#

New Hampshire taxpayers are spending as much as 100 percent more per student as school enrollment continues to slide, and some school districts are fighting to have the state pay more per student.

“The tax burden is incredible, and half of it goes to the schools,” said Dublin’s Leo Plante.

Plante is a local activist who tried unsuccessfully to get his town to withdraw from the Contoocook Valley School District, citing the town’s dwindling student population. As part of the ConVal district, Plante thinks too much Dublin money is leaving and going for students in the eight other towns in the district. 

ConVal has been losing students for 20 years. At the same time, spending on K-12 education has risen. On a per-pupil basis, it’s up more than 100 percent.

And it is not just in Dublin. According to data released by the New Hampshire Department of Education, across the state the cost per pupil has gone up an average of 78.4 percent since 2000. That was faster than the rate of inflation.

The steady increase is coupled with a 22 percent drop in the number of students since 2002. That year, there were 207,648 students enrolled in schools. The number has fallen to 161,755 enrolled for the current school year.

As a result, taxpayers are spending an average of nearly $20,000 per pupil, with the total cost of New Hampshire’s education system coming in at $3.5 billion in the 2021/2022 school year.

ConVal’s 20-year trend has seen a 34.6 percent decline in the number of students while the cost per pupil has shot up 103.5 percent. ConVal started the 2022/2023 school year with 1,969 students, and 10 years ago there were more than 2,200 students in the district.

Taxpayer activists want to know when declining enrollment means lower property taxes for Granite State homeowners.

“Clearly, school boards and SAUs are shrinking class sizes and padding school administration,” said Dan McGuire with Granite State Taxpayers. “If student performance was improving this extra spending might be justified, but unfortunately it is not. Voters need to pay attention to who they put on school boards, and those boards in turn need to rein in their superintendents.”

Janine Lesser, vice chair of the Contoocook Valley School District, has heard the argument that it should not cost more to educate fewer students. She said looking just at enrollment figures and the cost per pupil data is misleading.

“There’s a lot of the perception that if you have fewer students your costs should decrease, that the general budget should somehow decrease, and in some sense that’s true,” Lesser said.

But there are many factors behind the steady cost increases. Pay for employees, health insurance, electricity costs, heating costs, and building maintenance have all gone up in price throughout the economy, and school districts are no different, she said.

Critics note that doesn’t explain how school costs have risen faster than inflation, nor does it factor in the key elements in classroom education whose costs have declined — most notably tech like laptops, tablets, etc. Even the claim about energy costs is dubious. The price of heating oil and gasoline both plunged significantly during the downturns of 2007 and the COVID pandemic. And yet, taxpayer advocates say, somehow school property taxes kept going up.

The student enrollment decline is steady, but usually slight year to year, Lesser said. ConVal shrunk by 13 students this year, not enough to really impact the budget for a district that includes nine towns and several school buildings.

“All of the overhead costs don’t decrease that way. You can’t do away with a bus route for 13 students, you can’t decrease heating costs by 13 students, and you can’t decrease building repairs by 13 students. All of the costs remain,” Lesser said.

Plante doesn’t buy that argument, saying ConVal is top-heavy with too many administrators uninterested in watching out for the taxpayers who fund a large part of the education.

“It’s the inability of the administration to reduce costs in line with enrollment,” Plante said. “Someone has to have the courage on these school boards to say we can’t keep doing it this way.”

In part, Lesser blames lawmakers in Concord and Washington D.C. for fueling the rising cost per pupil by shoving unfunded mandates onto the districts, forcing local taxpayers to pay more.

“The unfunded mandates come down fast and furiously from the legislature, from both sides,” she said.

The federal government mandates local districts provide services for special education students, and it mandates transportation for students, but it does not help the district pay for these services. In 2020, the state started mandating a new STEM curriculum starting in kindergarten, but it does not come close to covering the costs.

Lesser said more is coming, as there are already 218 bills introduced in the New Hampshire legislature dealing with education that could end up costing local taxpayers more. All of this leaves school boards and school administrators struggling to put together budgets that will give students the best education possible, while not spiking local property taxes.

“It’s a fight every year to balance the needs of students with the needs of taxpayers,” Lesser said.

Claremont School Board Chair Michael Petrin is working hard on striking that balance. He’s trying to get the district to put together a budget that includes a needed raise for teachers, and one that won’t give taxpayers any more sticker shock.

