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OUR VIEW

But what's fair for Claremont and Franklin needs to be fair for Londonderry, Windham, Salem, and a host of other towns and school districts across Southern New Hampshire as well.

That's why it's vital for Southern New Hampshire's school districts to be unified in their opposition to the revised state funding formula. Londonderry School Board members are working to build a coalition to fight for fair funding, and the other school districts in our area would be well-advised to seek such strength in numbers.

School districts across Southern New Hampshire are in line for the hardest hits under the House school funding plan, which is now pending before the Senate. Only two of the 14 districts in our area -- Derry and Danville -- would see small increases in funding over current levels; the rest would lose significant amounts of state aid. Londonderry alone stands to lose about $3.6 million, the most of any southern tier district, and Salem will drop by about $1.5 million.

While channeling additional aid to poorer districts is an admirable goal, cutting aid to communities that have already factored the money into their school budgets is patently unfair (though it's an all-too-familiar occurrence in New Hampshire's annual school funding battles), and just shifts more of the cost of education back to the local property tax. As most districts have already passed next years' school budgets based on earlier figures, any revenue reductions will be felt in the tax rate.

The House-adopted plan incorporated some of the elements of the education-funding proposal unveiled a couple of months ago by Gov. John Lynch, including his complex distribution formula and the elimination of the statewide property tax. Lynch has described that tax as an "accounting gimmick," as most of the money that appears to be a state tax is actually retained in the towns where it is collected. He wants to eliminate that fiction and have it go straight to the towns.

But while that will appease the property-rich "donor towns" that pay in more taxes than they receive back in aid, ending it could open a revenue gap if the full 28-cent cigarette tax increase is not adopted in the Senate -- and several key Republicans have already spoken out against the increase.

There are many legitimate questions about the House plan: Is the targeted aid approach constitutional under the state Supreme Court's Claremont rulings? Are the distribution formulas, which funnel additional money to districts that perform poorly, fair?

Southern New Hampshire town and school officials need to make sure those questions get asked and get satisfactory answers. The districts in our area have a combined total enrollment of nearly 24,000 students, and a unified front representing that many students will provide more political leverage than pleas from individual towns and districts.

At the moment, Southern New Hampshire schools are headed for the short end of the school funding deal. Fair should mean fair -- for everyone. ~