Become a Member! (click here) Education Education funding has been at the center of public policy debate in New Hampshire for years. It is the cause of widespread popular frustration among NH citizens, as our property taxes continue to rise to fill the education budget shortfall. Education funding has created a complete bottleneck in Concord. While the legislature continues its struggle to find a long-term, fair solution to fund our public schools, it defeats other efforts to improve the quality of life for NH citizens, citing a lack of revenue. Until we solve our education funding crisis, NH will be slow to make progress in other key areas: expanding access to health care services, protecting our environment, ensuring economic security for NH families and enacting meaningful campaign finance reform. Since the NH Supreme Court's Claremont II decision in 1997, New Hampshire Citizens Alliance (NHCA) has been working to bring organizations and individuals together to support full funding of education through fair taxation. NHCA has long been a strong, vocal proponent of an income tax as the fairest way to raise sufficient revenue for NH's public schools. In 1997, few groups were willing to get behind an income tax, so NHCA brought them together around principles of fair taxation to form Citizens for Fair Education Taxation. We have worked to expand the number of organizations focused on education funding to include tobacco use prevention groups, health care advocates, activists for elder rights, campaign finance reform proponents and others whose initiatives are undermined by the state's continuing struggles to fully and fairly fund public education in NH. While the legislature has tried to divide these groups, pitting them against one another as they vie for scarce funding, we at NHCA have worked to forge coalitions among these diverse interests. We seek to consolidate the power of all these groups to get adequate revenue into the state coffers to fund all the needs of NH residents. NHCA has also fought against gambling as a revenue source to fund education - we are a member of the Granite State Coalition Against Expanded Gambling (GSCAEG). For details, visit GSCAEG's website at http://www.noslots.com.

During the 1999-2000 school year, education spending and taxation across New Hampshire varied significantly among communities. For example, in Derry, the community spent $4,876 per student. Moultonborough spent $9,016. In Derry, the student-to-teacher ratio was 16 to 1. In Moultonborough, it was 13 to 1. In Derry, the average teacher's salary was $34,000. In Moultonborough, the average was $37,700. To cover the cost of education, Derry taxpayers paid $20.68 per thousand of assessed property value. Moultonborough taxpayers paid $7.05 per thousand of assessed property value.