Previewing the Book and Some Education Funding Legislation on Tap.

First the book.

Here’s a thumbnail description of the book.

Law and Public Policy for Change

In 1973, the US Supreme Court should have taken the next logical step after the Brown v. Board order to end segregation and provided all children with the resources necessary to support a high-quality education. The Court instead abandoned equality and decided that education is not a fundamental right. In doing so, the Court approved a Texas funding scheme that favored privileged white schools over Black and Mexican American schools with higher needs.  The decision was written by Justice Lewis Powell, considered a moderate by most, even though he wrote the pro-business manifesto, the Powell Memo, and led the Virginia law firm that opposed Thurgood Marshall in Brown. Powell also was considered a friend of Hoover who the FBI considered willing to inform against influential supporters of desegregation in Virginia.

The book sets the table by re-analyzing the Texas case and Powell’s role.  It then describes some of the personal stories involved in the resulting national movement to fairly fund schools through the state courts after Powell’s decision foreclosed federal relief.  The second part of the book focuses on the state with the most extreme tax policies in the nation, New Hampshire, where I was lead counsel for the plaintiff school children and taxpayers for over 30 years in the Claremont litigation.  The fight in New Hampshire involves the brutal publisher of the statewide newspaper, William Loeb, the governor he created and the Democratic and Republican leaders who opposed efforts to equalize educational opportunities for more than three decades. 

Finally, despite the efforts of the most privileged and of those who would dismantle public education altogether, the last chapter asserts there is a glimmer of hope for public education both nationally and in New Hampshire.

I have been thinking about writing this book for a long time. I started roughing out my thoughts while Civic Scholar in Residence at Franklin Pierce University in 2022. (Thank you Professor Doug Challenger and President Kim Mooney.) Then, some things fell into place. First, Amy and I visited San Antonio for a wedding and Marissa Bono, the head of a terrific public policy advocacy group, EveryTexan accepted a cold invitation to meet, treated us to pan dulce and introduced us to policy people and litigators in Texas. Next, we found 30 boxes of Claremont materials that I thought were destroyed. Thanks, Giselle LaFleur. Finally, an old friend revealed that he worked on the data analysis in the San Antonio case while in grad school. Thanks, Gordon Allen.

Believing a bit in karma, I proceed. My draft manuscript should be done by the beginning of February.

If you have a good story to share, an interesting insight or tips on finding a publisher, please write to me using my personal email address which is AndruVolinsky@gmail.com.

Education Legislation to be considered on January 10th.

The Education Committee of the New Hampshire House is meeting on Jan. 10th to conduct public hearings on a handful of education funding bills.

Bills to improve how we fund schools in NH are consistent with the premise that money well spent makes a difference. Justice Powell questioned this premise in the San Antonio case and the state of NH challenged it with expert economists (Carolyn Hoxby of Harvard and Stanford and Eric Hanushek of U Rochester) in the Claremont trial. The naysayers’ claims have been thoroughly debunked by more recent and more comprehensive research conducted by C. Kirabo Jackson at Northwestern.

Most of these ed funding bills do not seek to increase overall spending, but will make the way we raise money more fair. Remember this when someone claims NH doesn’t have the money.

You should be able to watch the Education Committee hearings by clicking here. You may submit written testimony remotely by going here. You’ll need the Bill Numbers that I am providing below. Please consider signing in and supporting or opposing the bills. For more information, visit the NH Fair Funding Project (thank you, Zack Sheehan).

• HB 1583 (9:00AM): Increases the State's annual base adequacy aid from $4,100 to $10,000 per pupil. This would bring the State’s basic adequacy funding in line with the plaintiffs’ cost estimate in the ConVal case.  The prime sponsor is Rep. Jonah Wheeler from Peterborough who graduated from ConVal High School.

• HB 1656 (9:30AM): Increases the additional part of adequacy aid for students who qualify for special education services. The aid amount increases from the arbitrary current expenditure of $2,100 per student to $27,000, an amount approaching the state average spent on each child who qualifies for special education.   This is one of two Special Education funding bills sponsored by Rep. Cam Kenney of Durham. Cam received special education services when he was in school and is serving his third term as a state rep while finishing law school. Rep. Kenney’s other bill converts the local payment structure for special education costs to a uniform, comprehensive statewide insurance plan for most special education expenses. No hearing date has been set for the second bill.

• HB 1586 (10:30 AM): Establishes a foundation aid program for funding public education.  This hugely complex and multi-headed bill is sponsored by the Democratic education establishment in the House and is problematic. Parts of the bill are worthy of support. However, other parts of the bill violate the constitutional principles established in the Claremont cases and return us to an Augenblick-type foundation aid funding model where the state does not pay the full cost of a constitutionally adequate education, but rather targets money to help the poorest districts. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the targeted monies are sufficient to the task.

• HB 1686 (2:00PM): Requires all taxpayers to pay the full Statewide Property Tax (SWEPT) and prohibits the NH Department of Revenue Administration (DRA) from administering SWEPT in an illegal and preferential way. In part, the DRA sets negative local tax rates to offset the SWEPT allowing some substantial property owners to escape paying any portion of the state tax. Yea, the state sets negative rates so some of your neighbors don’t pay taxes (and it’s not limited to impoverished taxpayers). This bill brings the state into compliance with the recent Rand ruling. Rep. Marjorie Smith of Durham is the prime sponsor of this bill and she has attracted a number of Republican and Democratic reps as co-sponsors. The illegal negative rate strategy is also used to offset Coos County taxes for the county nursing homes, house of corrections and the like. About 20 other property wealthy communities who raise more money with the uniform SWEPT rate than is needed locally to pay for adequacy are permitted to keep the excess and apply it to other education costs. In essence, the DRA gives them a bonus to apply to their local education budget and thereby reduce local education taxes. HB 1686 returns about a $25 million to the state’s Education Trust Fund that could be deployed to support a pilot universal pre-school program or enhanced literacy programs in the most needy school districts. (Pre-school programming also helps with economic development in areas where daycare is scarce.)

Also on the radar:

The U.S. Court of Appeal for the DC Circuit will consider former President Trump’s claim that he is completely immune from prosecution on January 9th.

The Supreme Court will consider Trump’s appeal of his ballot disqualification in Colorado on February 8th. Maine also disqualified Trump. (Yay, Maine!)