a state when we don't adequately fund public education. We are sending our kids out of state because we've made higher education here not accessible by not funding it. When our teenage People graduate from high school and go out of state for college. Most of them do not come back here to live. So we get older and older with fewer and fewer young people to create the environments and provide the work and the services that we need. It does not make any sense. How is a society going to thrive if we all just get old and there's no new energy from young people to come in? We have to look at investing in public education as exactly that, as an investment that we must do, not only on behalf of the kids who are in public school, but on behalf of our broader society. We need nurses. We need electricians. We need plumbers. We need capable highway road crew. We need every level. Firefighters. We need all sorts of folks for our communities. Police people, safety people. All the things that make us run, that make us safe, that make us be able to enjoy going out to eat a meal. And when we don't adequately fund public education, we are saying that those things don't matter because we're saying you can't be here. We don't have a place for you. We're making it unaffordable by relying on property taxes for all All those hardworking people to live here. And we could go off on the influence of housing, which I won't do, but that's a variable as well, housing and childcare.

SPEAKER_02: 38:48

Housing and childcare, huge issues.

SPEAKER_00: 38:51

It's the triad, housing, childcare, education. So we have to look at how do we equitably fund education and make it happen. And we can. It is not impossible to do that. If

SPEAKER_02: 39:07

people care about their property. Yes. The avenue

SPEAKER_00: 39:17

to controlling local property taxes, maybe not the sole, but the most important avenue by far, the most impact, is to increase state funding of education. That's the driver of local property taxes more than anything else.

SPEAKER_02: 39:36

Every time the state doesn't fund something doesn't take the responsibility to fund something it still needs to get done and then it gets pushed to the local level i talked about that with christine in terms of medicaid but health insurance and coverage and things like that if you take away programs at the state level if the state lawmakers and i know you're a state lawmaker but if a majority of state lawmakers say we are not going to send funding to that typically those things still need to happen and And so then it falls on the local communities. And that is what has happened

SPEAKER_00: 40:14

with school funding. You can only squeeze so

SPEAKER_02: 40:42

much, and Claremont has been squeezed already.

SPEAKER_00: 40:47

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 40:48

By the state. The state has been the one doing the squeezing already. Yeah. So what can you do as a state lawmaker representative? What is something that state reps can do? What can y'all do?

SPEAKER_00: 41:00

One, we will bring forward legislation, and I believe it will be bipartisan legislation. Okay, I'd love to hear it. that not only do districts need to do audits on an annual basis, hopefully we can make it so they need to do them before they start the budget cycle for the next year, so that budgets can be built on the facts and the information of the audit of where the district stands, and that that legislation will ask both DRA and the Department of Education to review those audits, and if a So that's one. to all communities so that the zip code of the child does not determine what kind of funding there is for their public education. We have to do that.

SPEAKER_02: 42:18

I hear that phrase about the zip code that you're from. And some folks who maybe aren't the biggest fans of public schools or would prefer to allow some families to access schools that others are not able to They might say, well, Representative Damon, we should let students choose whatever school they want in the whole state to go to. And that would solve the problem of not being from a certain zip code. Just let the students and families choose whatever school they want to go to. They should be allowed to go there. What do you think about that as a policy solution?

SPEAKER_00: 43:02

I think it's another measure by the folks who want to close public schools. It's the by a thousand cuts. Because if you are a thriving school district neighboring a not financially thriving school district, it's not all about money, but the majority of quality districts are well funded. So if what you've just described, open enrollment for public schools, if that were put in place, families who have the capacity to get their children to the affluent successful school district will do that. Families who do not have that capacity, which are many, their children will remain in the less funded school district. And that district will become even less funded because to the degree that we have state adequacy aid, it's a per pupil amount. So if you have less pupils, you get less money. On the surface, you might think that makes sense, except the cost of it education isn't just per pupil it's what are the facilities in addition unless that effort for open enrollment were to require the receiving school districts to take all students what will happen is they will be selective and they aren't going to choose the students who have greater needs they're going to choose the students that are less costly to educate leaving the sending district the less economically thriving community with the students who cost the most to educate. So I do not believe that open enrollment is a solution. I think it's actually a haves and have-nots. It's aggravating the inequities that we already have.

SPEAKER_02: 44:55

We should probably talk about the cost of special education, since that is one of the topics that's been brought up in the Claremont meetings. And I have appreciated a lot of the folks who've spoken to it and have said, we are not blaming students who need special education services, but that's a reality that there are costs associated with providing those services. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how does special education funding factor into what's happening in Claremont and what's happening overall in our state?

