Every property tax bill in New Hampshire breaks into the same four pieces: town, county, state education, and local education. Buyers moving up from Massachusetts, or relocating from farther away, tend to skim past all four and assume they mean roughly what they'd mean anywhere else. In Derry, one of those four lines does not work the way it looks like it works, and understanding why changes how you should read every other number on the bill.

The local education line in Derry does not fund a town-owned high school. It funds a tuition contract with a private nonprofit that Derry does not govern alone.

Four Lines, One Unusual One

Derry's 2025 total tax rate, set by the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, came to $18.99 per $1,000 of assessed value, up from $18.69 in 2024. The state's official breakdown splits that total into municipal ($5.39), county ($0.62), state education ($1.14), and local education ($11.84). That last figure carries nearly two-thirds of the entire bill.

In most New Hampshire towns, local education pays for a district that owns its buildings, employs its teachers directly, and votes on its own capital projects, including bonding for a new gym or roof. Derry's local education tax does that for grades pre-K through 8. For grades 9 through 12, it pays a per-student tuition bill to Pinkerton Academy, a private, non-profit corporation that Derry does not own, staff, or bond for. The high school building your taxes support is not on the town's balance sheet.

Six Towns, One Contract

Pinkerton is not exclusively Derry's high school. It is the high school of record, under separate long-term tuition agreements, for six towns: Auburn, Candia, Chester, Derry, Hampstead, and Hooksett. Two of those towns, Derry and Hooksett, sit inside the areas buyers most often ask about in this market.

The contract list has changed within living memory, and the votes that changed it were close to unanimous:

• Auburn joined Pinkerton in 2011 after pulling its students out of Manchester Memorial High School, with residents voting 1,119 to 190 in favor.
• Candia joined in 2016, effective 2018, ending decades of sending students to Manchester Central High School, on a vote of 1,090 to 113.
• Chester and Hampstead have held contracts with Pinkerton for decades, alongside Derry.

Because six separate towns converge on one institution's per-pupil tuition rate, no single town sets that price alone. Pinkerton's Board of Trustees decides the number each year, and every sending town's local education line absorbs whatever that number turns out to be.

The Town That Walked Away

Londonderry sat inside this same arrangement until 1978, when voters chose a different structure: leave the Pinkerton contract, build a comprehensive high school, and take on the bonded debt of owning it outright. The building that opened as a junior high in 1972 became Londonderry High School in 1982, on a 135-acre campus off Mammoth Road. From that point forward, Londonderry's local education tax has meant something structurally different from Derry's. It funds a K-12 system the town owns and bonds for at every grade, not a mix of self-owned elementary schools and tuition payments to an outside board.

Neither structure is better on its face. A buyer's job is to know which one they are signing up for when they compare two tax rates side by side.

What the Trend Line Looks Like From the Inside

Pinkerton's general education tuition, the per-student figure that flows straight into Derry's local education tax, has moved like this over the last decade:

That is roughly a 51 percent increase in nine years, and the most recent jump, a 3.97 percent rise for 2026-27, landed inside a Derry school district operating budget that grew 11 percent year over year to $113,427,524. At the district's February 2026 deliberative session, held at West Running Brook Intermediate School, School Board Chairman Michael Thiele told the roughly ninety residents in attendance that rising tuition costs and health care were the main drivers, and that they were largely outside the district's control. Resident Brian Chirichiello proposed trimming the total budget to $110 million; the amendment did not carry, and voters faced the full number on the March 10 ballot, cast at four district polling locations including Pinkerton's own Hackler gymnasium.

Whatever a Derry school board decides to prioritize in a given year, it cannot vote the tuition line down. That figure is set at Pinkerton's level and passed through.

Why This Matters More At Today's Prices

Derry's median single-family sale price reached $577,500 for the three months ending in May 2026, up 3.9 percent year over year, according to the New Hampshire Realtors' Local Market Update. As assessed values climb alongside sale prices, an 11.84 mill local education rate compounds against a larger base every year, and a portion of that rate rides on a tuition figure the town does not negotiate.

A buyer comparing Derry's total rate to Londonderry's, or to any neighboring town that owns its high school outright, is not comparing two versions of the same math. One rate moves entirely through town-level budget votes. The other moves each spring, in part, on a schedule set by a private board across town lines.

What To Ask Before You Sign

• Ask for the last five years of the local education tax rate, not just the current year's figure, to see the direction and pace of change.
• Ask whether the town you're buying into owns its high school outright or contracts for seats, and if it contracts, who sets that price.
• If you're looking in Derry, Hooksett, Auburn, Candia, Chester, or Hampstead, expect the local education line to move at least partly on a schedule outside that town's own budget process.
• Request the current year's school district budget narrative or warrant articles from the town clerk rather than relying on last year's mailed tax notice, since tuition figures for the upcoming year are typically finalized months before bills go out.

A Few Direct Questions

Does this change how my mortgage escrow is calculated? No. Your lender still bases escrow on the town's total published tax rate. The tuition mechanism explains what makes up part of that rate, not how it's collected.

Is Hooksett handled the same way as Derry? Yes, structurally. Hooksett is one of Pinkerton's six current sending towns, so its local education tax line carries the same tuition exposure Derry's does, alongside its own K-8 costs.

Will Pinkerton's tuition keep rising at roughly the same pace? The nine-year trend shows steady increases, most recently just under 4 percent for 2026-27. Future rates are set by Pinkerton's Board of Trustees each budget cycle, and no town controls that outcome in advance.

Understanding a town's tax structure is part of understanding what you're actually buying, and it's the kind of detail that rarely shows up on a listing sheet. If you're weighing Derry against Londonderry, Hooksett, or anywhere else in Southern New Hampshire and want a clear read on what each town's numbers actually mean for your budget, Childs Realty Group is glad to walk through it. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to look past the median price.