“Purse strings are starting to tighten and going to this community to ask for money to help our teachers is really a tough topic,” Petrin said. “My grocery bills at least doubled over the last year and a half. There are families out there struggling to make ends meet.”

Last week, the Claremont School Board sent the district’s budget proposal back to Superintendent Michael Tempesta and his team to find another $1 million in cuts, hoping to bring the total budget number in low enough for voters to support the plan at the ballot box in March.

“We’re working hard to not kill the taxpayers and keep the teachers at the pay rate that keeps them here in the district,” Petrin said.

Petrin’s balancing act is complicated by the fact the Claremont district has also been steadily losing students. Last year’s average daily attendance in Claremont schools was a little more than 1,600 students. The figure was more than 1,700 a decade ago.

During that time, Claremont taxpayers have seen the cost to educate the shrinking number of pupils rise nearly every year, typically around 3 percent a year, according to state data.

Over the past twenty years, the district lost 24.6 percent of its student population while the annual cost per pupil rose 57.2 percent.

Rep. Walter Stapleton, R-Claremont, said part of the rising cost is that the buildings in Claremont’s district are obsolete. They were built for a time when the district had more people, and the city had more jobs.

“We used to be a big industrial town here with a lot of students and a lot of people,” Stapleton said. “It costs a lot to maintain that big infrastructure to support a shrinking number of students. It’s a tough problem.”

Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said the main drivers of the student decline are New Hampshire’s aging population and the state’s low birth rate. There are simply fewer school-aged children living in New Hampshire. School districts need to understand the decline is likely to continue, he said.

“It is important for school leaders to understand how declining enrollment numbers may be impacting their districts and how to plan accordingly for the future,” Edelblut said.

Zack Sheehan, project director with New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project, said the cost to educate students in New Hampshire will keep rising as long as the state and federal government continue to push down unfunded mandates.

“Schools are providing more services to students today than ever before, many of which are laws and regulations passed by the state that do not include increased funding. Many of these are important standards that support our students and schools, but they are not free,” Sheehan said.

How taxpayers will keep paying for fewer students is still being contested decades after the legal battle that was supposed to settle the question. Claremont’s district became the epicenter of the education funding fight with the Claremont education funding lawsuits of the 1980s and 1990s. That resulted in the New Hampshire Supreme Court decision that found every child has the right to an education and that the state has an obligation to fund that education.

Now, ConVal is taking the state to court claiming that the state’s $3,600 per pupil a year adequacy grant does not come close to paying for all the required services.

“This is our way to say, ‘this is what you require us to do, and yet this is what you actually give us money to do,’” Lesser said.

ConVal wants the state to fund closer to $10,000 per student per year. For a student population of 160,000, adding another $6,400 per pupil would cost state taxpayers more than $1 billion in new spending per year. With no guarantee that new state revenue would be used to reduce local property taxes.

As the ConVal lawsuit moves closer to trial, the original Claremont lawsuit attorneys are suing the state again, this time challenging the way the state-wide property tax is collected and distributed.

Attorney Andru Volinsky declined to comment on this story.

Stapleton said the state has money now in the form of a budget surplus, and he expects that to be used for education spending. He’s not sure what the long-term outlook will be if the ConVal and Volinsky lawsuits are successful.

“I personally can’t give you the forecast,” Stapleton said.

Plante thinks it’s time for New Hampshire to give parents their tax money back to make their own decisions about how to fund schools, but he admits that kind of a proposal is unlikely.

“I would give every parent the right to use school taxes to send their kids wherever they need to go, I would hand over the school tax to the parent and say, ‘take this money and do whatever you want with it.’ But that’s a pipe dream,” Plante said.

The state’s new Senate president has a message to the teachers union activists hoping the courts will shut down the state’s popular Education Freedom Accounts.

Good luck with that.

The lawsuit claiming the EFA program is unconstitutional was filed last week by the president of the New Hampshire American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Deb Howes, “as a citizen taxpayer,” according to an AFT press release, not by the union itself. Senate President Jeb Bradley (R-Wolfeboro) told NH Journal podcast he’s not too worried.

“Good luck with the lawsuit. I don’t think it’s going very far. I don’t expect that the AFT is going to win,” Bradley said on the NHJournal podcast.

The premise of Howes’ lawsuit is that lottery revenue must go to public schools and, she argues, cannot be used to fund EFAs, which allows the state’s share of education funding to follow the student to any school they choose: Public, private, or homeschool. But Bradley dismissed that argument

“I think (the EFA program) is carefully designed to meet the constitutional test,” Bradley said.

