It's not just about the funding: Obama chief of staff says where, how money is spent in education matters most

FRANKLIN — Franklin High School senior Nazlie Taban said her academic performance has improved significantly since transferring into the district, and credits teachers and administrators with creating an environment conducive to learning.

Taban said she transferred in about halfway through her third year of school, and has been surprised and delighted as the high school evolved. Coming in with a 1.2 grade point average, Taban said she’s improved that figure to 3.5, with much credit due to other “people putting in the effort” to support local students. 

“Franklin has opened doors that I would never get at my last high school,” Taban said.

Taban was one of a dozen students on the second floor of Franklin High on Monday afternoon, during a roundtable discussion between students, staff, Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to President Barack Obama.

Last year, students at Franklin High earned more than 270 credits through Lakes Region Community College, high school Principal David Levesque told the crowd of about 40 community members, including city councilors.

“There is no city that is working harder for its students,” Goodlander said during the discussion. 

Lots of student success, Levesque said, may have been thanks to changing their weekly schedule — high school students start their day in Franklin later than 8 a.m., when previously, they began shortly after 7 a.m.

Emanuel, who served as mayor of Chicago from 2011 to 2019, said his city had a lofty goal: ensure 50% of graduates finish school with college credit under their belts, and he strongly supports partnerships between high schools and community college systems. In the room on Monday, seven students raised their hands when asked who was taking dual-enrollment courses.

“I’m so proud of everybody, this has been quite the journey,” Franklin Superintendent Daniel LeGallo said. I’m so proud of the kids today, you guys are doing a great job.”

Goodlander, asked what success looks like in public education, and whether New Hampshire programs could be scaled-up at the federal level, said hard work pays off.  

“We just heard from a dozen extraordinary Franklin High School students, who are all earning credits in our community colleges in New Hampshire, and have incredibly bright futures ahead, because they got the support and they had a community here, a school here, a principal here who’s really trying to deliver for our kids.”

“As I look at our country, we’ve got so much work to do to save the trades in New Hampshire and across America. We have a massive recruiting problem for our armed forces,” she said. “Our students are our future, and our schools are the ultimate guardrail of our democracy.”

Goodlander said the government has a responsibility to ensure every child receives an adequate education.

“We need the Department of Education to stop randomly, arbitrarily, cruelly, chaotically cutting off federal funding streams, like we saw happen right here in Franklin just a few months ago,” Goodlander said. “We never got a good reason for why these programs just got shut off without notice or reason. As we heard here today, it hurts our students, it hurts our schools.

“I’m a deep believer that Congress should be living up to its basic obligations under the law, we’ve been chronically funding under the IDEA from the very beginning,” Goodlander said. “As we heard here, the budget deficit in Franklin could be made up if Congress and the federal government actually lived up to its basic obligations under the law. We’ve got to make the right choices in how we spend taxpayer dollars. Right now, we’re in a situation where trillions of dollars are going to unaccountable, underperforming departments and agencies including the Department of Defense and ICE, and that money has got to be put to better use, and it can be put to use, right here in Franklin.”

Emanuel, who was ambassador to Japan until last year, said while the number of dollars available is important, where those dollars are spent matters even more. 

“One is how you spend your money,” Emanuel said, referencing the State of Mississippi’s success in embracing the early emphasis of phonics in reading instruction. Mississippi, over 20-odd years, saw its reading comprehension score increase dramatically. “Mississippi proved, Tennessee proved, Louisiana proved, phonics, science-based reading — so how you spend your money is as much as how much money you get.

“Proven models that work, double-down on them.”  

Emanuel also criticized the education voucher program in New Hampshire.  

“The federal government has a role to play, the biggest is what a state does, but they have a role to play to incentivize the right set of academic choices,” Emanuel said. “You have a bunch of schools, or rather, these vouchers, with no accountability. Franklin High School is held to standards you have to meet, you have to do X, you have to do Y, it’s not true about these vouchers. There’s no accountability that follows that money, so we’re defunding on one level, and then we’ve walked away from accountability throughout the system, and we’ve seen our reading scores and math scores go down.” 

He said he’d rather see the country invest in community college than in immigration detention centers.

“One of my proposals, as I said, I’m tired of building detention centers [that] nobody wants, let’s start building your community college system where you could have dual-credit, dual-enrollment, school-wide, district-wide, and really would match that, so that a state and a community like Franklin is not left on their own.”