Kendra Cohen

My name is Kendra Cohen, and I am a resident of Deerfield, NH. I am currently the Chair of the Deerfield School Board, but I am submitting this testimony on behalf of myself only. If you haven’t been on a school board or have not been a part of the annual school district budget creation/proposal process, I would very much encourage you to actively participate so you can understand how Districts get to the numbers they do. My town has roughly 5,000 residents, and 775 students in our District yet our proposed budget for the 25-26 school year is over $20mm. This is an incredible amount of money for a Town like Deerfield, which has very little industry/commercial taxbase. This means that our school budget is almost entirely funded by our property taxpayers, around 70% of whom do not have a school-aged child. If we think about the budget lines as “discretionary” and “non-discretionary,” the vast majority of our budget lines are non-discretionary, meaning we cannot cut those lines without significant consequences. Our current (‘24-‘25) budget roughly breaks down as follows: 47% is teachers/staff salaries and benefits (largely non-discretionary); 20% high school tuition (largely non-discretionary); 18% special education services (non-discretionary); 8% transportation (largely non-discretionary); 3% administrative services (SAU, insurance, etc.); 2% building maintenance/operations; 2% curriculum/library/co-curricular activities; >1% food services. I would love to be able to figure out and fund the educational priorities of our local district and devote more funds to curriculum and new programming, but we can barely figure out how to pay for what we are required to provide. Because so many in my Town are struggling financially and are being crushed by property taxes, proposing any additional funding for the District is a non-starter, even if it’s in the best interested of our students. Increasing state funding would have significant and profound impacts on our taxpayers and students and would decrease the need for Districts around the state to consider significant cuts to programming and staff. I urge you to SUPPORT this bill.