Bradley is not alone in his view of the lawsuit, as the conservative nonprofit Institute for Justice has announced it plans to fight Howes in court.

“Halfway through the school year, opponents of Education Freedom Accounts are trying to take away parents’ educational options,” said IJ Educational Choice attorney David Hodges. “The New Hampshire legislature’s mechanism for funding the accounts is constitutional and the Institute for Justice is ready to defend it.”

The Institute for Justice has been part of the fight for school choice nationwide. Hodges said the organization has successfully argued for school choice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Institute for Justice will represent real New Hampshire families in court who are currently using the EFA program to send their children to private schools. Karl and Ellen Jackson of Pembroke are already set to be part of the fight in court.

“Without the Education Freedom Account our children would be forced to leave the schools they attend right now,” said Karl Jackson. “We are eager to defend our children’s access to a good education and also stand up for other families.”

More than 3,000 New Hampshire students are taking advantage of the EFA program. It awards need-based grants that families can use toward tuition or homeschool supplies. Bradley, who sent one of his four children to a private school, said the program is needed because not every child succeeds in a public school environment. Before the EFA program, only families with the financial means to send their children to private schools had any real choice, he said.

“Now the AFT is targeting lower-income students and their parents to try and end the opportunity and choices their parents feel are important for them.”

Of the 3,025 students who enrolled in the EFA program this year, more than 1,500 come from low-income households eligible for free or reduced lunch. And 187 of the participants are special education students, according to Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut.

“Half of the children enrolled are living below the poverty level. These families are seeking a nontraditional instructional model for their children who may not have found educational success,” said Edelblut.

The AFT is not a direct party to the lawsuit, as Howes filed it as an individual under New Hampshire’s law that allows citizens to sue the government. However, her legal fight has the backing of AFT’s national president Randi Weingarten.

“Any scheme to divert public funds into a voucher program without fully funding public schools first is an insult to the students, teachers, and families of New Hampshire, not to mention a violation of the law,” Weingarten said. Her suggestion that EFAs are undermining public school funding is a common complaint among its opponents. 

And according to Bradley, it is completely false.

“In the last two budgets we’ve increased funding on public education by over a quarter billion dollars,” Bradley said. And the increased spending comes as enrollment in public schools dropped by about 10,000 students. 

The way New Hampshire funds education could be completely upended as two separate lawsuits advance in court. One suit seeks to halt education property tax rates and the other attempts to increase the amount the state pays per pupil. 

Plaintiffs in the Grafton County education lawsuit are set to argue Friday that the state should not be able to set a rate for the Statewide Education Property Tax (SWEPT), arguing the tax is unconstitutional as implemented.

Meanwhile, Gov. Chris Sununu won’t be forced to sit for a deposition in the Contoocook Valley Regional School District lawsuit. Rockingham Superior Court Judge David Ruoff ruled the plaintiff school districts failed to show the governor is in possession of any unique knowledge.

Both lawsuits are attempting to force the state to pay more of the costs for local schools, with plaintiffs in both cases alleging the state has never followed the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s rulings in the 1980s and 1990s Claremont cases.

The Grafton County case involves several state residents who are also commercial and residential property owners. They claim New Hampshire is violating the 1997 Supreme Court’s Claremont II decision.

In Claremont, the court ruled New Hampshire has a constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education. That decision found, in part, that the use of local property taxes with varying rates to pay for the state’s obligation to provide its students with an adequate education is unconstitutional.

The ConVal case, which now includes dozens of school districts as plaintiffs, seeks to force the state to increase the per-pupil grants for an adequate education from $3,600 per pupil to around $10,000 per pupil, alleging the current grant does not cover the necessary services.

According to attorneys in the Grafton County case, Andru Volinsky, John Tobin, and Natalie Laflamme, the state continues to ignore the Supreme Court by using varying rates for the SWEPT, which in effect continues to punish poor communities with lower property values.

“Ever since (Claremont II,) the state has tried numerous mechanisms to avoid implementing an equitable tax system that would have the effect of imposing a fairer tax burden on wealthier towns, requiring the courts to intervene and protect the constitutional rights of New Hampshire citizens. Now, the state is primed to once again impose a tax using the same mechanisms previously held unconstitutional that will result in some taxpayers paying up to seven times as much for education funding as their wealthier counterparts,” the attorneys write in a new filing with Grafton County Superior Court.

