Lynch wants a school funding amendment: the wrong one!

[KBCraig]

 

Lynch admits he'd support a constitutional amendment about school funding... if it guaranteed targeted aid to "more deserving" schools!

Redistributionist POS! 



http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Lynch%3a+Constitutional+change+OK+if+school+aid+targets+need+it+done&articleId=cd9de6e1-a2b6-4e1e-b8e0-7d9771f21992

Lynch: Constitutional change OK if school aid targets need it done

By TOM FAHEY
State House Bureau Chief

Concord ? Gov. John Lynch said yesterday he wants the state to adopt a targeted-aid school funding plan, even if it takes a constitutional amendment to make it work.

Any plan the Legislature adopts next year, he said, should target aid to towns and students that need it the most.

Lynch told reporters he thinks a state policy and funding plan should be settled first. Once that's done, he said, it will be time to look at the state Constitution.

"If, in order to achieve that goal, we need to consider a targeted constitutional amendment, I'm open to that," he said. "We'd take a good look at it."

Lynch, running for a second term this fall, insisted that the state will meet its responsibility to provide children with an adequate education and repeated his pledge to veto a sales or income tax.

"What we're not going to have is a race to the bottom. I don't want to talk about what is the least we can offer. I want to have a discussion about what is the best we can offer to our children," he said.

Lynch said he'd use his funding plan, which came within one vote of passage in 2005, as a starting point for a new plan. His plan relied on what he called the education equity index. It measured community wealth and performance test scores as indicators of how much state aid a school district needed.

The state has struggled with defining and funding an adequate education for all schoolchildren for nearly a decade now, ever since the 1997 Claremont II ruling from the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

In striking down the current school funding system last month, the court said the state is responsible for funding all aspects of learning that the Legislature defines as part of adequate education.

It gave the Legislature until next July 1 to clearly define an adequate education so its costs can be determined.

If lawmakers don't act, the court said it would appoint a special master and set the court system to work on the problem.

[FrankChodorov]

I hate to say I told you so Jane...but I told you so!