#

Now that she doesn’t have to run for reelection in Manchester, Mayor Joyce Craig is leaving the city with a school system that is losing students and a budget that relies on $30 million in one-time funding. 

Craig’s proposed 2024 budget uses $30 million in COVID relief funds to pay for ongoing school district expenses like salaries and staff benefits, as well as transportation costs. Craig’s use of temporary revenue will become a problem for whoever takes her job next. Craig recently announced she is not running for a fourth term.

Jay Ruais, a Republican running for mayor, said Craig’s budget for 2024 is irresponsible.

“Using one-time funds for recurring costs is a band-aid approach, not a long-term solution to our city’s needs, and is a practice that will continue to harm us down the road,” Ruais said.

“Communities like Manchester will continue to face significant education funding gaps as long as the state continues to underfund public education and downshift costs to local taxpayers. I encourage the legislature to pass pending legislation that reinstates state contributions for teacher retirement and increases State Adequate Education Aid,” Craig said during this month’s annual budget address.

Craig blames a drop in state education funding for creating the need to use federal funding for operating expenses this year. In fact, state aid has increased on a per-pupil basis. It’s falling enrollments that are costing the district funds, leaving taxpayer groups to ask why the city needs more money to educate fewer students.

According to data from the New Hampshire Department of Education, since 2000, enrollment in Manchester schools has fallen by nearly 28 percent. At the same time, per pupil costs have risen more than 55 percent.

Craig’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Victoria Sullivan, a Republican considering another run for mayor, said Craig is going to leave the city by giving residents a tax increase after she’s long gone.

“The increased tax burden facing the taxpayers next year when the city has to reconcile the budget without the tens of millions of Cares Act, ESSER, and ARPA funds that have been irresponsibility used will either force significant layoffs across our city or force rents and property taxes to skyrocket,” Sullivan said. “Our citizens cannot afford this short-sighted budget or the inevitable consequences of it.”

Manchester’s projected State Adequate Education Aid grant comes to a little more than $44.8 million for 2024. That’s based on an anticipated average daily attendance in the district of 11,601 students.

Since the State Adequate Education Aid is based on those attendance numbers, the city’s adequate funding depends on its ability to keep families and students. Last year, with more than 12,000 students, Manchester schools got more than $45.5 million from the state, meaning the projected 2024 grants are hardly a large drop in funding. 

In 2014, Manchester was getting more than $46 million from the state in adequacy grants thanks to the fact it had more students. At the time, Manchester’s average daily attendance was more than 13,000 students.

Manchester isn’t alone in losing students. According to data released by the New Hampshire Department of Education earlier this year, The Granite State has seen a 22 percent drop in the number of students since 2002. That year, there were 207,648 students enrolled in schools in 2022. The number has fallen to 161,755 enrolled for the current school year. Meanwhile,  the cost per pupil has gone up an average of 78.4 percent since 2000. 

Craig’s $390 million total 2024 proposed budget for the city and school district is headed to the Board of Alderman for approval. Of that, the school district budget is about $190 million. Craig boasted in a recent budget address she’ll be able to lower local real estate property taxes under her plan using money left over from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, part of the CARES Act.

The ESSER funding was sent to districts in order to make sure students were still getting an education during the COVID emergency. The U.S. Department of Education recommended using the money to support remote learning for all students, especially disadvantaged or at-risk students, and their teachers.

Ruais said Manchester is ready for leadership that knows how to balance a budget without tricks.

“Our city cannot achieve its full potential unless we have a fiscally sound budget. Year after year we see taxpayers footing the bill for irresponsible spending practices, as taxes continue to go up,” he said.

Manchester Republican Victoria Sullivan had her Twitter account permanently suspended last week after she shared a New Hampshire Journal article about Manchester’s homeless crisis. And she has no idea why.

“If you’re a conservative, especially a conservative woman, they try to silence your voice,” she told NHJournal.

Sullivan, a former state representative and two-time mayoral candidate in Manchester, tweeted NHJournal’s coverage of Mayor Joyce Craig’s ongoing struggle to address the city’s growing homeless crisis. Soon after, Twitter shut down her account.

Sullivan says she does not know why she was suspended. “I am appealing, but they don’t tell you anything,” Sullivan said. “They don’t tell you what Twitter rules were violated.”

Craig was once considered a rising star in the New Hampshire Democratic Party, believed to have her eye on a run for the governor’s office. Amid the crime and homelessness during her tenure, however, many Democrats privately express doubts about a bid for higher office. Last week, Craig and a group of her fellow Democratic mayors wrote Gov. Chris Sununu asking him to deploy the National Guard to address the homelessness plaguing their cities and towns. Critics say it was an attempt to deflect criticism for her mismanagement of the issue.

Sullivan said she is not a heavy Twitter user. On Thursday she retweeted New Hampshire Journal’s article with her own comments, including the demand for Craig to resign. In the days before the suspension, Sullivan also posted videos of Manchester business owners speaking at a public Board of Alderman meeting about the homeless crisis impacting the city.

