NH judge finds - once again - state is underfunding education
In a ruling issued Monday in the Rand School funding lawsuit, Rockingham Superior Court Judge David Ruoff found New Hampshire's varying education property tax rate violates Part II, Article 5 of the New Hampshire Constitution — but stopped short of ordering the state to increase funding levels.
Monday's ruling comes less than two months after the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling in the ConVal lawsuit — which upheld the 'minimum, conservative threshold' of $7,356.01 for base adequacy. In both cases, the courts left the question of how to fund New Hampshire schools and how should money be spent on education for state legislators to decide.
Judge Ruoff's ruling in Superior Court involved funding provided by the state for special education services and property tax rates paid to cover that gap.
Zack Sheehan, executive director for the NH School Funding Fairness Project, called Ruoff's ruling a 'huge win for New Hampshire students and taxpayers.'
'The court once again found that the state is failing its constitutional duty,' Sheehan said in a statement. 'The overall adequacy funding levels from the state are unconstitutionally low, special education is severely underfunded, and taxpayers are forced to pay wildly different property tax rates that violate our rights.'
The lawsuit — Steven Rand, et al. v. The State of New Hampshire — focused on the widely varying rates of taxes used to fund schools, a responsibility spelled out in the New Hampshire Constitution and Claremont I (1993) and Claremont II (1997) decisions.
The lawsuit named three plaintiffs who face high burdens to fund schools because their towns have low property values.
For example, plaintiff Steven Rand lives in Plymouth. The town has only $942,600 in property values to fund the education for each one of its students; nearby Waterville Valley has taxes more than five times that value — $5.4 million.
The statewide average is $1.3 million.
Two of the other taxpayers involved in the suit are from Penacook, an incorporated village of Concord.
Robert Gabrielli is a retired physician who owns commercial property in Penacook, while Jessica and Adam Russell also live there. Jessica Russell is an at-large member of the Merrimack Valley School Board.
School property taxes in Penacook were $16.74 per $1,000 of assessed valuation for the 2020-2021 school year; the school taxes for the same year in the rest of Concord were $13.81, the lawsuit said.
Sheehan said Judge Ruoff's ruling differs from the ConVal ruling in two important ways — the Rand suit was brought by taxpayer plaintiffs, not school districts; and the Rand case argued against the levels of special education differentiated aid provided by the state, not just base adequacy.
Plaintiffs argued the low levels of funding from the state result in widely different property tax rates needed to provide an adequate education for our public-school students.
For example, in fiscal 2023, New Castle's school property tax rate was just $0.19 per $1,000 of value — while Brookline's was $14.98.
At the time the lawsuit was filed in 2022, the state provided an additional $2,100 per student for special education services. The plaintiffs proved that evaluations alone averaged $1,667 per student — leaving almost nothing for actual services.
'The math does not lie,' Ruoff wrote.
In 2024, local property taxes funded 83% of special education services. That same year, 70 school districts spent over 25% of their budgets on special education related services, up 10 districts from 2023.
During the trial, plaintiffs presented witnesses who spoke to the inability of school districts to educate their students with only adequacy aid, and the financial realities of running a school district and providing necessary and mandated services to students.
'I said it with the ConVal ruling, and I will say it again: it is past time for the Legislature to act,' Sheehan said. 'What will they do? What is their plan to comply? The Legislature has a duty to fix our school funding system to ensure that every child, regardless of their zip code or family income, has access to a high-quality public education and that taxpayers are treated fairly.'
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