Andru Volinsky breaks down a New Hampshire Supreme Court opinion that bolsters the open enrollment law threatening school districts across the state.
NH legislators lifted the Open Enrollment scheme directly from ALEC, the Koch Brothers funded, radically libertarian organization that proposes legislation for Free Staters to propose in their home state legislatures. The NH version of the ALEC template gives the receiving school district discretion to reject applicants that the ALEC version doesn’t. This makes it easier for the receiving district to reject high cost students with special ed plans. Stated another way, this allows high cost students to be more concentrated in struggling districts. The NH version also makes the transfer permanent, as long as the transferring student behaves and desires to be in the new district.
Pittsfield was the targeted district in the Supreme Court case. It struggles mightily. I previously wrote about John Freeman, a former superintendent, who reformed the district and improved outcomes with federal and private grants that increased district spending by just 5 percent. Unfortunately, when the grants went away, so did the improvements. Among other problems, Pittsfield is among the school districts with the lowest spending on teacher wages. A new teacher with a child is paid so little that the teacher qualifies for SNAP (food stamp) benefits and the child qualifies for the free and reduced cost lunch program. Exceptionally low wages leads to constant turnover. Constant turnover means teaching is inconsistent and new teachers treat Pittsfield as an extra internship before moving to districts that pay living wages.
NH has a 1950s style school funding system that is more dependent on the value of property in a community than any other state in America. The equalized value of property per pupil in a community, as you all know, is a measure of a school district’s financial strength. Pittsfield is bottom ten on this measure. It has $1,070,794 of real estate against which it can levy a tax to raise money for schools. The average property wealth in NH is $2,082,222 per pupil.
The receiving or more accurately “predator” district in the Pittsfield case was Prospect Mountain. Prospect Mountain is a joint effort of the Alton School District and the Barnstead School District. Alton has an equalized valuation six times that of Pittsfield at $6,381,900. Barnstead is at $1,658,290 per pupil.
I remember pitching the constituent unions of the AFL-CIO for an endorsement when I ran for governor. I talked about making school funding fairer, as I always do. The business manager for the Iron Workers Union responded that he had just moved to Alton, why would he want to change anything. It’s probably unfair, but this is how I think of Alton. We got ours, screw you. I didn’t get the endorsement by the way.
Enter Cornerstone.
Interestingly, the “state” wasn’t represented before the Supreme Court by the NH Attorney General or a lawyer from the NH Department of education in the Pittsfield case, according to the published decision. The Prospect Mountain side of the case advancing the concept of predator districts was presented by lawyers from Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the fifth largest law firm in the US by revenue. Gibson’s client was a group called Cornerstone. Cornerstone is a Christian advocacy group operating in NH. Cornerstone Policy Research is a 501c3 non-profit. Cornerstone Action is a 501c4 lobbying group. Cornerstone Policy Research is a state affiliate for a national group Focus on Families. Cornerstone bills itself as “NH’s Voice for Christians in Concord and the Courts.” Extreme-conservatives Karen Testerman and Kevin Smith were former executive directors of the group.
Why did this law firm get involved? Read the rest of the story here.