House Budget: Mandatory, permanent budget caps, overriding local voters and stifling public school innovation

April 8th, 2025

The budget caps that are included in the budget, originally outlined in HB 675, would restrict school districts’ ability to budget effectively for the needs of their students and communities by imposing a mandatory, permanent formula for their annual budgets. 

Local voters have already rejected these caps this past election in every district that they were proposed: Salem, Hollis Brookline, Kearsarge, Epsom, Weare, Epping, ConVal, and Haverhill. 

The budget caps do not account for any budget line items except for facilities construction and acquisition. That means that school boards will have to choose between providing academic programs and classes, employing qualified teachers and staff, offering extracurricular activities, having manageable student-teacher ratios, and/or meeting the needs of their students, when the cost of other budget items, like heating the school building, health insurance costs, or providing transportation to their students, increases. 

It would also lock in the budget decisions of the school board – including staffing levels, program offerings, extracurricular activities, etc – inhibiting the school’s ability to incorporate new strategies, practices, innovative programs, and more.

See a town-by-town analysis of the effects of HB 675 here.

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