A. That number was put forth by the business manager, and it applies to the 2026-2027 budget that he brought to the school board. This was about $2 million more than the previous year's budget. Normally the district requests more than it knows it's going to receive, because the board almost always makes some sort of cut. It's a wish list, and anything that is subtracted is a "cut". It's not a cut from what was spent in the current year.
By the way, this is a very common tactic that is used all the time in government finance. It's a way for a department or agency to maximize their funding.
That "cut" was immediately reduced to around $7 million by the School Board during a meeting in January, 2026. After this "cut" by the school, the budget was then $42.9 million--nearly the same level it was for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. (Note that the School Board, which made a significant "cut"
In addition, the Claremont school district lost over 10% of their students last year when they left for other educational opportunities. In effect, proposing the same bottom line for next year as for this year, the School Board has raised per student spending by 11%. This increase is over three times the current inflation rate. So the bottom line is still about the same, but the actual cost of educating each student will probably zoom from $26,000 to over $29,000 next year. If the spending cap were in place, the cost per student would rise about 3.1%, the latest inflation figure for this area. The excessive increase (8% over inflation) is around $3.4 million.
In addition, the spending per pupil cost was calculated by dividing the estimated spending amount ($35,700,906) for 2025-2026 by the number of students from 2024-2025. There's a big problem with this calculation: the spending cap can't be used on the 2026-2027 budget because it's already on the ballot now, and either that budget or the default budget will be adopted at the election. The spending cap can't be applied to this ballot's budget article.
In addition, the spending cap article requires that the 2025-2026 student count must be used, not the count from 2024-2025.
The student count dropped by at least 158 students this year, from 1,534 in October, 2024 to 1,376 in October, 2025. (The overall average attendance for the year--the ADM-R-is normally close to the October student census numbers, and was 1,554 for 2024-2025.)
To get an estimate for what this year's per pupil cost will be, divide the 2025-2026 spending amount $35,700,906 by the number of students (1,376) to get the per pupil cost: $25,945.
Using recent inflation rates, the next budget cap is estimated at $26,749 per student. A large chunk of the "cut" comes from the difference between a 3.1% increase required by the spending cap and the 11% increase per pupil cost due to dropping enrollments.
Q. Is it hard to get a budget passed that exceeds the spending cap?
A. In the vast majority of New Hampshire school districts, budget warrant articles usually pass by more than the 60% required to exceed the spending cap. This has been the case in Claremont for most elections.
However, for the last 7 years, the district and the School Board have increased spending per student much faster than the inflation rate would suggest, and there's no indication that the School Board will be able to end this out-of-control spending. Furthermore, because the School Board did not practice due diligence with regard to the school district's operation and finances, the current financial crisis had years to grow without appropriate intervention. During the same time, the district also avoided informing the public about their operations. Nobody was minding the store.
In a situation like that, the School Board may find it difficult to exceed the spending cap. But that is how it should work. The School Board and the district administrators both need to show that they are capable of dealing appropriately with school finance and administration if they want the voters to trust them.
The Claremont School Board promised last September that they were going to start posting more information about operations. Not only has that not happened, but many of last year's documents have been pulled off the SAU web site. It appears that the culture of silence and secretiveness that lies at the root of the financial disaster has not yet changed.
In such an environment, it might be hard to exceed the spending cap. It's very apparent that the School Board thinks so.
It's more than ironic that a School Board which has clearly proven it can't do its job doesn't trust taxpayers who coughed up increasing percentages of their household income without fail, year after year.
Q. Why can't we get the state government to just give Claremont schools more money?
A. This has been asked for the last 40 years. Here's why that isn't working:
1. Revenue is just one side of the equation. The spending side of the equation needs to be dealt with too. Imagine a business that has been around for 100 years. Does that business do everything the same way as it did 100 years ago? Of course not.
During the intervening years, the business introduced numerous improvements to make their businesses more efficient and economical. They changed products or services to match changing customer preferences, and they discontinued those products or services which became a poor investment.
Getting revenue from the state doesn't depend on improvement. So programs continue long after they've become obsolete. Operations don't need to become more efficient or a better value to the "investor." They'll get funded anyway, at least until the well runs dry. It really is a case of "bad money driving out good" with predictable results.
3. The majority of legislators think that Claremont's problems are "self-inflicted" and they don't look forward to telling their own constituents why they're handing out money to a district that is so poorly run. Few legislators are willing to commit political suicide for a poorly run district that isn't even theirs. It's really not a good idea to reward failure.
Q. If the spending cap passes, will the school district end bus service for the high school?
A. The spending cap does not apply to transportation costs. Because it doesn't, any decision to cut transportation at the high school rests with the school district management and the school board. Because the business administrator fills out form DOE-25 reports for the NH Department of Education, he is certainly aware that transportation costs are not included in the cost per pupil calculation.
