The House, Thursday, February 25, 2021

Rep. David Luneau (D - Merr 10)Thank you, Mister Speaker. Why am I speaking in opposition to HB 242, relative to the content of an adequate education? Doesn't this bill make an adequate education even better? Well, that's not what this bill does and, furthermore, that's not the problem we have with public education. Overall, New Hampshire students perform very well and in fact rank among the best in the country. Student outcomes are measured using a combination of student performance on statewide assessment tests, graduation rates and attendance rates. The problem is it's just not happening everywhere. In districts with higher incidents of poverty, student outcomes are well below state average and these school districts spend less on education than do district serving more affluent communities. The lack of access to financial resources leaves many districts unable to provide the opportunity for an adequate education and inequities manifest themselves in more needy districts through lower student outcomes and higher property taxes. A good example of where this happens is in Manchester, our state's largest school district with 13,000 students. While some districts have average student performance in the 80th percentile, Manchester sits at the bottom closer to the 5th percentile. It's not the kids fault or the fault of the parents or the teachers or the administration or the school community. On a per pupil basis, Manchester spends about half of what many other districts do. Simply, they lack the fiscal capacity to fund their schools in a way that sets their kids up for success. But, rather than do anything that could improve the opportunity for Manchester's 13,000 kids, or Nashua's 11,000 kids or Berlin's kids or the kids in Pittsfield, Newport of Claremont, this bill makes arbitrary snips and clips to the definition of an adequate education and it blasts a huge hole in local control by allowing third parties to issue high school graduation credit with no accountability to the local voters. Who knows what you are going to get? And, your local school board will have no ability to say stop, that is junk, we are not going to go do that. This bill turns its back on student achievement by defining the cost of an adequate education as having 30 desks in a classroom and a line 500 students long waiting to meet with a school counselor. Wow, what a step forward. So, as long as the classroom is chock full of desks, then I guess that's good enough. Good enough for the kids in Manchester. Defining an adequate education in terms of student outcomes is the way forward. It's fair to students and their families and it's good for our workforce and for the New Hampshire economy. This bill just doesn't do it and it takes us in the wrong direction. Let's not do this to our students. Let's vote against this. What students, families, taxpayers and businesses need is a bill that defines an adequate education in terms of student performance. This isn't it and Mister Speaker; I do request a roll call vote. Thank you.

Speaker PackardThe Chair recognizes the member from Haverhill, Rep. Ladd to speak for the committee report.