This is not the first time Sullivan has been banned on Twitter. During her first run for mayor, Sullivan was booted from the platform and unable to get back on despite an appeal. She thinks her photos from the Women’s Self-Defense League family picnic may have triggered someone enough that she was reported.

Sullivan said New Hampshire liberals engage in egregious behavior on the platform without any seeming reprisals from the company. Rep. Maria Perez (D-Milford) was forced to issue an apology in 2021 after she sent a post about Israel widely viewed as anti-Semitic. Rep. Alissandra Rodríguez-Murray, (D-Manchester) referred to Jewish people as termites on the platform last year.  In 2019, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley retweeted a post that included the “N-word.”

All three are still active on Twitter.

Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for information, including an explanation for Sullivan’s suspension. The phone number listed on the company website does not seem to work and the email address for the Twitter media relations team immediately bounced back.

Twitter’s corporate offices are reportedly in turmoil a few months after the company was bought out by mercurial billionaire Elon Musk for $44 billion. After firing most of the Twitter staff, Musk himself has come under fire for his handling of the social media company.

According to the Associated Press, the company no longer has a media relations team. The AP was seeking comment on its story reporting Twitter is behind on rent payments for the San Francisco headquarters.

Meanwhile, Craig’s struggles to manage Manchester’s homeless crisis continue. The city suffered several high-profile incidents over the Christmas holidays, including the deaths of two homeless people and the birth of a child in freezing temperatures at a homeless encampment. The mother, Alexandra Eckersley, 26, was well known to Manchester authorities. She is the daughter of former Red Sox pitcher and sports commentator Dennis Eckersley.

The baby was naked and struggling to breathe when authorities found him.

Facing political blowback. Craig issued an order to vacate Sunday for the homeless encampment on the corner of Manchester and Pine Streets. “The notice will be posted at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, January 9, 2023, and individuals must vacate themselves and their belongings by 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 17,” according to a statement from the Craig administration.

“At what point does Gov. Sununu decide the state must step in?” Sullivan said in response to the news. “These people will be scattered into our trails, in our neighborhood, and many will die. This is insanity!”

After years of failed policy initiatives to address homelessness, Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and a group of her fellow Democrats want Gov. Chris Sununu to send in the troops.

Literally.

Craig joined seven of her fellow Democratic mayors in a letter asking Sununu to call up the National Guard.

The mayors, including Craig, Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess, Berlin Mayor Paul Grenier, Franklin Mayor Jo Brown, Dover Mayor Bob Carrier, Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard, Claremont Mayor Dale Girard, and Laconia Mayor Andrew Hosmer, blamed the state for the failures in their communities.

“The State of New Hampshire’s systems of care for individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness are not meeting the needs of communities across the state and are contributing to a statewide homelessness crisis,” the mayors wrote. “Inadequate state services for individuals experiencing substance use disorder, mental illness, chronic health conditions, histories of trauma, and incarceration are all substantial factors contributing to homelessness in New Hampshire.”

In addition to requests for more state-funded emergency beds, the mayors want the National Guard to help staff emergency shelters. They also want state-owned property in Manchester opened up to house the homeless, also with the help of the Guard.

Sununu rejected claims the state isn’t spending enough to address homelessness. And he said mayors like Craig are failing to use federal resources or effectively manage the problem.

“The tone and misleading content contained in the mayors’ letter is disappointing considering the team approach that is so important on an issue as critical as this. The state has made unprecedented investments to address this issue and continues to identify additional pathways working through the Continuum of Care model,” Sununu said in a statement.

Sununu also said Manchester left a large chunk of its $43 million American Rescue Act funding untouched, money that could have been used for homeless services. At the same time, the city has spent millions on other, less life or death, priorities.

“Meanwhile, the City of Manchester has seemingly used very little of their $43 million from the American Rescue Plan funds to directly address homelessness and, as of Q3 of 2022 (according to their public facing website), they had only expended 22 percent of their funds,” Sununu said. “The unprecedented request to call in the National Guard when federal funding hasn’t been spent by many of the municipalities who signed this letter is impossible. For example, $2 million of American Rescue Plan funding received by Manchester has been dedicated to the city’s branding strategy.”

The state currently supports a Continuum of Care program to allow individual communities to address the homeless crisis while also investing more than $120 million into 42 programs, including housing, emergency assistance for families, and healthcare access for people in crisis.

“Emergency shelters across the state serve more than 700 people (individuals and families) on any given night in New Hampshire,” according to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.

The deaths of a homeless man and a homeless woman in separate incidents in Manchester during frigid temperatures around the Christmas weekend have increased scrutiny of Craig’s leadership on the issue. Now a national spotlight has been turned on the Queen City’s homelessness issue with the news of the birth and abandonment of a baby in a homeless camp around midnight on December 26.

