New Hampshire: 21% of students qualify for SPED support
- The end of childhood
- 22 hours ago
- 1 min read
In Depth NH: Op-Ed: Special Education Funding, The Problem of Not Getting It
I testified before the NH House last week on a bill to change how we fund special education expenses and caused a bit of controversy. Go figure! The bill flips the script on how NH funds special ed costs from the state contributing ten percent of the costs to the state contributing eighty percent of the costs. The bill also provides for timely payment by the state, to the extent possible, in the same year as the cost is incurred. Rep. Heather Raymond, (D-Nashua) is the prime sponsor of the bill which is filed as HB 1835. Alicia Gregg (D-Nashua) and Hope Damon (D-Croydon) are co-sponsors. . . .
The answer may lie in the different make-ups of the two districts. Windham is a school district of 2927 students on NH’s southern border with Massachusetts. It has less than four percent of its children living in poverty and 16.95 percent of its children qualify for special ed. The state average is about twenty-one percent.
The Merrimack Valley School District is an amalgam of five school districts in the Concord area with 2192 students. Almost thirty percent of its children live in poverty and more than twenty-five percent qualify for special ed.
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