Alan Doyon: Schools need to show they provide a superior education or learn to budget for loss of funding

To The Daily Sun,

There have been numerous letters to the editor claiming the New Hampshire educational freedom vouchers take needed public education funds. I would say these letter writers failed math while in school themselves.

Public schools in NH are spending over $20,000 on average per student but will lose state funding of approximately $5,000 when a student and parent choose to accept that payment toward their private school expense. Schools need to either show they provide a superior education or learn to budget for this small loss of funding. Since they would spend over $20,000 to retain that student, they should have little problem figuring out how to adjust their budget having saved $15,000+ when that student is removed from their school system.

First and foremost, elimination of one administrator (not necessarily a teacher) should be the first change and it will have minimal or no affect on the classroom education. Families that choose to participate in the educational freedom accounts are choosing to spend more than the state funding because they chose a private school that likely will result in a better education. I applaud their commitment to their child's education and expect that any school system should be able to wrestle out $5,000 from their annual budget and quite frankly even more.

This isn't reverse robin hood, but instead an economics and finance lesson that public schools need to learn instead of robbing the public for declining educational results.

Another suggestion for teachers at school systems with low student to teacher ratios, offer to the district to not replace any retiring teacher and instead use 50% of those unfilled teaching positions salaries to be split with all remaining teachers. The student to teacher ratio with slightly increase while teacher pay will also increase.

This can be a win-win.

Alan Doyon

Meredith