The Grafton County plaintiffs are now seeking an injunction to prevent the state from setting a tax rate, asking the court to keep the SWEPT rate at $0. A hearing on the injunction is set for Friday.

The SWEPT accounts for 30 percent of education funding in New Hampshire. The tax started in 1999 as a response to the Claremont decisions, which found the state has a constitutional obligation to fund an adequate education. The money raised, more than $360 million estimated in the coming year, is used to fund state adequacy grants.

According to the plaintiffs, wealthy communities raise more funds per pupil through SWEPT than the state’s low standard for what it asserts is the cost of a state-funded adequate education. And since 2011, the state has allowed those wealthy towns to keep the surplus, which flies in the face of the Claremont decisions, according to the motion.

“The SWEPT tax as currently administered is not uniform in rate as the state allows towns with surplus SWEPT funds to either set a negative local education tax rate to offset the state’s official equalized SWEPT tax rate or retain the excess,” the motion states. “Both of these mechanisms have been previously deemed unconstitutional by New Hampshire courts.”

In the ConVal case, the plaintiffs sought to depose Sununu in order to get him to testify about the reasons he vetoed a bill that would have increased education spending by $140 million. The bill would have paid for the increase by rolling back some of Sununu’s business tax cuts.

Ruoff found the plaintiffs did not articulate how Sununu’s veto was directly related to the issues involved in the lawsuit, like funding for transportation, meals, and other necessary services.

Ruoff has already found the state is not following the Claremont decisions and that it is unconstitutionally underfunding education. The ConVal case is slated for trial in the spring to try and determine what the adequate education grant should be per pupil. 

Decades of educational gains were lost during the COVID-19 classroom lockdowns, leaving vulnerable students with learning gaps that will last a lifetime, according to new data out this week. 

The National Assessment of Education Progress report, released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education, shows test scores for nine-year-old students declined five points in reading and seven points in math compared to 2020. According to NAEP, that is the largest average score decline in reading since 1990 and the first-ever score decline in mathematics.

In an odd twist, Democrats who pushed to keep classrooms closed are now blaming Republicans for school shutdowns.

Dr. Aaron Pallas, a professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, told The Wall Street Journal it could take decades for these students to close the learning gaps, if ever. “I don’t think we can expect these 9-year-olds to catch up by the time they leave high school. This is not something that is going to disappear quickly.”

New Hampshire’s Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said the results are not surprising given the long school shutdowns and remote learning challenges from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic response.

“COVID negatively affected student performance across the board and exacerbated systemic problems in achievement that preceded COVID, notably high performing students–top quartile–holding steady or making modest gains/losses while bottom quartile students–those already the most vulnerable–are falling farther behind,” Edelblut said. “In math, the top 10 percent of students nationwide declined 3 points while the bottom 10 percent declined 12 points. English Language Arts tells a similar story for national trends. Among these declines, black students fared the worst.”

The NAEP scores for New Hampshire students will be released in October.

 Jason Bedrick, the Heritage Foundation research fellow at the Center for Education Policy, says the scores show the depths of the shutdown’s calamity.

“The dismal NAEP scores confirm what we already knew: the unnecessary school closures that the unions demanded were disastrous for children, especially the most disadvantaged. Black and Hispanic students saw two-to-three times the decline of White students. For Black nine-year-olds, for example, nearly three decades of progress in math was wiped out. Proficiency rates were already low. This is a calamity,” Bedrick said.

A calamity the Biden White House is trying to pin on the GOP.

On Thursday, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said it was the Biden administration who re-opened classrooms, and she said it “was the work of Democrats in spite of Republicans.”

In fact, Democrats overwhelmingly supported teachers unions’ efforts to keep classrooms closed long after most European countries had students back in school. In July 2020, the Democratic National Committee even ran TV ads accusing President Trump of trying to re-open classrooms too quickly.

Edelblut said he is looking forward and is focused on solutions. He said all options need to be on the table to guarantee that students going forward can get the education they need.

“Recovery back to where we were before COVID should not be our goal. No one was satisfied with that performance. We now have an opportunity to lead and transform the disrupted education system to serve all students, top performers and those who are not finding success in the current system,” Edelblut said.

The Granite State is enjoying another win as New Hampshire has been named one of the best states to live by a new WalletHub report.

