Jackie Cilley

As legislators it is our duty to ensure the best education possible for all of our children. This is not only a moral and civic imperative, but also an economic one as well. For example, in a report by Noah Berger and Peter Fisher (2013), the authors detailed the strong relationship between education and high wage states with thriving economic activity.

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“Overwhelmingly, high-wage states are states that have a well-educated workforce…The correlation is very strong and there are very large differences between median hourly wages in states with well-educated workforces and hourly wages in states with less-well-educated workforces...Median wages are substantially higher in states with better-educated workers.” https://bit.ly/2IUgKpR

 

Other research has shown that one of the most important factors in a business’ location decision is the availability of an educated workforce. Therefore, ensuring access to a high-quality education, including post-secondary school, is in the economic interest of a state as well as in our workers.

 

Even more important than the moral, civic, and economic reasons to ensure an excellent education to our children, is the constitutional requirement that we do so.  Article 83 of the New Hampshire Constitution states: 

 

Knowledge and learning, generally diffused through a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; and spreading the opportunities and advantages of education through the various parts of the country, being highly conducive to promote this end; it shall be the duty of the legislators and magistrates, in all future periods of this government, to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries and public schools, to encourage private and public institutions, rewards, and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and economy, honesty and punctuality, sincerity, sobriety, and all social affections, and generous sentiments, among the people: Provided, nevertheless, that no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination. Article 83, NH State Constitution

 

For all of the above reasons and more, I believe it is our responsibility and duty to ensure that every one of New Hampshire’s children, regardless of zip code, have access to the very best education we can provide. The state should be a full partner with our towns and cities in keeping the promise that our founders made at the outset of our Granite State, and we should work toward reducing the burden on local property taxpayers to the fullest extent possible.

 

That obligation on the part of the state fails to be upheld when monies intended for our local schools are diverted to private unaccountable organizations. Currently, the voucher program created by the current legislature and signed into law by Gov. Sununu has exceeded its initial estimates of $3 +/- million over time, to mushroom to $14.7 million currently and is estimated to grow to $70 million over time. Those monies will have to be made up at the local level by the property taxpayers of each of our communities.

 

In addition to appropriately supporting our local schools, I also believe we have a responsibility to ensure an honest, robust education of competing ideas, developed by credentialled educators. Legislators, often with no background or experience in educational services, should not be in the business of banning books or topics or threatening our dedicated teachers with loss of licensure for teaching of “divisive topics.” (Do we even know what those are??!) We have local school boards, local PTOs, and the individual relationships between teachers and the parents of their students to help oversee that age-appropriate materials and activities are used to convey knowledge and assist learning. Moreover, we already have opportunities for parents to elect to remove their child from specific lesson plans and/or activities.

 

Recently we have been witnessing a nationwide, concerted effort to impugn the reputations of our teachers and our local schools and ultimately, to dismantle them. There are sitting legislators here in New Hampshire and across the US who do not believe that educating our young is a responsibility of our local, state and federal government. Rather, they believe this is an individual responsibility to be shouldered by individual parents. I fundamentally disagree with this view. As noted above, I believe that educating our children should be one of our highest priorities in order to protect our democracy, enhance our civic life, to attract businesses with high paying jobs, and to compete with the rest of the world. The citizens of Strafford District 18 can count on me to advocate for and strengthen our local schools.