State House News

This totally unnecessary bill creates the false and frankly insulting impression that we have rampant problems with educator misconduct in so many of our public schools that it can only be solved by granting unprecedented investigatory power to the head of the Department of Education, through his hearing officers! Let me be clear, nobody wants the kind of person who would hurt students to stay in a position where they can ever do it again, whether that is as an educator, a volunteer, a sports coach, a clergy person or any other adult a child might encounter.

This bill seems simple: if a parent asks a question about a student, the teacher or school employee must answer "completely and honestly" in writing within 10 days. Ideally parents and teachers should be working together as a team both focusing on the best interest of the student because we all know that is when students make the most progress academically and thrive socially and emotionally. And if this bill were limited to questions about student academic progress, classwork, homework, whether the student follows school rules while in class, gets along with classmates and is kind to others, it might be a useful framework for a collaboration between parents and teachers. Useful, that is if it didn't come with the threat of punishment for educators, because genuine teamwork in the best interest of seeing a student succeed is not produced under coercive threats.

HB 748 would create a local voucher program that could easily decimate our local neighborhood public schools, leaving students with a threadbare education. It also could rapidly increase already burdensome property taxes in any New Hampshire school district that adopts it. It would do this because it would require local districts to fund local voucher accounts for any eligible student who lives in their district at twice the state per pupil adequacy grant plus any differential aid, a sum of $8,364 to $13,668 per student.

Busy Week Ahead

Priority Education Bills Front and Center

It was a mostly quiet week in Concord as many legislative committees were on February break, just like our public schools. One big development this week was that anti- public education politicians, very angry that voters in most school districts steadfastly support their public schools and refuse to set artificial and harmful spending caps, brought forward an amendment that would mandate, through state law, a budget cap on local school budgets. School districts already have spending controls—they are called voters, who must choose to approve or vote down every budget and change in local property taxes. It is not up to the extremist majority in Concord to impose a decision on local voters to automatically limit local spending.  It would do well for the current anti-public education politicians in Concord to recognize they should work to meet their constitutional obligation to all Granite State students to fund robust public education in all school districts instead of passing the property tax burden onto Granite Staters at the local level. You can read more about the amendment here. It will be discussed in committee on Tuesday.

Victories for Public Sector Unions and Public Education

BIG VICTORY! The House Labor Committee this week voted to defeat HB 735—the bill that would require public sector unions to vote to recertify. As we have said before, we are not worried about us—we were worried about time and energy this would have taken and how it would have affected our ability to represent you. This was an attack on unions and collective bargaining plain and simple. Your voices matter and you were heard. The next step will be a full vote by the House during the first week in March.

I am here today to testify in opposition to HB 10 establishing the parental bill of rights.

While this bill gathers together existing statutory parental rights in one place, it also appears to expand on them with some sweeping assertions and vague language. This bill sets up potential conflicts between parents and teachers or other school staff when a parent asserts their unlimited right to direct the education of his child while in a public school and the teacher is teaching the school board approved  curriculum to meet the state approved standards. We know that students do best in school when parents and teachers work together as a team, focusing on the best interest of the child.

Now is a time when we should be focusing on real solutions to make sure our Granite State students can learn and thrive in our public schools. We should be focused on making sure they all feel they are welcome and connected to their school community. In particular, this Legislature should be focusing on ensuring that each neighborhood public school has enough resources to provide every student with individual teacher attention, learning and behavior support from trained paraprofessionals, school counselors and nurses, and a wide variety of quality learning resources and all the other components of a robust public education. Instead, we get a bill that will divide communities, pitting different families against each other, and will make it easier to remove books from school libraries and micromanage the materials available in the classroom. All of this makes it harder to meet students’ learning needs and help them succeed.

SB 208 strikes the right balance in recognizing the needs, interests and responsibilities of students, families, and schools when it comes to school libraries. It strikes a similar balance when it comes to families, individual patrons and community members for public libraries. It requires that all school boards and library trustees adopt clear policies for how to build the library collections and on what steps to take if feels material in the collection is objectionable or accessible to the wrong age level. This is the right balance, respecting the rights and interests of all individuals involved. It is built on the fundamental First Amendment principle that libraries serve as centers of inquiry where patrons, including students, can access a wide variety of information and materials.

HUGE VICTORY FOR NH WORKERS!

So-called Right to Work Defeated (again)

Action Needed - Red Alert

What a week! We had two big victories. The union-busting so called Right to Work bill was killed by a bipartisan vote in the full house this week. The bill was indefinitely postponed meaning that no bill that even broaches the subject of so-called right to work can be even considered for the next two years. We are thrilled with the outcome. If you want to see how your legislator voted on this bill, click Roll Call on HB 238.

This and the other big victory this week, HB 283, would not have been possible without you making your voices heard by reaching out through sign-ins, emails to committees and contacting your legislators. Thank you to every one of you who has spoken up.

I am here today to express our staunch opposition to SB 295.

The NH Constitution places a high value on educating the children of the Granite State. In Part 2, Article 83, the NH Constitution guarantees each Granite State child the opportunity for a robust public education through public district schools and places the responsibility for paying for it squarely on the state. I use the word robust because it is clear the term “adequate” used in the constitution does not have the commonplace meaning of just barely enough, but rather an education sufficient to prepare the student for working life, further studies and full civic participation in the community after finishing school. We saw the overwhelming support for robust public education in the hearing to pare back the