Despite two recent court decisions finding the system of funding public schools unconstitutional, the Legislature, mired in partisan gridlock, has not tackled the issues fueling the litigation.
Instead, Republican lawmakers seek to expand the Education Freedom Account (EFA) program, which subsidizes the tuition of children choosing to attend private and parochial schools, while turning a blind eye to proposals of their Democratic counterparts to address the court’s orders.
The EFA program entitles students choosing to leave public schools for private schools as well as those either already enrolled in private schools or being home-schooled to between $4,182 and $8,000 of state funds to defray a share of their tuition or homeschooling expenses. Those leaving public school draw funds from their school district budgets while those already in private schools or are home-schooled are funded from the Education Trust Fund, which was originally earmarked for public schools.
Unlike the expenditures of all other state programs, which are limited to the amount of their budgeted appropriations, the cost of the EFA program is driven solely by the number of eligible students choosing to enroll in it. In short, it is an entitlement program.
More than 4,500 students receive EFA grants. Three quarters of these students were either attending private schools or being home-schooled when they enrolled in the program. The cost of the program has risen threefold — from $8 million in 2021 to $23.8 million this school year.
House bills breakdown
Currently eligibility for the EFA program is limited to students whose household income is no more than 350% of federal poverty guidelines — $109,200 for a family of four — only when the child enrolls in the program, but not in subsequent years.
A handful of bills, three of which will come to the House floor this week, would expand the program significantly. HB 1634, sponsored by Rep. Alicia Lekas (R-Hudson), would strike the income cap altogether, making every school-age child in the state eligible for an EFA regardless of their family income.
HB 1665, sponsored by Rep. Glen Cordelli (R-Tuftonboro) would raise the income limit to 500% of poverty, or to $150,000 for a family of four, which is $25,098 more than the median income of a family of that size. In other words, more than half the families in the state would become eligible for the subsidies.
HB 1561, sponsored by Rep. Joe Sweeney (R-Salem) would retain the income threshold, but extend eligibility to those “persistently bullied,” fearful of contagious disease, identifying as LGBTQ+ , diagnosed with an eating disorder or mental illness, tested in the bottom 25th percentile, residing where PFAs exceed drinking water standards, living in a district scoring in the bottom 10th percentile in standardized testing or acting on the advice of a guidance counselor.
HB 1677, sponsored by Rep. J.R. Hoell (R-Dunbarton), would keep the income qualification, while expanding eligibility to include students in schools with aggregate performance below 49% proficiency in mathematics, language arts and science.
HB 1652, sponsored by Rep. Kevin Verville (R-Deerfield), would introduce a local EFA program providing vouchers between $8,364 and $13,668 for private school tuition or home-schooling expenses with no income qualifications and funded by the school district budget.
Reaching Higher NH, an education think tank, using the current numbers of students enrolled in private schools and schooled at home, estimated that lifting the income cap to create a universal EFA would cost the state $104 million in FY 2025. Discounting the cost of those currently enrolled in the program, this would represent an increase of $82 million in state funding.
‘Fight it on the floor’
Last week, when the bills came before the House Education Committee for a vote, Rep. Mel Myler (D-Contoocook) said, “We have been very patient around the voucher issue. We’re dealing with a program here that is a very costly program that frankly takes money away from public education. It’s unfortunate that this kind of a program has no guardrails.”
“When the program began,” Myler added, “we thought it was just the camel’s nose under the tent. Well, now the camel is in the tent. You know where you are, and you know where we are. Let’s just move the vote and fight it on the floor.”
“I concur,” replied the chairman of the committee Rep. Rick Ladd (R-Haverhill).
The committee voted the five bills and deadlocked 10-10 on all five, which will be reported to the full House without a recommendation.
Just three days later a bipartisan subcommittee, appointed by Speaker of the House Sherman Packard and chaired by Ladd, struck a deal to increase state funding for public schools in the next school year that is expected to be endorsed by the full committee this week.
The $134 million package, crafted by Rep. Dave Luneau (D-Hopkinton) and endorsed by Ladd, would not change the existing formula for distributing state aid but would adjust the funding special education services. The increased funding would be drawn from the $182 million surplus in the Education Trust Fund, the basket of state taxes and fees earmarked for funding public schools.
After much back and forth, lawmakers agreed to amend two bills: HB 1656, which would have increased per pupil special education aid from $2,100 to $27,000 and HB 1583, which would have increased the per-pupil stipend for an adequate education from $4,182 to $10,000.
HB 1656 was amended to increase funding for special education by $35 million, while at the same time delineating three categories of these services based on the level of service required by individual pupils.
HB 1583 was amended to reintroduce fiscal capacity disparity aid, based on the equalized property value per pupil of school districts, with an appropriation of $39 million and to allot an extra $25 million for pupils qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch. The same bill would appropriate $35 million to raise the base cost of an adequate education per pupil from the current $4,182 to $4,404 beginning on July 1, 2025.
As expected the only bill to address the issues posed by court orders and ongoing litigation, HB 1586 sponsored by Luneau, was referred to interim study.
The bargain carried the subcommittee with just one dissenting vote after lawmakers from both parties broke to caucus during the negotiations before reaching agreement. Ladd indicated he would recommend the full committee report to the House with the recommendation “Ought to Pass.”
If the package carries the full House, it will be referred to the House Finance Committee. The increased funding would be drawn from the $182 million surplus in the Education Trust Fund, the basket of state taxes and fees earmarked for funding public schools. Rep. Ken Weyler, chair of the House Finance Committee, who has long sought to transfer surpluses in Education Trust Fund to the General Fund, sponsored legislation (HB 1560) to do just that, which narrowly carried the Finance Committee on a partisan vote of 13 to 12.
“There will be a battle,” Luneau said.
“This is not where we need to be,” he said of the bargain, “but it’s the direction we need to go.”
Meet Samii, the mannequin who is bedridden in the AI Simulation Lab, one of the drawing cards to the new $32 million home of the Jean School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Saint Anselm College.
As a crippling financial crisis uncovered in recent weeks in Claremont makes headlines, Pittsfield, too, is reckoning with a budget shortfall of more than a million dollars as a new school year gets underway. Pittsfield’s deficit, discovered early this year, is roughly $1.8…
Portsmouth-based GBCC offers one of the few associate degree programs in Surgical Technology in the region and the only one in New Hampshire that is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Programs (CAAHEP).
Superior Court Judge David Ruoff has once again ruled that the state has shirked its duty to fund an adequate education and this time further held that local school property taxes, which vary in rate from one municipality to another, are themselves unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, July 14, allowed the Trump administration, for now, to proceed with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Education Department ordered earlier this year. The decision from the nation’s highest court marks…
Keene State College has started to gut its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to comply with new state law. It’s an all-too familiar tune for many higher education institutions. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has gone on…
The partnership, which started many years ago as a cross-town agreement between the college and John Stark, has steadily grown. Graduates of Hopkinton, Kearsarge Regional and Hillsboro-Deering, among several other high schools in the state, were already eligible.
New Hampshire remains one of the lowest funders of public higher education in the country, according to 2024 data from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEOA).
The New Hampshire Supreme Court once again says the state has failed to fulfill its constitutional duty to fund an adequate education as ordered by the justices in the foundational Claremont litigation nearly three decades ago.
