New Hampshire — United States Department of Education to the Honorable Frank Edelblut (December 1, 2023)

Summary

New Hampshire Commissioner Frank Edelblut is told in a December 1, 2023 letter from Laura Jimenez that the Department accepts the first three of four tolerance levels proposed for FY 2022 and FY 2023 maintenance of equity but not the fourth. The accepted levels tolerate year-to-year per-pupil reductions of 85 percent for LEAs of 25 or fewer students, 20 percent for 26 to 500 and 17.5 percent for 501 to 1,000, while a 15 percent level for 1,001 to 1,500 students is not found reasonable. The Department says no FY 2022 reductions remain outstanding, and New Hampshire must still make additional FY 2023 payments to LEAs outside those levels.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

                      UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION


                                       December 1, 2023

The Honorable Frank Edelblut
Commissioner
New Hampshire Department of Education
25 Hall Street
Concord, NH 03301

Dear Commissioner Edelblut:

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) received your written plan for a reasonable
level of tolerance when calculating whether the New Hampshire Department of Education
(NHED) has met State maintenance of equity requirements under the American Rescue Plan Act
of 2021 (ARP Act) in fiscal years (FY) 2022 and 2023. This written plan applies only to a subset
of New Hampshire’s local educational agencies (LEAs).

The ARP Act’s State maintenance of equity requirements help ensure that State funding supports
LEAs with high concentrations of poverty and the students who have been subject to
longstanding opportunity gaps in our education system and experienced the greatest impact from
the COVID-19 pandemic. These requirements are vital for ensuring that States maintain funding
to address the impact of the pandemic on students’ education, and for protecting students in high-
need and highest-poverty LEAs from disproportionate cuts if reductions in State effort do occur.

The Department determined that it is consistent with the State maintenance of equity
requirements to allow a State educational agency (SEA) to calculate whether it has maintained
funding equity with respect to its very small high-need and highest-poverty LEAs within a
reasonable “tolerance level.” The Department’s determination is based on the possibility of
significant volatility in the calculated per-pupil funding amounts for very small LEAs caused by
small changes in student enrollment, which may be unrelated to whether an SEA has achieved
the intent of the requirements. (See Frequently Asked Questions, American Rescue Plan
Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Program, Maintenance of Equity
Requirements, July 26, 2022, Question 21(a).)

According to materials provided by NHED, New Hampshire’s State funding formula includes
two categories of funding: (1) components tied to student enrollment; and (2) static grant
components, such as local property taxes collected and allocated to LEAs, that are not tied to
student enrollment. Accordingly, a per-pupil maintenance of equity calculation for these LEAs
may be significantly affected by small changes in student enrollment and make the measure an
imperfect indicator of whether the SEA has achieved the intent of maintaining equity in
funding across LEAs.

NHED’s November 8, 2023, correspondence proposes four tolerance levels:

       1) For “exceptionally small LEAs” with 25 or fewer students, NHED proposes to
          tolerate an 85 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would
          impact five exceptionally smalls LEAs in FY 2022 and three exceptionally small
          LEAs in FY 2023 identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or
          highest-poverty that served less than 0.04 percent of New Hampshire’s students in FY
          2022 and 0.02 percent of students in FY 2023.
       2) For “very small LEAs” with enrollments of 26 to 500 students, NHED proposes to
          tolerate a 20 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would
          impact seven very small LEAs in FY 2022 and 31 very small LEAs in FY 2023
          identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty that
          served 0.7 percent of New Hampshire’s students in FY 2022 and 3.08 percent of
          students in FY 2023.
       3) For “small LEAs” with enrollments of 501 to 1,000 students, NHED proposes to
          tolerate a 17.5 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year. This would
          impact one small LEA in FY 2022 and seven small LEAs in FY 2023 identified by
          the State as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty that served 0.55
          percent of New Hampshire’s students in FY 2022 and 2.55 percent of students in FY
          2023.
       4) For “somewhat small LEAs” with enrollments of 1,001 to 1,500 students, NHED
          proposes to tolerate a 15 percent reduction in per-pupil funding from year to year.
          This would impact zero somewhat small districts in FY 2022 and nine somewhat
          small districts in FY 2023 identified by the State as meeting the definition of high-
          need or highest-poverty that served 6.2 percent of New Hampshire’s students in FY
          2023.

After reviewing NHED’s tolerance proposal and accompanying data, the unique circumstances
in the State, and our further State-specific analysis, we have determined that tolerance levels 1, 2,
and 3 include reasonable levels of tolerance when calculating whether New Hampshire has
maintained equity for small LEAs in FYs 2022 and 2023. However, we do not find extending
tolerance to Level 4 (somewhat small districts) to be reasonable. For example, it is unclear how
changes in enrollments in LEAs of this size would contribute to the large reduction in per-pupil
funding compared to LEAs with many fewer students.

Based on the Department’s approval of NHED’s tolerance proposal, there are no outstanding
disproportionate reductions in per-pupil funding in FY 2022. New Hampshire will need to make
additional payments to LEAs that experienced disproportionate reductions in per-pupil funding
in FY 2023 and are not addressed by levels 1, 2, or 3 of the small LEA tolerance proposal. Please
advise the Department when these additional payments have been made.
We appreciate your diligence in developing this proposal. If you have any questions, please
contact your program officer at: NewHampshire.OESE@ed.gov.

                                                  Sincerely,

    Laura J                              z       Laura Jimenez

                                                  Laura Jimenez
                                                  Director, Office of State and Grantee Relations


File and source

File

department-of-education-12-1-2023-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-fy22-www-ed-gov-909835019c.pdf

Size

158,150 bytes

SHA-256

bf944176bc1674098d0bb934c25ab8d5754af210d7dca8b3e6609a3ad06a7f0b

Our copy

department-of-education-12-1-2023-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-fy22-www-ed-gov-909835019c.pdf

Original

www.ed.gov