This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
Amy Bogart has had enough of the state failing to adequately fund education programs, such as special education and career and technical education tuition costs, leaving local taxpayers in Hopkinton and other towns to pick up the tab.
“If the state keeps cutting money to the towns, how can they require us to continue to incur costs?” Bogart asked during the school district’s annual meeting on Saturday. “Where is this money coming from? I don’t have it. Do you have it? No. So just stop putting those people in Concord. That’s all I can say.”
State law obligates New Hampshire to cover 75% of tuition costs when school districts send students to career and technical education programs — a mandate the state has repeatedly failed to honor.
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Hopkinton sends roughly 30 students to the Concord Regional Technical Center, where tuition is $8,000 per student.
School board member Rob Nadeau said the district has been left holding the bill time and again when the state falls short of its legal commitment.
In addition to the regular tuition bill, the district was hit with an unexpected $80,000 charge to cover the state’s 2024 funding shortfall.
This year, that shortfall has ballooned to $126,000.
All these costs are baked into Hopkinton’s $29.3 million school budget, a 4.7% increase over last year. Voters approved the budget in a ballot vote of 220 to 67.
The budget will raise the local tax rate by $1.07 per $1,000 of assessed property value.
Security upgrades
The budget approval, however, did not come without criticism—particularly over a $750,000 security redesign at Hopkinton Middle High School that is to be completed in the summer.
“I am not pleased with how this decision on how to fund this occurred,” said Amanda Gilman. “I do think that a project as large as a $750,000 building project should have been presented to us to vote on in a bond.”
The school’s main entrance has failed to meet safety standards for 26 years, officials said. Early estimates for external safety structures ran as high as $3 million. But last year, school staff found a more inventive, cost-effective approach.
The price tag was $750,000 that could be funded directly from the district’s existing fund balance, a realization that came only in June, said Nadeau.
The district held several public hearings on the project.
Nadeau said the town meeting schedule made it difficult to add the item to the warrant for a formal vote and still get the redesign planned and completed on time.
“This has been about as open and as transparent as a process as you can have, so yes, would it have been nice to have everybody come together and do a warrant? It would have been,” Nadeau said.
Since the money comes from the district’s existing fund balance, taxpayers will see no impact on their tax rate.
While all warrant articles passed, a persistent theme ran through the entire meeting: keeping taxes from climbing so high that longtime residents are priced out of their own community. Residents want the state to deliver the education funding it owes.
Christa Scura said every year, Hopkinton taxpayers are asked to shoulder more as the state chips in less, even after the state Supreme Court affirmed that New Hampshire is already failing to provide adequate funding for public education.
“I am proud of this community. I’m proud of our teachers and administrators who do more with less. These schools are a big reason why many of us choose to live in Hopkinton, but this funding model is broken, and it angers me that it falls on the folks on fixed income who are already struggling,” she said. “It is an unfair funding mechanism that we have in this state.”
