The Portsmouth Herald ran an attention-grabbing headline Tuesday: “Portsmouth teachers warned of layoffs in budget crunch.”
But is it true? As President Bill Clinton might say, it depends on what your definition of “crunch” is.
Yes, teachers like Brennan Lynch, “a seventh-grade math teacher at Portsmouth Middle School,” have been told they may be written out of next year’s budget. And if you lose your job due to “budget cuts,” that will no doubt feel like a “crunch” for you.
“Over the past month, I’ve been trying to kind of prepare myself for this possibility,” Lynch told the Herald, adding that getting an email saying her job could be cut “was pretty upsetting. I actually had to leave the teaching day to compose myself.”
But like the old line about a recession being when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours, personal perspective isn’t always the best economic indicator.
And here’s what’s really going on in Portsmouth public schools: They are spending more and more money to teach fewer and fewer students.
In 2001, the Portsmouth school district had 2,706 students and was spending $42.8 million educating them.
In 2019, enrollment slipped to 2,676 students, but taxpayers spent $10 million more ($52.6 million) on schools, a per-pupil spending number of $19,657.
And according to the New Hampshire Department of Education, by 2024 Portsmouth’s enrollment was down to 2,428 while per pupil spending had surged to $25,488.
Does that sound like a spending “crunch?”
The math puzzles don’t end there.
According to the same Herald report, the Portsmouth City Council’s budget calls for an increase of 2.9 percent. It quotes Zach McLaughlin, superintendent of Portsmouth schools, as saying the nearly three percent spending hike could cause “the largest set of layoffs in a long stretch of time.”
Portsmouth School Board chairperson Nancy Clayburgh echoed that view.
“We’ve got to look at this closely. We’ve asked to come in at 2.9 percent (increase), which is a huge budget cut for us,” Clayburgh said.
In the world of people not using taxpayer dollars, spending more money isn’t a cut. It’s an increase. But because the Portsmouth schools had planned to spend about five percent more but is now spending just three percent more, it’s the seacoast version of “Death by DOGE” for government workers.
And once again — this is all to teach fewer students. And with a record amount of state funding, too.
In the last biennium, lawmakers sent local schools like Portsmouth a record amount of state tax dollars to spend (when calculated on a per-pupil basis). Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s budget proposes doing the same.
So, what are taxpayers to make of this? If we were restaurant owners and had fewer customers, we’d be spending less on food and laying off wait staff. Nobody would consider this a “crunch” or crisis. If we were in sales and had fewer orders to fill, the same thing.
But because the story is about government workers and members of a public-sector union, the idea of fewer employees tomorrow than today is portrayed as tragic.
“I would have thought seven years into my teaching career I would be pretty much guaranteed to have continued employment,” Lynch told the Herald. “It’s struck me that no matter how qualified I am or how much time I give outside of school, this position is still not very stable.”
She’s right. Under the union’s “last in, first out, merit doesn’t matter” system, her hard work and qualifications don’t matter.
At the same time, do these government workers have any idea how it sounds to everyone else to hear the phrase “guaranteed employment?” For most taxpayers, the idea of having our “continued employment” guaranteed is unimaginable. Thousands of Americans get laid off every day.
In fact, the same day this story hit came news that Harvey’s Bakery in Dover is permanently closing its doors this spring after 93 years in business. How many employees will be out of work? How many bakers or servers were expecting lifetime employment?
And when will there be news articles about the tragic cuts in the food service industry?
If politicians continue to insist that spending increases are really “cuts,” and every government job should be permanent, even when the number of people served is falling, then don’t be surprised if more taxpayers don’t decide that, as ugly as Elon Musk and his chainsaw may be, it beats the alternative.
