FACT SHEET: School Funding

October 11th, 2024

New Hampshire relies mostly on property taxes to pay for its public schools. More than 70% of a school’s funding comes from the property taxes in the town where it is located, while about 19% is provided from the state, and the remaining is from the federal government.

The state’s reliance on property taxes means that students’ educational opportunities vary significantly based on where a student lives. Schools do not have the same amount of funding available to them to pay for for things like school buildings, teacher salaries, materials, extracurricular activities, and more.

 

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SOURCES:

Burke, L. (2024, February 26). How do state appropriations impact graduation rates among underrepresented students? Higher Ed Dive. https://www.highereddive.com/news/state-appropriations-graduation-rates-underrepresented-students/708434/

Darling-Hammond, L., Schachner, A., & Edgerton, A. K. (with Badrinarayan, A., Cardichon, J., Cookson, P. W., Jr., Griffith, M., Klevan, S., Maier, A., Martinez, M., Melnick, H., Truong, N., Wojcikiewicz, S.). (2020). Restarting and reinventing school: Learning in the time of COVID and beyond. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.

Hosung Sohn, Heeran Park, Haeil Jung; The Effect of Extra School Funding on Students’ Academic Achievements under a Centralized School Financing System. Education Finance and Policy 2023; 18 (1): 1–24.

Lafortune, Julien. (2022). Understanding the Effects of School Funding. Public Policy Institute of California.