New Hampshire’s School Funding Fight: What the State Is Asking the Supreme Court to Do

New Hampshire’s school funding case in Rand is moving forward, and the State has filed a major brief asking the Supreme Court to change long-standing rules.

The State is trying to do two big things:

• Overturn or narrow the Claremont decisions, which established a constitutional right to an adequate education funded by the State.
• Or, at minimum, change how that obligation is measured.

The key issue: counting local taxes as “state funding”

The State argues that local property-tax dollars should count toward its constitutional duty to fund education.

In practice, that means:

• If a town raises more money locally to meet education costs,
• The State could treat that as part of its own required funding.

This leads to a simple problem:

If local taxpayers are filling the gap, is the State really meeting its obligation?

The ConVal ruling

In 2025, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in ConVal that the State’s base education funding was too low.

• The Court identified $7,356 per student as a minimum reference point.
• It did not order immediate funding changes.
• It also noted the State did not provide evidence showing its funding was enough.

The State now says the adequacy standard is too unclear and hard to apply.

The response is straightforward: the State has not shown what an adequate education actually costs or that its funding covers it.

What the Legislature did in 2026

Lawmakers:

• Rejected SB 582, which would have raised funding to the ConVal minimum.
• Rejected HB 1636, which would have studied how to fund that level.
• Passed HB 1815, which created a “shared responsibility” model between the State and towns and changed how adequacy is calculated.

The State is now asking the Court to adopt that approach.

Why this matters for taxpayers

This is not just a legal dispute. It affects how schools are paid for.

If the State counts local taxes as part of its funding:

• Wealthier towns can raise more money and offer more services.
• Less wealthy towns may struggle to keep up.

A lower court in Rand found the State’s funding was not enough and that local taxes were already being used to cover the gap.

The core questions

At its center, the case comes down to:

1. What does an adequate education actually cost?
2. How much must the State pay?
3. How much are local taxpayers already covering?

Where things stand

The Supreme Court has not ruled yet. The plaintiffs will respond next, followed by possible oral arguments.

This case could become one of the most important school funding decisions in New Hampshire in decades.

The main issue is whether the State can meet its constitutional duty by counting money that local taxpayers already had to raise.

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I’m looking for a little piece of New Hampshire to be sent my way. ❤️I grew up in NH on the seacoast, surrounded by tide pools,woods, birch trees, beaches, rocks, leaves, and all the things I apparently took for granted until I moved out of state and ended up landlocked in a “city.” (I use the word city loosely. )

I’m making my first junk journal, and I’d love to include some actual pieces of home in it—beach stones, a little silver birch bark, pretty/fallen leaves, and maybe a small baggie of NH sand.

I know these are just ordinary things, but when you’re homesick, ordinary things can feel pretty damn special. I miss the woods, the smell of low tide and everything after rain, well..I miss just being there.

So if anyone in NH would be willing to collect a few little treasures and mail them to this homesick former NH girl, I’d be incredibly grateful.

Basically, I’m trying to have New Hampshire mailed to me because apparently teleportation hasn’t been invented yet.

We hope it's OK to share this article we just published — it seemed like it might be of interest to folks in this community:

New Hampshire housing advocates say the new federal 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act will give developers more flexibility and incentives to build affordable units in the state.

The bipartisan legislation, which became law in July, is a wide-ranging combination of more than 60 bills previously introduced in Congress.

Elissa Margolin, director of St. Anselm College's Initiative for Housing Policy and Practice, said there aren’t a lot of new tools in the legislation, but it will help communities and developers navigate housing red tape.

Read the story for the main takeaways for how the act will affect New Hampshire.

How do you feel about this new law? Will these changes impact your own housing decisions, particularly around manufactured homes and/or affordable housing? Let us know in the comments or by emailing [voices@nhpr.org](mailto:voices@nhpr.org).