Why are some people saying we need to save our public schools?

These concerned citizens are trying to educate the public about things many are not aware of such as the bills which have been proposed and/or passed by New Hampshire's legislature in the last 5-10 years including:

• Dissolving all school districts (which would involve Wolfeboro compensating the other towns of the district for facilities and other costs which they have traditionally partially paid for but would no longer be benefitting from)

• Restricting what can be taught or how it is taught undermining local control and costing New Hampshire citizens millions of dollars in court costs to find out some mandates/restrictions are, in fact, unconstitutional 

• State mandates which cost us (through our school districts) money but for which the state provides no funding. These have raised our property taxes substantially. Unfortunately, people blame the increased costs on the schools when it is the result of state mandates which the school districts must follow.

• The decision by the state to pay Public Charter Schools $9,000 per student, which increases each year based on CoL, when they only pay $4,200 for traditional public school students and there is no automatic increase. This means that students that use to cost school districts $4,200 are now costing $9,000+. (Or you can view this difference as -- the state knows what they provide for adequate education grants is insufficient -- and should be more than twice as much.)

• The state mandates traditional school districts to provide services to charter schools -- transportation, special education services, and sports/afterschool activities. The cost of these services are paid for by the school district even though the students are not attending traditional district schools.

• The fact the state has chosen to fight suits against their consitutional obligation to fund an adequate education to the tune of millions and millions of dollars over almost 40 years -- to find out each time they are not meeting their obligation.

• And that the statewide property tax is unconstitutional in addition to the fact it is not solving the problem because every town keeps the money raised by the statewide property tax meaning it functions more like a local property tax.