In 1994/95, Franklin's school tax rate increased to $5.08 more than Gilford's. Examples of equally dramatic differences among the districts in the amounts of school tax rates, spending per pupil, and valuation of properties for the 1993/94 school year were:

On pages 104-105 of the Superior Court's decision, the per pupil costs for each district's elementary, middle and high school programs are listed. The comparison districts, in every year, at every level, spent more per child than the petitioner school districts even though they had a much lower tax rate. The difference in spending per pupil at the high school level for Franklin verses Gilford was $3,197 per child. The difference amounts to over $60,000 for each 20-student classroom.

The Superior Court discounted the above figures by stating that " tax rate standing alone, is not an accurate measure of tax burden; other factors such as income level, partially determine the "burden" the tax actually imposes. Throughout the trial, the state used as a smoke screen, the academic theory that a school district's property tax is a function of a person's income.

Defending the state's position, the Superior Court referred to Table 10 in its decision, which compares median house value, median household income, the school tax on a median house and the school tax as a percentage of median income among the districts. Table 10 was prepared by the state's statistics expert witness Dr. Paul Snow.

Dr. Snow not only created his own numbers, he invented his own analysis. Snow recomputed the property tax as a per capita tax and as a percentage of income. By calculating the school property tax as a percentage of income in Table 10, Dr. Snow was able to claim that the amount of property taxes the residents of the petitioner districts paid was comparable to the state average and to those of the comparison districts.

Using Dr. Snow's income comparisons, the Superior Court incorrectly concluded that the tax rates of the petitioner districts did not significantly exceed those in the comparison districts, so therefore, the school districts could not argue that the system of school financing was unconstitutional.

The comparison is flawed because per capita income is reported by the U.S. Bureau of Census based upon the principal place of residence of the wage earner. Dr. Snow admitted during cross examination that in preparing the figures for Table 10, he only included the incomes of a district's full-time residents. He did not include the incomes of the non residents who paid property taxes on their second homes.