The report puts New Hampshire 6th in the nation overall and earning strong showings with a 6th ranking for health and education, 5th for safety, and 7th for its economy. New Hampshire comes in 40th in the nation for overall affordability and 36th for quality of life.

WalletHub used data to compare the 50 states based on 52 key indicators of livability. Those indicators range from housing costs and income growth to education rate and quality of hospitals.

Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York are the top three in the 2022 list. Maine and Vermont come in 11th and 12th respectively. Connecticut landed at the 25th spot and Rhode Island trailed the rest of New England with 28th place.

Louisiana, Alaska, and Mississippi were ranked the three worst states on the list.

Kenneth Johnson, professor of Sociology and Senior Demographer at the Carsey School at the University of New Hampshire, said that while New Hampshire ranks well overall, the lack of affordable housing could put a damper on future growth. Currently, New Hampshire’s saving grace is the high cost of living everywhere else in New England.

“(T)here is certainly widespread concern that the lack of affordable housing may limit the ability of families and workers to settle in some areas of New Hampshire. However, it is also important to recognize that many migrants to New Hampshire are coming from Massachusetts from the Boston metro area. Housing costs in the Boston metro area are generally higher than those in New Hampshire,” Johnson said.

New Hampshire ranked 8th in the 2021 WalletHub study, where it also placed well for its economy, education, and health, though last year it also placed 40th for affordability. Robert Ross, the Vice President of Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Clark University said housing affordability is the most important factor when deciding where to live.

“The cost and supply of appropriate housing is a critical matter. In my own life, I have had to reconsider applying for jobs in places where I simply could not find affordable (to me) housing reasonably near where I might work,” Ross said.

New Hampshire is currently experiencing a housing affordability crisis. The rental vacancy rate is less than one percent statewide — the national rate is almost 6 percent — and the high cost of housing is driving employees away from some of the state’s biggest employers.

Gov. Chris Sununu announced a $100 million program to spur housing development and streamline local zoning in the coming months, to add thousands of rental units to the market.

Johnson said despite the high costs, the comparison to Massachusetts helps people decide to move North and further spur the economy.

“So, even though New Hampshire housing is expensive, families from the Boston metro area may still be able to get more house for the same amount of money in New Hampshire. For example, the median price of an owner-occupied house in the three New Hampshire counties just north of the Massachusetts border proximate to the Boston metro area is approximately $100,000 to $150,000 less than the median house value in the three Massachusetts counties in the Boston Metro area that are just to the south of the state line,” Johnson said.

New Hampshire has the lowest poverty rate of all 50 states, and has the second lowest crime rate, right behind Maine, according to the report. The Granite State also has the 5th highest rate of people over age 25 who have obtained at least a high school diploma or higher.

New Hampshire public schools rank among the top 10 in the nation, according to the data analysts at Wallethub.

Using metrics like academic performance, safety, class size, funding, and instructor credentials, the analysis ranked the Granite State as having the nation’s seventh-best school system.

Among New England states, known for high-performing schools, the Granite State ranked third, behind Massachusetts (1) and Connecticut (2). Vermont came in at 11, Maine at 12, and Rhode Island at 16. 

New Hampshire tied for fourth when it came to having the highest median ACT scores, the standardized test that gauges English, mathematics, reading, and scientific reasoning skills and is used for many college admissions. New Hampshire also ranked fourth in best reading scores and third for student-teacher ratio.

New Hampshire does, however, rank poorly when it comes to having a high bullying rate, ranking 47 out of 48 on a best to worst scale.

Despite the two current school funding lawsuits in the state, WalletHub finds New Hampshire to be among one of the bigger spenders in education. It spends about $16,000 per pupil on average, a little less than Massachusetts’s $17,000, and significantly less than Connecticut’s more than $20,000 per pupil.

Rhode Island spends about $16,000 per pupil, and Maine around $14,000. Vermont spends the least among New England states, averaging $9,300 per pupil.

School spending is not the key factor in having a high-quality education. According to Purdue’s Christine Kiracofe, the director of the university’s Higher Education Ph.D. program, the family and neighborhood count for more than the per pupil spending.

“A lot has to do with how the communities and families that students come from are supported,” Kiracofe said. “When students come to school having had access to an educationally supportive community (access to preschool programs, opportunities for extracurricular learning, museums, educational camps, etc.) they are at a distinct advantage over students who have not had access to these things. Thus, increasing school quality really involves increasing what is available to entire communities.”

