State House News

Consequential House Finance Committee Vote on

State Budget Up Next

Another tough week at the State House for those who want to see every public school student in the Granite State get the robust public education they deserve in their own school district. This past week, the Senate passed their version of the Universal School Voucher Program on its financial vote. It previously passed a policy vote. With this latest vote, the Senators and Representatives who voted for the Universal School Voucher Program made one thing very clear. They support sending our tax dollars to the wealthiest individuals in our state for private education, all while failing to provide anywhere near enough tax dollars to allow the more than 155,000 public school students to learn and thrive in their public schools.

I am here today to express our opposition to the Governor’s budget as presented in HB 1 and HB 2. It is often said that a budget is a statement of values, yet this budget does not protect or adequately support the needs of most Granite State students, their families or local property taxpayers. Our public schools, which serve nearly 90% of students in our state, and our public universities are pathways to opportunity for our students, their chance to learn and work towards a brighter future, to the benefit of their communities and the Granite State. Rather than meet our state’s obligation to those students, this budget chooses to focus its limited revenue on helping just a few, while leaving so many behind.

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.