SPEAKER_00: 45:33

Special education funding is a significant challenge for most districts throughout the state, and I think That's true whether you're a not very well-funded district or a more well-funded district. The state pays less than the cost of special education. So for the children who have the highest level of need, the most expensive educational services... the state is supposed to pay 100% of what the district informs them is needed for those students. And they're paying for the prior year for services that have already been paid for and expensed. And for many years, the state has prorated that. So this year's payment from the state for those services was 67% of what districts spent. So that is a major gap in funding. If you thought, as the law says, that you would 100% of the funding for those particularly challenged students, and you got 67%, that is hundreds of thousands of dollars of difference in what the community is receiving. That's one category. That's not a lot of students, but it's a lot of impact. And then there's a category of students, which is probably most of the children who receive special education services, that the state provides what's called differentiated aid. So in addition to the base amount of education funding from the state, there is a$2,100 stipend for students who need special education services. In the Rand case that just came out last week from the Superior Court, the judge said math doesn't lie and acknowledged that since it costs about$1,600 a year to properly assess and create the plan of education for a special ed student, if we only provide$2,100 from the state,$1,600 gets used for assessment, that leaves$500 for services. It doesn't work. The math is completely inadequate. And so districts are forced to pick up those additional costs because we are mandated by federal law to provide adequate special education services, which we should be doing. Which we should. That's

SPEAKER_02: 47:54

how

SPEAKER_00: 47:55

it should be, yeah. It is further complicated by the reality that there are many more children who are receiving and needing special education services in recent years than there were decades past. And that is partly because we know a lot more about how children learn and what will help them to thrive and succeed. So we have more kids in special ed. We know more about how to help those kids in special ed, but it's costly. It just is. And

SPEAKER_02: 48:26

public schools, our Right. put my child on a laptop. That's not going to work. And that's true for so many families.

SPEAKER_00: 49:07

I so appreciate you highlighting that. Public schools welcome and do their level best to provide a quality education for every single student, starting from the baseline that they're at, whatever their background is, whatever their family environment is, whatever their IQ is. Let's help this child to thrive and learn as best they can in the way that they best succeed. And every other educational setting can choose which students they enroll. They can choose whether they take special ed students. They often do not. They can choose whether they take students whose gender identity is fluid. They can choose whether they take young kids or older kids. I mean, they can just choose their students. And they do.

SPEAKER_02: 49:58

They could have a testing requirement of... Right.

SPEAKER_00: 50:03

Yep. Exactly. services. And we don't ask for accountability from those entities. Public schools have to measure what the outcomes for their students are. Are they perfect? No. Better than people perceive them to be, the people who are critical, that is. But the other settings aren't even having to assess in any comprehensive, consistent way, what's the outcome for the kids with education freedom accounts? They could thriving, but we don't know. And we're spending taxpayer money not knowing what the outcome is.

SPEAKER_02: 51:09

This gets back to your earlier point about oversight and knowing what's happening. And it sounds like the Education Freedom Accounts does not have that same oversight that is being asked of from charter schools, from neighborhood schools. That's not being met in that same way.

SPEAKER_00: 51:27

That is correct, Liz.

SPEAKER_02: 51:29

I know that the majority majority of lawmakers have been really supportive of the education freedom accounts are they making sure that there is oversight so that they can prove their point that look this is a good thing

SPEAKER_00: 51:41

not yet not yet you would think for a party that claims to be about fiscal responsibility that the republicans would want oversight and accountability for the outcomes from the education freedom account program and we have brought a number of pieces of legislation legislation forward that have not passed to try to create that accountability. And also to try to affirm safety for kids, like background checks. It just seems to be like, here's your money. Go have a good time. Maybe buy yourself a ski lift ticket. I mean, not yourself, but your kid a ski lift ticket. You know, go do whatever you want with the money. Here it is. There have

SPEAKER_02: 52:22

been some bills introduced that have been voted down that would have provided oversight and accountability. Those haven't happened.

SPEAKER_00: 52:30

And And there is currently an audit of the Education Freedom Account program in process through the Legislative Budget Assistant Office. And it has been very difficult for those diligent folks to do this performance audit because they have not been able to obtain all the information that they need from the Department of Education. Because under the prior commissioner, he believed that the private company that administers Education Freedom Accounts deserve protection of this information, which is, it doesn't make any sense at all. It's a state of New Hampshire contract. You need to tell us what you're doing with our money.

SPEAKER_02: 53:08

That's very, it's an interesting argument to have been made. I

SPEAKER_00: 53:14

hope that argument is over with the change in commissioners.

SPEAKER_02: 53:17

We will perhaps see.

SPEAKER_00: 53:20

We might.

SPEAKER_02: 53:21

I cannot believe that I didn't ask you about Croydon. What am I doing here? What am I even doing here that I haven't asked you about Croydon? How did the, so I have already drafted for my show notes, the This American Life episode that had the story about Croydon. You have firsthand knowledge from that because you live in Croydon, right? Am I right that you're from Croydon?