Like many states, New Hampshire public schools took a hit during the COVID-19 restrictions, with many students falling behind due to remote learning. Those education gaps are starting to improve, the New Hampshire Department of Education reports.

According to the DOE, 2022 test scores are already showing an improvement over the 2021 data, which recorded declines in student performance at every grade tested. 

This year, however, New Hampshire students in grades three through seven improved their math assessment scores while eighth-grade math scores remained the same. Proficiency scores showed slight gains with 51 percent of third-graders proficient in math in 2022 compared to 45 percent proficient in 2021. 

The older grade levels showed slight declines in English proficiency in 2022, with 49 percent of seventh graders scoring proficient in 2022 compared to 52 percent in 2021. A similar scenario occurred with 46 percent of eighth graders scoring proficient in English in 2022 compared to 49 percent in 2021. 

“Assessment scores are inching upward and returning to near pre-pandemic levels, but it is clear that there is still work to be done to recover from the academic declines that resulted from COVID-19. New Hampshire has not fully regained ground, but these early signs of improvement are promising,” said Frank Edelblut, education commissioner.

Students are starting to regain the ground they lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the New Hampshire Department of Education. But the destructive impacts of classroom lockdowns backed by teacher’s unions continue to be felt.

“Assessment scores are inching upward and returning to near pre-pandemic levels. But it is clear there is still work to be done to recover from the academic declines that resulted from COVID-19,” said Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut. “New Hampshire has not fully regained ground, but these early signs of improvement are promising.”

In 2021, New Hampshire Statewide Assessment System performance levels dropped at every grade level from third through eighth grade, including both English and math scores. The state completed a comprehensive analysis of those results to help understand how to support students recovering from the pandemic. In 2022, that performance data started to turn around. 

It is hardly a New Hampshire problem. Multiple studies have found online learning was a disaster for K-12 students in response to the COVID pandemic. Learning loss was worst among low-income and minority students, one reason so many parents and supporters of education reform fought against teachers’ union demands to keep classrooms closed. The results were mixed.

The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University reports some one in five U.S. students were enrolled in districts that continued online learning for most of the 2020-21 school year. The learning loss is estimated to be as much as 22 weeks of learning.

In New Hampshire, this year’s early data sets show students in grades three through seven improved their math assessment scores in 2022, while eighth-grade math scores remained at classroom-lockdown levels.

For example, proficiency scores showed small gains with 51 percent of third-graders proficient in math in 2022 compared to 45 percent proficient in 2021. The trend was similar for fourth graders, which showed 48 percent were proficient in math in 2022 compared to 41 percent in 2021. 

COVID gaps remain for many students, however, including at the high school level. The high school junior class 2022 SAT high school assessment data reveals slight declines in reading proficiency in 2022, and more moderate declines in math proficiency–a trend found among other states as well, according to the DOE.

New Hampshire students still performed better on the SAT than students nationally, according to the DOE.

In 2022, New Hampshire’s average reading score on the SAT was 511 compared to 517 in 2021 and 515 in 2019. The average math score for 2022 was 492 compared to 509 in 2021 and 508 in 2019. 

“We know that these students, who will be starting their senior year in a few weeks, have had a high school career filled with disruptions, remote classes, and missed learning. We also know that SAT participation dropped in New Hampshire to about 82 percent in 2022” said Edelblut. “While many states have seen an overall decline in SAT scores, New Hampshire scores continue to remain comparatively high.”

Individual school and district data for both the NHSAS and SAT results will be released in the fall through the iPlatform system.

Democrats are mocking U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Smith over his appearance in a commercial for an education app that helps students complete their homework.

Gates MacPherson, deputy communications director for the New Hampshire Democratic Party, tweeted a screenshot of the ad Smith made for education company Brainly. 

“In addition to running as a B-tier Senate candidate, Kevin Smith is also a… paid actor, according to his personal financial disclosure, and made $900 from the New England Models Group for appearing in an ad,” MacPherson tweeted.

Smith took the Democratic Twitter snark in stride, saying he only appeared in the ad to support his daughter, who was being featured by Brainly. The ad partially deals with struggles faced by students due to classroom lockdowns — a policy promoted and defended by Democrats like U. Sen. Maggie Hassan.

“While my acting career was short-lived and in support of my daughter, Maggie Hassan’s election year act is alive and well, although widely panned by critics,” Smith said.

A wave of post-lockdown research shows critics of closing classrooms were correct: The policy took a disastrous toll on low-income and disadvantaged students but did little to stop the spread of COVID-19.

