Senate to vote School-Funding Plan

The Laconia School District could pocket another $1.5 million in state aid if the bipartisan school-funding plan sponsored by Senators Bob Odell (R-Lempster) and Lou D'Allesandro (D-Manchester) before the Senate today succeeds.

On Tuesday, a majority of the 24-member Senate announced their support for the plan, which Governor John Lynch has also endorsed. All eight Senate Democrats were joined by Odell and four other Republicans — John Gallus (Berlin), Joe Kenney (Union), Dick Green (Rochester) and Andre Martel (Manchester) — to form the majority. Although the plan strongly favors Laconia, Senator Robert Boyce (R-Alton), whose distirct includes the city, was not among those who endorsed it.

The plan, which eliminates the statewide property tax, applies a formula combining fiscal capacity with the so-called "education equity index" (EEI) to distribute $460 million in state aid to municipalities. Laconia would receive a grant of $6,812,193, or $1,513,341 more than projected by the School District budget adopted by the City Council last month. The additional revenue would reduce the projected tax rate by $0.91 per $1,000, based on a conservative estimate of the total assessed valuation of $1.665 billion.

That projection was based on the school-funding plan (House Bill 616), which narrowly passed the House in April. Under the House plan Laconia would receive a grant of $5,298,852. Three of the city's five representatives — Donald Flanders, Ralph Rosen and Frank Tilton — voted with the majority while Jim Fitzgerald and John Veazey did not vote.

Unlike HB 616, the formula applied in the Odell-D'Allesandro plan works to Laconia's advantage by assigning relatively greater weight to factors, especially those comprising the EEI, designed to target aid to the school districts with limited resources and significant needs. Laconia equalized valuation per pupil, calculated as of 2003, was $652,002, which was slightly below the state average of $654,891. However, the city's median household income of $37,796 was only three-quarters of the state average of $49,467.

The EEI uses three factors to measure the number of students with special needs: the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, requiring special education, and with limited English proficiency. Laconia scores above the state average in each of the three categories. Nearly a third of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, twice the state average. Almost 16 percent receive special education, compared to the state average of 14 percent and about five percent have limited proficiency in English, more than twice the state average.

The EEI also measures performance by the percentage of elementary school pupils scoring above the "novice" level of state assessment tests and the high school graduation rate. In Laconia, 62.5 percent of elementary school pupils reach or exceed the "novice" level , compared to the state average of 71 percent. Laconia High School graduates 82 percent of its students while the average graduation rate for the state is almost 86 percent.

By adopting the Odell-D'Allesandro plan today, the Senate would put the ball back in the House's court. The House would be faced with the choice of accepting the Senate plan or requesting a committee of conference to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House plans.

Meanwhile, a number of municipalities where state aid would be significantly reduced by the Odell-D'Allesandro plan have announced that if it is adopted, they will contest it in court. Some Republican senators, including Majority leader Bob Clegg of Hudson, have indicated they will also mount a constitutional challenge to the plan, which they claim by eliminating the statewide property fails to comply with the decisions and opinions issued by the Supreme Court during the past decade of school-funding litigation.