N.H. Court Strikes Down School Aid System

Justices threaten action if state legislature fails to find a remedy.

New Hampshire’s school finance saga took a new turn this month, when the state supreme court struck down the funding system and threatened to step in if legislators failed to fix it by next summer.

Ruling Sept. 8 in a case brought by 19 towns and school districts in the southern part of the state, the five-judge panel unanimously agreed that the 1-year-old school aid system was flawed because lawmakers had failed to define an “adequate education” under the state constitution.

Without that definition, the justices said, it’s impossible to determine what an adequate education costs, or whether the state is meeting its constitutional duty to provide one. The judges disagreed, however, on what steps the court should take...