State House News

On behalf of my members, the public-school students and the communities we serve, I respectfully urge you to vote “Inexpedient to Legislate” on HB1804.

HB1804 would fundamentally restructure how New Hampshire’s public schools are governed by consolidating school administrative units at the county level and creating an elected “chief school administrator” (CSA) to replace the current superintendent model. It also redistributes duties among boards and principals in ways that create overlapping authority rather than clarity.

On behalf of my members and the students and communities we serve, I urge you to reject HB 1358.

HB 1358 creates a commission to study transitioning all public schools into public charter schools. It also, immediately upon passage, makes it far easier to convert an individual public school into a charter school by replacing the two-thirds district vote at a local school meeting with a simple majority vote at the biennial state general election.

On behalf of my members, their families and the students and communities we serve, I urge you to vote NO on HB 1815 because it harms Granite State public school students and pushes unsustainable costs onto local property taxpayers.

HB 1815 redefines “adequate education” by tying it to a specific list of subjects in the school‑approval standards, limiting what the state is obligated to fund. It also declares that decisions about raising, allocating, and spending education dollars are a “political policy matter” reserved to the legislative and executive branches, limiting judicial oversight that has historically protected students’ constitutional right to an adequate education.

We all share the goal of transparency and good financial management of taxpayer money, especially when it comes to our public schools because we know that any misspent money is lost education opportunities for our public-school students. However, we strongly oppose HB 121 because it goes too far and poses significant dangers to the educational opportunities of public-school students throughout New Hampshire, especially those in our small, rural, property poor school districts.

HB 121 imposes unfunded mandates, ones that small and rural districts cannot absorb. HB 121 dramatically tightens audit requirements; mandates professionally conducted audits with an inflexible one‑year deadline and requires full publication of findings. These new compliance demands come without funding to help districts implement them.

I want to express our concerns that HB 1669, while well‑intentioned and filled with kind sentiments, fails to address the real, urgent needs in many of our Granite State public schools.

This bill, HB 1669, offers aspirations, not action. It lays out a “Teacher Bill of Rights” including statements about safe schools, civility, respect, and professional autonomy. However, these provisions are just statements of principles without requiring any district, administrator, or policymaker to make concrete improvements. The bill lists rights such as a “safe and healthy school environment” and the expectation of “civility and respect”, but it includes no mechanisms to create, fund, or enforce those conditions.