Everything you need to know about New Hampshire politics you can learn from the Concord school board.
This week, the Concord Board of Education unanimously approved a $111.5 million budget, the Concord Monitor reports, and members patted themselves on the back for their fiscal conservatism.
“I commend the administration’s work for coming in with a budget that is under 3 percent growth, given a lot of increased costs and a reduction in state funding,” board President Pamela Walsh said.
How did these belt-tightening board members cut spending to the bone? “By a one-vote margin, the board decided against adding a school resource officer at the middle school,” according to the Monitor.
Leaving middle-school kids without a campus cop is a tough call, but these are tough times.
Ah, but not too tough. The board voted to hire a Restorative Justice Coordinator at the middle school. And while it isn’t spending $137,000 for a Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice now, members are confident they’ll be spending it next year.
“As one of the folks in this group that has been very outspoken about anti-racism in the school district, I trust this administration’s commitment to DEIJB,” board member Sarah Robinson said.
Well.
First, it’s no surprise that the progressives who run New Hampshire’s capital city are spending top dollar on DEI. Earlier this year, they spent $40,000 on a “DEI consultant” best known for running “Cash Cow Consulting,” a get-rich-quick seminar.
Second, progressives don’t spend money on cops if they can help it. Just five years ago, they were chanting “Defund The Police” and pushing new bail laws to keep people accused of violent crimes out of jail. The premise of the “restorative justice” movement they’re funding is that sending criminals to jail is almost always wrong and should be avoided if possible.
But the most “chef’s kiss” moment in this budget story is the math.
The first rule of journalism is “always drink for free.” But the second — and almost as important — rule is, “nothing is good or bad except by comparison.”
Is $110 million to run Concord’s public schools for a year a good deal, or a bad one? Are they spending too much? Not enough?
You can read the news coverage of this budget, you can watch every TV report, and you’ll have no idea. Because the one thing the New Hampshire media will never include in a news story about school spending is context.
This is context:
In 2001, there were 5,564 students in the Concord public school system, and taxpayers were charged $61.6 million to educate them.
Today, there are just 3,832 students, and the Concord school board is popping the champagne because they’re only charging $110.5 million to run the schools.
Or put another way, the number of students went down 31 percent, but the price taxpayers are being charged went up 45 percent.
The result is $29,100 per student.
More context: That’s about twice as much as the cost of tuition at Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua — the highest ranking Catholic school in the state.
Yes, it’s true that inflation-adjusted $61 million gets close to Concord’s current budget, but that assumes they are teaching the same number of students. It’s not even close. A third of the enrollment is gone, but the spending goes on.
Concord homeowners who can do math (perhaps they avoided public school?) might look at this “kids are leaving, costs are rising” data and do some thinking about their sky-high property tax bill. In New Hampshire, local taxes pay the bulk of education costs. If you’re spending $110 million to teach just 3,800 kids for 180 days, chances are you’re going to feel it in your property tax.
New Hampshire consistently ranks in the top five for property taxes in the U.S. And it’s not just because of Concord.
The Monitor’s headline out of Penacook this week is “Merrimack Valley schools to eliminate 21 positions, lay off up to 3 employees.” It’s the tragic fallout from the previous Monitor story: “Effort to cut $2 million from Merrimack Valley schools budget succeeds, plunging district into uncertainty.”
Oh, no! They cut $2 million! Teachers are being laid off! Those MAGA radicals strike again!
Uh, no. Read carefully: “A $2 million reduction to the district’s proposed budget.” The district asked for about $3 million in higher spending. They got a $1 million increase. That is what the people spending your property taxes call a “cut.”
There was a similar story in Portsmouth, where the “cuts” involved spending more money than the year before.
And what do all of these school districts have in common? Fewer students, higher spending, and angry property tax payers,
They also have Democratic state legislators claiming — falsely — that it’s the state’s fault, that evil Republicans have given away so much money with lower business tax rates and Education Freedom Accounts, there isn’t enough state funding for local schools.
In fact, the state spent more money per pupil on public schools in the last biennium than any budget in history. And it did the same the biennium before. State funding to schools and towns is at an all-time high.
Pamela Walsh’s claim of a “reduction in state funding” is a bald-faced lie. But since nearly every New Hampshire Democrat is telling it, and the media won’t fact-check it, what’s the problem?
The taxpayer beatings will continue until their math skills improve.