According to Smith’s campaign, his daughter Lindsay was chosen to be in the ad. COVID procedures mandated that the producers use real parents instead of actors for the parents. 

“While the Democrats and their Teachers Union counterparts were desperately fighting to keep schools shuttered, Kevin’s daughter was chosen to appear in an ad for a remote-learning education platform. Due to COVID-19 precautions, the company required actual parents to appear in the ads with their children, and Kevin was proud to support and appear alongside his daughter in that ad,” said Seb Rougemont with Smith’s team.

“As the proud father of three children in Londonderry public schools, Kevin cares deeply about their education and the education of all students across New Hampshire. Is this seriously what the New Hampshire Democrats are spending their time attacking?”

Brainly offers a peer-to-peer learning platform to support students, teachers, and parents. The company claims to have 350 million users which would make it the biggest online learning platform in the world.

Smith is running in a crowded field to challenge Democrat Hassan. While MacPherson and state Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley have slammed Smith, Senate President Chuck Morse, and retired Brigadier General Don Bolduc as “B-tier” candidates, recent polling suggests Hassan is a “C-tier” incumbent at best.

Despite her 99 percent name ID, Hassan leads Smith by just one point, 45-44 percent, according to the Granite State Poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. She is leading Bolduc 47-46 percent, and she is actually losing to Morse 44-46 percent.

The attack also opens the door for Smith and his fellow Republicans to hit back. President Joe Biden is imposing new rules on charter schools that will make it harder for them to accommodate more students. As the liberal New York Times reports:

“Rules proposed by the Education Department to govern a federal grant program for charter schools are drawing bipartisan backlash and angering parents, who say the Biden administration is seeking to stymie schools that have fallen out of favor with many Democrats but maintain strong support among Black and Latino families.”

Asked by NHJournal if she supports the new rules, Hassan declined to respond.

“Hassan’s flacks are attacking an education TV ad while her Joe Biden and her party bosses attack charter schools, keeping communities from getting the quality education and classrooms they need,” Smith said.

Students suffering the effects of the long COVID lockdowns are getting some help, thanks to a New Hampshire Department of Education (DOE) scholarship program. 

The Yes, Every Student (YES!) scholarship program is designed to help families and residents whose education was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic by awarding $1,000 tutoring scholarships to New Hampshire students, which includes public, non-public, home education, and Education Freedom Account students. It is the second year in a row the Department of Education has offered the scholarships.

“Although it has been two years since the start of the pandemic, some students may still feel that they are not meeting their desired academic performance,” said DOE Commissioner Frank Edelblut. “These scholarships will be used to help children that may have experienced disrupted learning and provide them with individualized tutoring and support to target their unique educational needs.”

Andrew Yates with the national education non-profit yes. every kid praised New Hampshire’s scholarship program.

“We commend Commissioner Edelblut for putting forward a universal scholarship program to help all NH students seek tutoring services to help combat Covid learning loss,” Yate said. “Every family and student has faced unique challenges during this pandemic, and we support allowing all students the opportunity to find the best pathways to their educational success.”

According to a recent Harvard study, students in K through 12 schools that went remote during the pandemic have fared worse than students who stayed in school, losing ground in math and reading.

“In districts that went remote, achievement growth was lower for all subgroups, but especially for students attending high-poverty schools. In areas that remained in person, there were still modest losses in achievement, but there was no widening of gaps between high and low-poverty schools in math,” the study states.

Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, recently noted that students in high poverty areas who were abandoned to online learning have experienced an education gap that will impact them for decades.

“In K through 12, we have a learning deficit that will take us a long time to erase, and sadly it’s a deficit that in the inner city is almost two years,” Gates said.

According to a report from the consulting firm McKinsey, the learning gap experienced by school students now, especially minority students, threatens economic depression in the years to come.

“Our analysis shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year,” the report states.

Parents in New Hampshire responded to closed classrooms and learning loss by fleeing the public school system.

“Until the pandemic, enrollment decline in New Hampshire was relatively slow but steady: between 0 and 2 percent each year,” NHPR reported. “But in 2020, enrollment declined by 4.5 percent, about 8,200 fewer students in one year.”

The scholarships from the Department of Education can be used for tutoring as well as special education therapies and services. The state has about $2.3 million in funding from the Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund under the CARES Act for the scholarships. Last year, the DOE awarded nearly $1.9 million to almost 500 recipients for tutoring and other needs.

