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Fred S. Teeboom
24 Cheyenne Drive, Nashua NH 03063
Public Comments to Nashua Board of Aldermen
9 November 2016
Ordinance O-16-11 Reduced Taxation for Charter Schools has lingered “on the table” for about 6
months.
Let us examine the facts.
Two charter schools are located in Nashua: the Academy for Science and Design (ASD) and the
MicroSociety Academy.
> ASD (grades 6-12) has 525 students, of whom 263 reside in Nashua.
> MicroSociety (grades K-8) has 151 students, of whom 96 reside in Nashua.
A total of 464 students resident within Nashua attend charter schools in the region, within and
outside Nashua. This data is tabulated on the Nashua Board of Education website, under “budgets.”
The students who reside within Nashua and attend the two charter schools located in Nashua
must be provided with bus transportation provided by the Nashua School District, by state law
Now let us examine the cost savings.
The tuition cost to taxpayers for a student K-12 in the Nashua School District is $13,000 per
year. The cost for a student attending a charter school is $5,600 a year. Thus the savings in
tuition cost per student who attend a Charter School is $7,400 per student. This totals to a
savings of $3.4 million for the 464 Nashua students who attend charter schools, offloaded from
the Nashua School District
The cost to transport students resident in Nashua to the two Charter Schools in Nashua is about
$160,000 according to the Nashua School District business office.
Thus the cost savings to the Nashua taxpayers is $3.2 million, for students attending charter
schools who otherwise would be attending the Nashua School District
The loss of tax revenues under O-16-11 is $80,000 for ASD and $65,000 for the MicroSociety,
for a combined loss of $145,000. This figure, missing from the financial analysis section of this
ordinance, was provided by alderman Dowd.
Thus the net cost savings is over $3 million.
What do we get for these savings?
According to the comprehensive School Digger rankings (www.school digger.com) the Academy
for Science and Design is consistently the top performing high school in New Hampshire.
Furthermore, it is ranked among the top 50 high schools in the entire United States. Consider
that the ASD must accept, by law, special education students with an IEP.
