State House News

AFT-NH President Deb Howes testified on 4 education funding bills heard before the House Education Committee.  You can read the full testimony here.

Education Funding   Last week in addition to the bills we have previously highlighted, the House Education Committee focused on bills that look to solve our school funding problem. New Hampshire ranks 49^th in state aid to our public schools, and even in the face of numerous previous court rulings that declared our funding formula unconstitutional, the legislature has not found anything close to the right solution to fix our school funding problems. That means that the 160,000 students that attend their neighborhood public school in New Hampshire have public educations that vary due to zip code as our reliance on property taxes cause some districts to be able to afford smaller class sizes and more robust educational opportunities for their students. Every Granite State student has the constitutional right to a robust public education and it does not depend on where they live in the state.

2024 Legislative Session Opening Week

Action Needed

The legislative session opened this week, and we are already seeing a continuation of the divisive culture war attacks on students and teachers rather than real solutions that will help our kids learn and grow and our communities thrive. And Right to Work is back – again.

On January 4^th, the NH Senate Education Committee will convene to hear new proposed legislation. The school voucher crowd is wasting no time to try to expand the unaccountable and expensive voucher program with SB 442 and SB 522. More divisive legislation is being proposed in SB 341. We need you to sign in as opposed to the following bills SB 341, SB 442-FN, and SB 522-FN-A. With more than 100 education bills being proposed this session, we expect to be reaching out to you often to defend our cherished public schools and educators.

We are at a challenging turning point for public education in the Granite State.

We can come together and stand up for the robust and well-funded public schools our students deserve, that are the hearts of our communities and are the kind of workplaces where our teachers and paraeducators are respected as professionals and can use their talents to help students learn and thrive. Or we can continue to stay focused on the many legitimate pressing demands of our own daily lives, in the workplace, and with our families, while our students, our schools and our communities in the face of a series of relentless attacks are dismantled around us.

End of the 2023 Legislative Session

The legislative session is now officially finished. The State House will see no action on any bill until September when work will begin on any bills retained by the committee.

Governor signs school voucher expansion. This week the Governor signed the expansion for the unaccountable, over budget and unproven school voucher program. We have talked a lot about this bill in this space and will continue to as New Hampshire continues to fail to adequately fund our local neighborhood public schools. Expanding voucher eligibility to families who make more than 100 thousand dollars is bad for your property taxes and bad for the state’s ability to finally fulfill its promise and fund our neighborhood public schools.