To apply for a Yes! scholarship, visit Yes, Every Student. Please email questions to [email protected]. 

Democrats are vowing to keep up the fight over COVID-19 restrictions at the State House even as more voters are ready for an end to pandemic living.

On Monday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston denied New Hampshire Democrats an injunction against House Speaker Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry). Democrats have been pushing for Packard to allow for remote attendance for legislators. House Minority Leader Rep. David Cote (D-Nashua) responded by saying he would continue the remote legislation lawsuit.

“While we are disappointed that the First Circuit denied our request for a preliminary injunction, it is important to note that the court did not rule that disabled people must risk death to serve in the legislature and represent their constituents. The court’s decision only related to a preliminary injunction, not the Speaker’s denial of minimal accommodations for representatives with disabilities,” Cote said in a statement.

Cote, 61, lives with cerebral palsy and has not been to Concord for a vote in more than two years. He did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Packard successfully argued that as Speaker he enjoys “legislative immunity” and is exempt from following the Americans with Disabilities Act, and therefore the injunction fails.

“This opinion reaffirms the importance of the integrity of the legislature and the legislative process. Both the First Circuit and District Court evaluated the plaintiffs’ arguments and ruled against them. My next step is to continue working on legislation that will benefit the state of New Hampshire and keep pushing us forward,” Packard said in a statement.

Spencer Kimball, an associate professor at Emerson College and the director of the school’s polling center, said the politics of the pandemic have shifted away from favoring Democrats as the virus has become less threatening.

“I have been looking at COVID restrictions and see a big difference nationally between Democratic voters where 38 percent see COVID as a major health threat, while that number is about 17 percent among independents and 14 percent among Republicans,” Kimball said.

The COVID-19 virus seems to be in retreat, with cases and hospitalizations dropping drastically in recent weeks across the country and in New Hampshire.

Earlier this week, state Sen. Tom Sherman, (D-Rye) who is running to unseat Gov. Chris Sununu, was asked if he would impose a mask mandate “on day one” after taking office. “It really depends on the numbers,” Sherman said. “You have to look at what’s called the epidemiology, which is how pervasive is it in the community.

“If the numbers say it is [necessary], then we may need to do that, but that would not be my first response, Sherman added.

Kimball said, with the threat perception changing, COVID restrictions could be a loser for Democrats heading into the midterms.

“Democrats may be overplaying their COVID hand, but if COVID was to increase they may find themselves in a stronger position. Time will tell,” Kimball said.

In New Hampshire, most adults have some level of protection against COVID-19, according to recent UNH Survey Center data.

“Currently, one-quarter (of adults) say they have tested positive for COVID since the pandemic began. Six in 10 adults say they are vaccinated and boosted, another 17 percent are vaccinated but not boosted, and 22 percent are not vaccinated at all. Overall, seven in eight Granite Staters likely have some protection against COVID-19 through vaccination or recent infection,” The UNH data report states. 

David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University Political Research Center, said Democrats need to be alert to parents who are tired of mask mandates and school lockdowns harming their children.

“It’s hard to say whether or not mask advocacy on its own will be a cutting issue in November. More likely is a scenario where Democrats will say mask policies and required vaccinations ultimately saved lives and Republicans will say that mask mandates were an overreach, setting back education a couple of years,” Paleologos said. 

Democrats who align with teachers unions, which have backed stricter COVID restrictions like remote learning and masking, have had a rough time at the ballot box.

“Traditionally, education and healthcare are wheelhouse issues for the Democratic Party. If Republicans chip away at these two pillar issues (like they did in Virginia and New Jersey last fall), Democrats may face some dark November days,” Paleologos said.

Glenn Youngkin took the Virginia governor’s race, in part, because parents were upset with COVID lockdowns. In New Jersey, incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy barely beat a challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli.

Cote took over the leadership after the death of state Rep. Robert “Renny” Cushing (D-Hampton.) Cushing died this month following a two-year battle with prostate cancer. His family told The New York Times Cushing’s death was partially brought on by complications from COVID-19.

Cushing first brought the lawsuit to the federal court and pushed for a ruling on the appeal for the injunction ahead of the current legislative session. Even as he was dealing with cancer treatments, Cushing remained active throughout the pandemic, missing few votes over the last two years. 

House Speaker Dick Hinch (R-Merrimack) died from COVID-19 in 2020 shortly after the first socially distanced House session of the biennium at UNH’s athletic complex.