Rep. Rick Ladd (R - Graf 4)Thank you, Mister Speaker. You might ask why this bill at this time? We're at the frontside of planning for the next biennium and it's important that we get education policy and the definition of adequacy squared away and understood so that finance, when they meet with the chore ahead of them, which is to develop a budget for this state and more specifically in terms of education, a biennium budget for the state in terms of how we are going to fund K-12 education. So this is an extremely important bill. There are some constructs in this bill or considerations that we must build our legislation around. It is the state's duty to define the substantive content of a constitutionally adequate education. It is our job to define adequacy. The way that the funding commission this last year has looked at this, is that they recognize yes, we do have a high achievement scores in our state as a whole or as an average. We always are in the top 5 states in the country. There is no question about that. But what they've done is they figure well if we are achieving that well, the amount of money we are spending totally on education is what we have to fund through adequacy. Negating the fact that we have shared responsibility for instruction and curriculum. That's not a state responsibility. That is a local responsibility. But, the way they have done it is they've taken each year the DOE 25 forms, which are submitted to the department from each school district, which reflects other assets, their revenues and their expenditures and they've taken the average of those expenditures and say that's the amount we are supposed to fund all of our students at. Not segregating from that expense account activities like marching bands, soccer, football, non-adequacy elements. So we are getting now moved into adequacy the costs of an education, which are beyond a state's responsibility. We are seeing moved into that benefit packages, which are negotiated locally that are above and beyond what the state has recommended in the past or what we have seen in base adequacy. You are seeing all this thrown into that average cost. So that is the performance outcome they are looking at. That's not how the majority sees it. It is our responsibility to define adequacy and we've done that. Adequacy is the opportunity for an adequate education as defined as rigorous academic study and applied learning in the core knowledge domains or areas. Some call them subjects. We've gone and looked at those subjects, which are in statute and yes, language arts and writing and reading, they remain. They are very important. They are the base subjects that we have. But there are some subjects that were denigrated back in the 70's when I was a school teacher and later when I was a principal throughout this country and I wrote many a piece of literature looking at what is social studies, social studies. We have now changed that terminology within adequacy to read civic, government, economics, history and geography. It's time to return to these subjects so our kids know that New Mexico is not part of Mexico. We've also changed science, blank science, and reflect what we have in education 306. The state has the responsibility for defining the minimum standards for public school approval. When 306, we look at sciences, well, what are sciences? We have put in what is in 306 right now, biology, physical science and earth science. So we are talking about physics, biology and botany. We are talking about subjects which are important that our youngsters have the opportunity to receive. Health education, we put down health and wellness and one that I have heard on the floor of the House for many years, we have also integrated personal finance literacy. Our students need to come out of school knowing how to balance a checkbook and know that Visa or Mastercard is not the end all. We've also taken several skills which need to be taught throughout all of these subjects and indicated that that's the way it should be done. Computer science, digital literacy, logic and rhetoric. Logic, how to reason. How to see what we think verses what is fact, scientific fact. So, that's one of the constructs that we put in to this bill. Now, the other one is, whatever the state identifies as comprising a constitutional adequate education, the state must pay for it. The costing of education, an adequate education. So, what is an adequate education? We have defined it as base adequacy or base cost. We have defined it as differentiated cost, aid. Now, in the base cost, we have defined those elements or resources that every district needs in order to support children with an adequate education. This includes teachers, specialty teachers, principals, administrative assistants, guidance counselors and it goes on. We have defined this. This comes from the Joint Legislative Oversite Committee we had in 2008. They went through and did this. We also look at what came out of the 2018 task force. We were looking at our funding here in the state. We also looked at that and said that was correct what was done back in 2008. That's what we should have. Now, the local school district decides that their pupil teacher ratio should be 14/1 or 13/1, beyond what we are recommending as an adequate education, that's on the local district. However, that should not be aggravated into the average cost of an education and that DOE 25 and passed on for every student. Now, looking at differentiated aid, we've had that in our legislation in the past. We recognize that there are students which need additional support and help. That is a given and it's understood. Special education students, those with English language proficiency needs and those that come from poverty that's identified through the free and reduced meal plan. Yes, the minority did speak to there is a relationship between free and reduced and poverty and we know there is a relationship between that and the equalized property valuation per pupil and we've written that into this legislation as well. Those kids in the lowest quartile in terms of equalized evaluation per pupil, 85% of them in these municipalities are below proficiency. Well, only 15% are above proficiency, but when you look at the highest quartile in terms of equalized property valuations in our state per municipality, and we have some that are well up to about $7 million plus per pupil and we have others that are around $340,000 or $400,000 per pupil, we are seeing the highest having 40% of their students are below proficiency while 60% are above. There is a change there, however, we are not doing the job. We need to have all children above proficiency or working towards that goal. So, we've added a category that was put in there back in 2008 back into legislation. Fiscal capacity disparity aid and that's based upon equalized property evaluation per pupil and also, we put in a category which deals with achievement. So, districts that have high property values, we know they have large elements of students which are not proficient. Those kids need support as well and we have a responsibility to help all students in this state. In terms of accountability, we've written into this statutory language accountability where those school districts which are not meeting the inputs that we have here that we've addressed in terms of proper resource elements, they will be notification coming from the department to the Joint Legislative Oversite Committee and schools which are not meeting the bar, they will be required to post the status on their websites and to notify parents in writing. We want parents to know that their school is not performing and to get on the stick and get it performing. Now, we have a number of issues that people have not looked at in terms of both the commission, there are number of areas where funding is not necessarily the only answer to an adequate education. There are characteristics that we have to look at which are funded, they impact our outcomes such as community expectation, family aspiration, parental support and engagement, quality of school leadership and supervision added to an engagement of staff, local control. All these things impact adequacy. It's not just going to be throwing more dollars at them. Whatever we do with the costing of an adequate education, it must be sustainable. If you take the report that came out of that commission and look at what the cost is set at, roughly around $6,000 per student and you look at the weighted formula for special education, which is 4 times that base, plus the base, you are looking at a kid that possibly got an IEP that maybe has 30 minutes per week being supported with $30,000. That is unbelievable. You can't have the same weighted formula for all kids. You have to weight it properly, but that formula that they used for the estimated cost model has to come up with that average cost based on DOE 25 aggregate. So, you add one, you have to subtract somewhere else. So, I would like to conclude here that what we have here is a priority that we need to look at. We need to assume our responsibilities. We need to define adequacy. We cannot default that to local school districts and let them decide what adequacy is. We will certainly have unsustainable budgets in the future if we do. Thank you very much, Mister Speaker.

Speaker PackardRep. Luneau has requested a roll call. Is that sufficiently seconded? It is sufficiently seconded. Members will take their seats. This is a roll call vote. The Chair recognizes Rep. Tanner for a parliamentary inquiry.

Rep. Linda Tanner (D - Sull 5)Thank you, Mister Speaker. If I know that our New Hampshire students perform very well in the top 4 or 5 states in the country. And, if I know this bill defines the base for the cost of an adequate education on resources, rather than student outcomes as recommended by the independent commission on school funding that just concluded after extensive research and development. And, if I know that this adequacy funding method of resources will have a negative effect, not only on student outcomes, but does nothing to address the funding inequities that hurts our students, our taxpayers and our schools, would I now vote no? Thank you.

Speaker PackardThe Chair recognizes Rep. Steven Smith for a parliamentary inquiry.

Rep. Steven Smith (R - Sull 11)Thank you, Mister Speaker. If I know this bill clearly identifies and defines the educational content of an adequate education without defaulting this responsibility to the educational establishment. If I also know the ultimate purpose of this bill was to improve educational quality while ensuring that all students regardless of educational needs or inequities benefit and have access to core educational services and criteria defined by the legislature. And, finally if I believe this bill provides a reasonable policy pathway to determine cost and provide all children in our state the opportunity for an adequate education, would I then push the green button? Thank you, Mister Speaker.

Speaker PackardThe question is on the majority report of Ought to Pass as Amended on HB 242. This is a roll call vote. If you are in favor, you'll press the green button. If you are opposed, you'll press the red button. Voting stations will be open for 30 seconds. Have all members present had an opportunity to vote? The House will be attentive to the state of the vote. 198 voting Nay, 149 voting Nay, the committee report is adopted. (Rep. Steven Smith in the Chair)