The mother, Alexandra Eckersley, 26, is the adopted daughter of Major League Baseball Hall of Famer and retired Red Sox broadcaster Dennis Eckersley. She was subsequently arrested for allegedly abandoning the newborn in a tent for more than an hour. The newborn boy was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

Craig’s continued struggle to address homelessness has become a political embarrassment for the mayor, who is widely believed to have an eye on the governor’s office. The city hired Schonna Green as its first-ever director of homeless initiatives in 2021. But she abruptly quit in September.

Ward 3 Alderman Pat Long told Manchester InkLink that Green was set up to fail in her post.

“She was a director of homelessness with no staff, so that was set up to fail from the start. It would be like telling (Police) Chief (Allen) Aldenberg you have no more officers and, oh, keep the city safe,” Long said. “Schonna had a lot of ideas that were stifled someway, somehow – and that was frustrating to her. She called me three weeks ago and said she felt like people were working against her and that they didn’t want her here. I don’t know about that because I’m not in her shoes every day.

“Homelessness is a major initiative in the city of Manchester and in my opinion, you can’t address it with a one-person department,” Long added.

In an interview with WMUR, Craig conceded the homeless problem has gotten worse on her watch.

“Homelessness has been an issue for decades,” Craig said. “Manchester runs health care for the homeless. We’ve had that contract for 40 years. But I would say right now, we are seeing more people living outside than we have before.”

The Manchester School District’s transgender student policy violates the state constitution which protects the right of parents to raise their children, according to a new filing in the lawsuit brought by a Manchester mother. 

The woman, who is known as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, is responding to the district’s motion to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the district has no legal obligations when it comes to telling parents about their child’s activities at school regarding sexual and gender identity.

The response, filed in Hillsborough Superior Court-North in Manchester and written by attorney Richard Lehmann, hits back at the district accusing school officials of interfering with Jane Doe’s rights as a mother by forcing staff to keep secrets from parents. 

“Knowledge that the school is actively supporting a child’s decision to transition to a different gender identity when a parent would believe a different response is in the child’s best interests is precisely the kind of information that a parent would be likely to consider in deciding ‘whether’ to send a child to public school or to choose some other option,” Lehmann writes. “However, the policy purposefully and intentionally interferes with the ability of a parent to obtain this information. The defendant argues that it has no duty to advise parents of a student’s transgender expression in schools. This too serves to burden a parent’s right to direct the education and upbringing of children.”

Lehmann also argues that Manchester’s policy, which requires school employees to withhold information from parents and to actively mislead parents at the child’s request, is a violation of New Hampshire’s Constitution’s Part 1, Article 2, which states all people “have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights among which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty . . . and . . . seeking and obtaining happiness.”

Lehmann notes the right of parents to raise their children has been recognized by the New Hampshire Supreme Court as a constitutional right.

“Our Supreme Court has recognized that: [t]he family and the rights of parents over it are natural, essential, and inherent rights within the meaning of the New Hampshire Constitution. Because of their fundamental importance, great judicial deference has been accorded parental rights,” Lehmann wrote.

Jane Doe learned in 2021 that her child, known in the filing as M.C., was using a different gender identity at school than M.C.’s biological sex, according to court records.

When Jane Doe confronted the school staff, M.C. ‘s teachers agreed that she had the right to step in as M.C. ‘s mother and direct staff to use M.C.’s natural identity and gender.

“I do think that a parent should be giving permission for their child to be called by any other name,” one of M.C.’s teachers wrote to Jane Doe.

However, soon after the teachers agreed to use M.C.’s biological identity, the school principal wrote to tell Jane Doe that the district’s policy makes that impossible.

“Good Morning [Jane Doe]. While I respect and understand your concern, we are held by the District policy as a staff. I have quoted our district policy below, which outlines the fact that we cannot disclose a student’s choice to parents if asked not to. If [M.C.] insists on being called [M.C.’s desired name] as a staff we have to respect that according to the policy or unfortunately we can be held accountable despite parents’ wishes,” the principal wrote.

No one in Manchester’s School Administrative Unit would talk to NH Journal in support of the policy. Mayor Joyce Craig, chair of the school board, also declined to defend it. No one on the school board’s policy committee agreed to speak about it, either.

The district claims in its motion seeking to have the case dismissed that the policy does not interfere with Jane Doe’s rights as a parent because she can use M.C.’s biological sex and birth name in the home. But in school, Jane Does has no right to say how her child is to be treated, according to the district’s motion.

“Whatever the scope of a parent’s rights vis-a-vis their transgender or gender-nonconforming children, they do not include the right to force a school district to act as a conduit for the parent exercise of those rights in this fashion,” the district’s motion states.

Lehmann argues the district’s position is akin to a Jewish family asking that their child receive kosher food or a Hindu family asking that her child be given vegetarian food, only to have the school staff keep secrets and lie to parents about what they are feeding the children.

“But when a school affirmatively acts in ways that hide these kinds of facts from parents, they violate the parent’s rights to direct the upbringing of their children, to become engaged in the child’s development, and to exercise their right to provide guidance,” Lehmann wrote.