SPEAKER_00: 53:45

I live in Croydon. You live in Croydon. For 38 or nine years. For a little bit. You've lived there. And Croydon is how I became a state rep because after the 53% cut in our school budget, which was initiated by freestaters on the floor, of a poorly attended school district meeting. Their motion to cut the budget passed by a vote of 20 to 14. The community was shocked.

SPEAKER_02: 54:09

20 to zero to 14, one four. Yes. Oof, boy oh

SPEAKER_00: 54:14

boy. We're a little town, but that was in fact a particularly poorly attended meeting. Yes, yes. The community was shocked, to put it mildly, and it was a truly extraordinary grassroots experience to be one of the leaders of a very collaborative group of people who might otherwise be pretty dissimilar politically and in various values, but who did not want our school system to fail. New Hampshire has a statute that allows a re-vote on a budget issue. You have to get two-thirds of the number of voters on the registered voter list on the day of the original vote to show up for the meeting. And then you have to get a majority vote of those people. It's a very high bar. Very high bar. Not normally show up to vote. We had a seven weeks grassroots campaign in the spring of 22, and the revote was 377 to 2. So clearly the community wanted the school to thrive and to be there. It made me and many others very, very aware that if you don't show up, if you don't participate, things can happen that are not what you wanted to happen. And when you do show up and participate, good things can happen. It also made me acutely aware of the Free State Party's belief that no government services should be They are intent on dismantling government and having individuals and families provide for the needs. So they would have every family educate their kids or educate their kids with other families, but not any structured government entity. And we now have at the state house, many, many free state elected people. And they have really taken over the Republican Party. And that party, the voting is driven by what the free staters want to happen or what they want to happen. don't want to happen. I don't for a single minute believe that all of the Republican voters out there on Main Street in Claremont or any community want their public schools to go away. But the freestaters and the elected Republicans are voting in that direction regularly. So if there's another takeaway, it's that people would be well served to know how their representatives vote and to be very deliberate about who you elect. so that you elect people who actually represent what you truly want to happen in your community.

SPEAKER_02: 56:36

So why should I care about what's happening in Claremont when I live all the way on the other side of the state? I'm all the way over in Exeter. Why should this matter to me? Besides that I have this podcast and I have you on it. But why should people maybe who live in Exeter who are not on this podcast, why should we care about what's happening in Claremont?

SPEAKER_00: 56:55

So people across the state should care about public education in every community regardless of what whether it's your neighboring community. Because public education is for the greater good of the society, and because when we don't adequately fund education in one community, the state as a whole is harmed. And because, in fact, based on the number of districts that haven't filed audits, your district could be next. And then would you think that maybe the state should be helpful and the structure should be different? Probably. We need to look through a bigger... A bigger lens, a bigger heart at meeting everybody's basic needs, including a quality, adequate public education for every kid.

SPEAKER_02: 57:39

Matt and I talked about a thing to do is get involved in your own committees in your own town. Run for school board. Run for select board. Run for city council. But there's also subcommittees. Join the budget committee. And yeah, get to know your state lawmakers and how they vote on the things you care about. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 58:00

Yeah. And even if you're not running, listen to the meetings. Show up or do it if it's live streamed. Know what decisions are being made in your community.

SPEAKER_02: 58:10

Put it on in the background while you do other things. You're washing the dishes, put on the meeting, and just have it running. You don't have to watch it. There's nothing really to see.

SPEAKER_00: 58:21

It's just to hear. You can't leave it up to everybody else.

SPEAKER_02: 58:25

Yeah. And that's what you saw in Croydon. When folks show up, it makes a huge difference. And when they don't, it could have been extremely detrimental for

SPEAKER_00: 58:34

sure.

SPEAKER_02: 58:35

Representative Damon, thank you so much for coming on my little podcast and talking about Claremont and what's going on. Thank

SPEAKER_00: 58:43

you so much for the opportunity, Liz. Thank you for your hard work to help people have a clearer understanding of the issues in New Hampshire.

SPEAKER_02: 58:54

There are a few.

SPEAKER_00: 58:55

There's a lot of issues and there's not enough journalism that's honestly and accurately reporting them. So kudos for you to stepping up and doing this.

SPEAKER_02: 59:03

I've got a little microphone. I've got a pencil. I've got a podcast. That's what I've got. That's all I've got. Thank you for listening to New Hampshire Has Issues. If you would like to support the show, visit patreon.com slash nh has issues. If you have an idea for a show, send me an email at newhampshirehasissues at gmail.com. New episodes on Tuesdays. I'll see you next week.