State House News

On behalf of our members, their families and the people they serve, I respectfully urge you to vote Inexpedient to Legislate on CACR 28.

CACR 28 would repeal and reenact Article 6 of the New Hampshire Constitution to authorize towns, parishes, bodies corporate, and religious societies to elect and contract with public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality, grounding public instruction in evangelical principles. It also provides additional constitutional protections only to Christian denominations. These changes conflict with the existing Article 6, which guarantees equal protection for all faiths and prohibits subordination of one sect to another.

We want to express our serious concerns with SB 434. While it appears simply to call for all districts to have complaint procedures for reconsideration of library and other school materials, its impact would be much broader. As written, the bill endangers students’ access to information, undermines educators’ professional judgment, and invites constitutional challenges that will distract districts from teaching and learning.

We urge you to find HB 1792 Inexpedient to Legislate. The bill is unconstitutional and would significantly damage student learning conditions in New Hampshire.

HB 1792 harms students’ right to an honest, complete education. It censors core content and prohibits teaching methods required by state standards. New Hampshire’s Minimum Standards for Public School Approval (Ed 306) require districts to deliver comprehensive, competency‑based instruction that develops critical thinking and analysis in social studies, civics, English language arts, and other content areas. Teachers routinely use scholarly frameworks to guide students in analyzing primary sources, literature, and historical movements, as well as to demonstrate required competencies. HB 1792 would limit these practices, making it harder for districts to meet Ed 306’s expectations for rigorous, standards‑aligned instruction.”

We strenuously oppose HB 1778. New Hampshire has already seen the consequences of passing vague, speech‑restricting laws targeting discussions of identity, race, gender, and discrimination. This bill repeats those same errors and does so in direct contradiction to the federal court ruling in Local 8027, AFT‑NH v. Edelblut (2024), which struck down the state’s previous “divisive concepts” law. In addition, HB 1778 recycles the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion prohibitions from RSA 186:72, a statute already under injunction for violating constitutional rights, and tries to make them law again.”

I am here to express the strenuous opposition of our 3500 members across the Granite State to HB 1704 and urge you to find it Inexpedient to Legislate.

The bill is marketed as “employee choice,” but it would actually create chaos, higher costs, and legal risk for towns, school districts, and the State of New Hampshire. Its text authorizes public employees to bargain individually with public employers, establishes a parallel system to existing collective bargaining, and adds criminal penalties for peaceful advocacy.

We urge you to oppose HB 1816. The bill creates a state intervention framework that mirrors state takeover models tried in other states, approaches that do not improve academic outcomes, destabilize school communities, and undermine local democratic governance.

HB 1816 authorizes the Commissioner of Education, when the State Board declares a “financial emergency,” to develop and oversee a recovery plan, alter district operations, reallocate resources, renegotiate contracts, and oversee governance and administrative structures for up to one year. In practice, this is a state takeover mechanism, and decades of experience show similar state takeovers elsewhere do not solve academic or fiscal problems in public schools.

We urge you to oppose SB 580. At first glance the bill looks like a simple cooperative purchasing proposal, but the text also authorizes the State Board of Education to place schools or SAUs into receivership in certain circumstances. That is a profound change in governance that would have real and negative consequences for students in our public schools.

I am here to express AFT-NH’s strong support for SB 582 modifying the base cost of an adequate education.

For more than 30 years, Granite State citizens have sought to have the State meet its constitutional obligation to fund a robust public education in every school district. While the Legislature has made several attempts, none have proven sufficient, nor enduring.