State House News

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.

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.