Education funding amendment is an assault on NH's constitution

"If this proposal was to pass, New Hampshire would stand alone in turning its back on the right of every child to an education that prepares him or her for success in life."

January 16, 2004

By Walter Peterson
Board of Directors
Children's Alliance of New Hampshire

For four very important reasons, I urge New Hampshire’s House of Representatives to defeat CACR 2, the constitutional amendment, that says “the Legislature shall have exclusive authority ... to determine, either directly, or through a delegation of power to local school districts, or both, the content, extent, beneficiaries, and level and source of funding of public education.” The vote is scheduled for Jan. 15.

• Passage of this amendment will damage the checks-and-balances system critical to our democracy.
• New Hampshire’s citizens don’t need a voice. They have a megaphone – the ballot box.
• The Legislature has had the authority this amendment purports to seek, and has failed to exercise it.
• Children from disadvantaged communities or families need more educational support and opportunities, not fewer.

I agree with those who have called this proposal an assault on our state constitution. Because the amendment’s backers disagree with a series of N.H. Supreme Court decisions on public education funding, they would ask voters to remove that topic from judicial review.

This is a shortsighted and destructive approach. There is no notion more democratic than that of a government in which the rights of all are preserved and protected by a balance of power among the legislative, executive and judicial branches. The court system is the last refuge of any of us who have been treated unjustly.

Remember, judges retire, legislators and governors eventually move on to other pursuits, and political ideologies rise and fall. Those in power today may be in the minority tomorrow. Those who would remove judicial review of any issue may do well to ask themselves where they will turn when they are treated unfairly, when it is their rights that have been abridged.

CACR 2’s proponents say this amendment will “give the people a voice.” New Hampshire citizens speak – loudly – at the ballot box. We’re not shy about it. Our voting rate runs well above the national average.

Citizens have raised their voices on this topic in other venues too. Eighty-one percent of all voters surveyed this year by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research ranked supporting public schools as very or somewhat important. UNH’s Survey Center has reported that only 16 percent of New Hampshire residents approved solving the education funding dilemma by amending the constitution.

Speaking loudly, however, does not mean speaking with one voice. The reason education funding remains such a divisive issue in New Hampshire is because voters have many varied and strong opinions about how to pay for public schools. Again, our voice has come through loud and clear — and has resulted in a Legislature as divided on the topic as we are.

It is that lack of consensus, more than the Supreme Court’s Claremont decisions, that has some elected leaders feeling so frustrated that they would prefer to shed the issue altogether, under the guise of “letting the people decide.” However, though the Legislature and governor have a menu of revenue and spending options from which to craft a solution, this proposal gives the people only one.

Backers of the constitutional amendment say the Legislature needs the authority to determine state education and funding policy. The Legislature already has that authority. The Supreme Court has not told the state how to fund education, nor at what level. It simply said that “the provision of an adequate education to every New Hampshire child is the constitutionally mandated duty of the state government.”

That duty has proven too heavy for some in the Legislature. CACR 2 is their way of prying it off. It is not authority some legislators seek, but unbridled power.

Passage of this amendment would allow the Legislature to shift responsibility for public education back to local communities — the level of government least able to afford it. This will result in increased property-tax rates in many towns. Worse, it will widen the gap between New Hampshire’s haves and have-nots. Without any state obligation, poorer communities will be less able to provide the same quality education as will wealthy communities.

Education trains people to be good citizens and productive workers. Its absence spawns poverty, crime, substance abuse, economic dependency and the physical and social ills that drive state budgets relentlessly upward. This lack of educational opportunity may over time weaken our state’s workforce, and deter the very businesses we would like to attract.

If this proposal were to pass, New Hampshire would stand alone in turning its back on the right of every child to an education that prepares him or her for success in life. My hope is that CACR 2 will be defeated, as has every previous proposal of its kind.

Walter Peterson, a Peterborough Republican, is a former governor of New Hampshire.