The Winchester School District is joining a school funding lawsuit against the state. Winchester, which is located in the southwest corner of New Hampshire, is the third district that's party to the lawsuit, brought earlier this month by the ConVal School Board.
The ConVal lawsuit claims the state is not meeting its constitutional obligation to pay for an adequate education and that it has downshifted these costs to local taxpayers.
Both the Winchester and the Monadnock School Boards voted last week to join the lawsuit, and Winchester is now an official plaintiff alongside ConVal.
Winchester has its own K-8 school with around 430 students, and it pays Keene High School tuition for its high-schoolers.
Winchester School Board chair Lindseigh Picard says this costs Winchester a lot of money - in the case of their 36 high school special ed students, tuition to Keene is over $30,000 a year for each student.
In the lawsuit, Winchester says the state isn't covering enough of that cost and it asks for over $4 million by April 1.
Picard says the board has been discussing a possible lawsuit for over a year but was concerned about legal costs. ConVal, a much larger district, is footing most of the bill, and Winchester has agreed to pitch in $15,000.