The New Hampshire Department of Education shows the relevant details here.
Q. If the spending cap passes, what will happen to all the school buildings?
A. That's already a problem in Claremont, whether a spending cap is present or not.
At the time that Bluff school closed down, the school was down to 144 students in a total of 8 classes. Both Maple Avenue and Disnard schools are under capacity, and despite Bluff's classes being split between them, they still have empty classrooms.
At the middle school, there's 14 empty classrooms.
Stevens High School, which has a capacity of 1,500 students, only had 424 students at the time of last October's student census. Next October will be even more interesting: Unity students are expected to go to Fall Mountain, so 30 - 35 more students will vanish. And that's before counting the trend of parents continuing to shift their children to home schooling, charter schools, and private schools with the help of scholarships and EFAs.
It's highly unlikely that nearby districts are going to send their kids to Claremont. Several have already been there, done that, and left. Think Cornish, Charlestown.
Altogether, Claremont schools lost over 10% of their students last year. For the last 10 years, the schools have lost an average of 21 students per year--almost 1 1/2 classrooms.
Last fall, Claremont had 1,376 students. This is less than the capacity of Stevens High. This is not to suggest that Claremont put their entire school system in Stevens- High, but it is a less than subtle hint that the school district needs to right-size the operation.
Each school costs tens to hundreds of thousands a month to keep open. That money goes to utilities, insurance, maintenance, some duplication of personnel, and other costs.
A spending cap is likely to encourage some school consolidation. Money that is going into keeping empty classrooms heated is not the best use of funds. With the motivation of trying to get the best use of every dollar, it's unlikely that empty schools will be of much value.
This is a problem that almost every school system in the state is facing. Twenty years ago, there were 205,000 students in New Hampshire. Now there's 160,000--a drop of 45,000 students.
It shouldn't be necessary to pass a spending cap to convince a School Board that schools that are a quarter or half full are an unnecessary waste of tax dollars. So when the School Board threatens that schools will be shut down if a spending cap passes, it should be taken as a sign that they don't have a good grip on financial reality.
Q. What about music and arts and athletics?
A. These are the areas that school administrators and School Boards threaten to cut first because they are the most popular programs for parents.
This is extortion, pure and simple. And here's why:
When the School Board cut out arts and music and athletics last September, they did not yet know about the 10% of Claremont kids who left the schools. The Board decided not to combine small classes, thereby making the decision to fund smaller classes over having sports and arts and music. They made the decision to keep personnel on at nearly the same level to support the smaller classes. And because of the financial mess, they decided to spend a lot of money on lawyers and consultants rather than put money into arts and music and sports.
The average per pupil cost in 2024-2025 was $26,013. The estimated per pupil cost for 2025-2026, the current year, is $35,700,906 divided by 1,367. That's $25,945 per pupil, or $68 difference before adjusting for inflation. Remember that there were already annual increases of 8+% every year since 2020 that are baked in to the budget totals.
Rather than selectively reducing programs that had less demand because of dropping enrollment, the School Board chose to delete programs that mattered. About a dozen years ago, one of the Manchester High Schools was faced with a similar problem: Should the school keep the knitting class, which only had one student enrolled, or should it drop it and save $10,000? (They made the intelligent choice.) As the number of students in Claremont schools drop, the School Board needs to make the choice to offer what people truly want. Yet several School Board members at recent meetings want to be able to offer all things to all possible students. Adjusting to and responding to their real market is not an option.
Eventually this ends up educating zero students for an infinite amount of money.
So will a spending cap affect arts and music and athletics? It depends on whether the School Board responds appropriately to the reality of a shrinking school population. A spending cap did not create the declining student population, and a spending cap does not dictate that financially unsound programs must absolutely continue, no matter what.
For instance, if a sport is not able to attract enough student interest, maybe its funding should be switched to other sports instead. Or if an art class only attracts two or three students, maybe it's time to revise the course or revamp the curriculum.
So, yet again, a spending cap isn't the cause of cutting popular programs. It's one of many tools that can be used to extort stakeholders, or it can be used to improve management and operation of the school system. The choice that the School Board and district administrators make says a lot more about them than it does about small differences in funding.
Q. Fixed costs per student rise when enrollment drops, don't they?
A. Sure they do. Which is why most businesses find ways to reduce them, such as selling off excess assets, laying off non-essential personnel, renegotiating contracts, and so on.
Schools are not exempt from economic law. A good business manager finds ways to control costs, fixed or variable, wherever he reasonably can.
Not all increases in fixed costs can be mitigated, but that's not an excuse to avoid making any reductions in fixed costs.
