State House News

HB 1311, also known as the Freedom to Read bill, strikes the right balance in recognizing the needs, interests and responsibilities of students, families, and schools. It requires that all school districts adopt clear policies on how they build their library collections and on what steps to take if a parent or guardian feels material is in the collection that doesn’t belong there or is at the wrong age level. This is the right balance, respecting the interests of all involved.

More Book Banning and Retirement Bills

Week in Review    The noise and activity of the presidential primary campaigns have cleared out, but the NH legislature continues to churn in Concord. This past week the legislature heard, and committees voted on, dozens of bills including one bill that would expand the school voucher program so that municipalities would have to foot the bill and one bill that would eliminate all but history, math, English and social studies from mandatory public school curricula. This bill, as introduced, would further exacerbate the gap in our public schools where schools in property rich communities will be able to continue offering a robust variety of subjects important to a well-rounded education like art or music, advanced sciences and upper-level math or in-person financial literacy. Students in property poor towns won’t have those as dedicated subjects, although they could get a passing mention in a core class. Their public education will suffer because of it, yet they are still Granite State citizens with the same constitutional right to an equally robust public education regardless of which district they reside in New Hampshire.

AFT-NH President Deb Howes testified in support of SB 525 which would provide for annual income verification for eligibility for the school voucher program. Supporters of the voucher scheme claim it is targeted to only those neediest families, to allow them more educational options, but that is not exactly true. Without getting into an argument over where to draw the line for which families are considered needy, the voucher program only has means testing in the first year. It does not look at family income level at all in any year after that, yet a student could be in the voucher program for 13 years. While a family may be under 350% when a student starts the voucher program, they could easily be over it any year, or every year, after that. Unlike every other means tested program, these folks will keep getting public funds designed for public schools.

Yet, instead of rising to this challenge, some New Hampshire politicians are considering House Bill 1691, a bill that drastically narrows what public schools would be required to teach to four core domains: English Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. If this bill passes, public school students across the state could find classes in computer science and digital literacy,   personal finance literacy, engineering and technology, world languages, music and art education,   as well as physical education, health, and wellness treated as nonessential luxuries which are no longer part of a state mandated “adequate education.” Yet these are all subjects and content areas  that are instrumental to the academic and personal development of students and the economic and technological development of our state as part of a global economy.

HB 1652 would create a local voucher program that could easily decimate our local neighborhood public schools and rapidly increase already burdensome property taxes across New Hampshire. The new program will further impoverish our neighborhood public schools, leaving our students with only a threadbare education. AFT-NH President Deb Howes testified in opposition to this bill before the House Education Committee today.

Week in Review   This week the House Education Committee heard four separate school voucher bills. Three of those bills equated to universal voucher programs meaning that anyone of any income level could access the voucher program. What does this mean in practice? According to analysis by Reaching Higher New Hampshire at Reaching Higher NH  Universal Voucher Analysis 1-12-24 it would cost the state an additional 82 million dollars a year, with a total cost of the voucher program being north of $100 million dollars.

AFT-NH President Deb Howes testified in opposition to HB 1419 (yet another book banning bill)

"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 public school has enough resources to provide every student individual attention from the teacher, learning and behavior support for those who need it from trained paraprofessionals, school counselors and nurses, quality learning resources and all the other components of a robust public education. Instead, we get a bill that will divide communities, pitting families against each other, and make it easier to remove books from school libraries.

This is not the New Hampshire way where we highly value our individual freedoms. We see ourselves as different from the rest of the country, where nearly 250 years since our country’s founding, some Americans are still attempting to restrict others’ basic freedoms. Today, thousands of books in school libraries and classrooms have been caught up in a torrent of censorship. Public schools have become a cultural battlefield when they should be insulated from politics so they can focus on providing children with a strong, well-rounded education."

AFT-NH submitted written testimony in opposition to SB 374, relative to the licensing of part-time teachers. You can read the full testimony here.