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August 17, 2006
$17,564!
In June I listened to the arguments before the state Supreme Court on the latest challenge to the way New Hampshire pays for schools. This is the never-ending Claremont case. It was impossible to know how the court might rule on the question before it.
But the core of Claremont – the terrible inequity among districts’ abilities to provide a sound public education – still burns hot.
I am reminded of this every time I edit a letter to the editor from Mary Paradise, the head of teacher contract negotiations for the Pittsfield School Board. On behalf of the board and the teachers’ union in Pittsfield, Paradise is sending the Monitor a series of letters making the case to the town’s voters for a one-year contract that the two sides agreed to last month.
Paradise’s latest letter, which will appear in tomorrow’s Monitor, is an eye-opener. Consider just one fact from it: During the school year just past, a beginning teacher with a family insurance plan had a before-tax income of $17,564.
$17,564!
Work a little overtime, and a kid can make that much flipping burgers.
Pittsfield was an original plaintiff in the Claremont suit, and it has received some relief from the court’s rulings. But if the court needs a jolt to stiffen its backbone on Claremont, the teacher contract in Pittsfield should provide it.
Like other poor districts, Pittsfield struggles to pay competitive wages and retain good teachers. Its teachers pay 50 percent of their health insurance costs. Even before benefit differences are included, veteran teachers make between $5,000 and $9,000 less annually than their counterparts in comparable districts.
Those who argue that Pittsfield taxpayers are chintzy and do not support education might want to take a look at the property tax base Pittsfield works from. Just to cite two nearby towns, Barnstead has more than twice as much taxable property per student, Alton more than six times as much. The properties on just two coves in a big-lake town probably exceed Pittsfield’s entire tax base.
The differing tax burdens among towns were at the heart of the Claremont decisions. If anything, that disparity is widening.
Overtaxed though they are, I hope Pittsfield voters approve the one-year teacher contract at a special district meeting later this year. I hope the board and the union press on on salaries and benefits, as they have vowed to do.
But the problem here is beyond the ability of a Pittsfield or an Allenstown or a Claremont to solve. That’s why the Supreme Court ruled against the state in the Claremont case, and that’s why the court should strengthen its earlier rulings when it decides the current case.
It is a travesty and a tragedy that the state of New Hampshire continues to ignore its constitutional obligation and to turn its back on the children of poor towns.
Posted by Mike Pride at August 17, 2006 01:59 PM
Comments
Hi Mike, I read your "blog" on Pittsfield and school funding and would like to say "thank you". While I do not have kids in school and I don't want to pay more in taxes, I understand rock and a hard place the school district is between. I hope that those folks who think there are "programs" and/or "services" that can be cut to help fund the proper salaries, will tell the rest of us where these cuts can be found........
Thanks again for your common sense "blog".
Posted by: Donna Keeley at September 1, 2006 02:08 PM