AFT-NH Legislative Bulletin (2023-10)

House Action  Thursday’s House session dealt a blow to supporters of public education as well as property taxpayers across the state. There is no way to sugarcoat this. Despite our best efforts, anti-public education politicians voted to expand the use of unaccountable school vouchers, further draining money from the Education Trust Fund which funds our neighborhood public schools. This means your local property taxes will go up or your neighborhood public school will have to cut things like arts, sports, and other programs.  In fact, one of the voucher expansion bills that passed could result in a family struggling to keep up with their bills now being responsible for funding a voucher for a millionaire who wants to send their kids to an elite private or parochial school. Many families currently in the voucher program are using their vouchers to pay for art, music, and sports, some of the very programs neighborhood public schools will have to cut because of the underfunding from the state. The journey of these bills is not yet over. They will either be put into the budget or sent over to the Senate.

What happened yesterday was not just because of anti-public education politicians but also because a number of our friends in the fight to save and strengthen public education did not attend the session on March 9th. We know that we have a volunteer legislature. We know that people have work, families, and complicated lives. But we NEED all of our allies to be in attendance every single session day because their votes can’t be counted if they aren’t in the room. And part of our job of protecting public education, students, teachers and school staff, university faculty, and public employees, and all Granite Staters depends on those friends and allies in the State House.

We may have lost a battle yesterday, but we are not done fighting.

Next week in the NH House  Looking forward next week continues to be a busy one.  The House will meet in a full session on Thursday, March 16^th to address a number of important topics. The top of that list will be HB 514 the Book Ban Bill. HB 514 comes to the House with no recommendation from the Education Committee. This is the bill that seeks to let some parents ban books that they deem inappropriate for everyone in their local school district. While a parent has the right to decide what his or her own child may read, he does NOT have the right to dictate what materials all children in the district have access to. The bill also expands the power of the Commissioner of Education to push the banning of books and other materials.  You can also read the testimony of AFT-NH President Deb Howes in opposition to HB 514.

Action Needed - Oppose Book Banning (HB 514)   Please contact your state representative before Thursday and ask them to vote against HB 514. You can find your representative at this link  Contact Your Representative.

Beyond Next Week in the House   Looking further ahead the week of March 20^th will be the busiest week of the legislative session yet. There will likely be 3 days of sessions to deal with all of the bills before a legislative deadline. Many of these bills will affect public education including unlimited voucher expansion (HB 331), and the so-called parental bill of rights (HB 10). We will need your voices to tell your representatives to show up to session and oppose these dangerous and harmful bills. Please continue to look for this space for updates. 

Thank you for all of your work so far. If we stand together, we can push back against this extreme agenda from those who do not support our public schools.

For breaking news and other legislative information, please be sure to like us on Facebook at AFT New Hampshire or follow us on Twitter @AFTNewHampshire to receive the latest news.  Please share this with friends so they can sign up for this bulletin at http://nh.aft.org/.

You can also read written testimony submitted to the legislature at STATE HOUSE NEWS.

Legislative Schedule for the Week of March 13^th