State House News

More Voucher Expansion Bills Up Next

Urgent Action Needed

Good news, bad news.  Two big victories and a very narrow defeat in the attempt to keep public money in public schools this week.  A bi-partisan group of lawmakers defeated both unlimited school voucher bills this week on strong bi-partisan votes. Your voices helped move lawmakers and made sure that the two universal school voucher bills were defeated. However, school vouchers were still expanded to 500 % of the federal poverty level, which in NH is $156,000 for a family of four when HB1665 was passed 190-189. One more single vote could have changed the outcome – it was that close! Then, even though this bill was supposed to go to House Finance due to the obvious financial impact it would have on the state, and come back to the House floor for a second vote, anti-public education extremist politicians decided there was no need to send it there. Instead, the bill will go directly to the Senate. Be ready to take action when it gets scheduled for a hearing on the Senate side. This one will not only hurt our students and our public schools, it will also raise your local property taxes.

The law this bill seeks to repeal does its work of silencing appropriate and necessary classroom conversations because it never clearly explains exactly what is allowed and what is not. It threatens punishment up to and including the loss of teaching credentials and career if someone subjectively feels you have somehow violated the boundaries of law. We have had a year and a half to see how this works in schools and how it robs our public-school students of the robust education they deserve.

Part-time uncertified employees would not have the tool kit certified teachers develop through their teacher preparation programs, practicums, student teaching, internships, and years on the job. Teaching is an art, craft, and skill as much as it is the knowledge of content that one is trying to convey to the student. When you have uncertified teachers, it is the students who lose. In fact, research shows that having an uncertified teacher is equivalent to losing 2 months of instructional time each year. Don’t shortchange our public school students!

For all these reasons, it does not make sense to allow noncredentialled individuals, who are not professional teachers to work in our public schools and call themselves educators. Our students deserve to have their needs considered and they deserve professional, credentialed teachers.

Urgent Action Needed to Stop Universal School Vouchers

Breaking News ~ Stop Universal Vouchers.   Our public school students need your help now. The NH House calendar for next week now includes three bills that would significantly expand the school voucher program, making it universal, will be voted on by your state representatives.  Contact your state representative NOW and ask them to vote NO on these unaccountable and budget busting bills.

These three voucher bills, HB 1561, 1634, and 1665, will expand the state’s school voucher program so that any family, or almost any family, is eligible, yet still relying on the same overburdened taxpayers to fund it. These bills which come with a huge price tag are being presented at a time when they are ignoring the Court’s Con/Val ruling that shows they have been starving our local neighborhood public schools of necessary funds for decades and ignoring their constitutional obligation to provide all students in the Granite State with the opportunity for a robust public education. The extremists in the NH House will also vote on a plan to raid the Education Trust Fund so the money can’t be used to help public school students.

AFT-NH and its members want to see an investment in our states’ pension system with a portfolio that considers both strategic and responsible investments to ensure the best sustained return over the long term. HB 1267 would artificially limit what investments could be considered by the trustees of the retirement system. This is not a rational strategy for assessing long, or medium term risk, or even potential for growth. Assessing exposure to lawsuits for environmental clean-up or evaluating the promise of new and emerging technology to solve pressing environmental problems are examples of analysis that could be both within this bill’s proscribed realm of ESG, yet still be exercising sound financial management when considering investments. This bill leaves no room for an investment strategy that is both.

This bill is carefully crafted to make anyone who opposes wholesale censorship and book banning and stands up for the rights of students to access a wide variety of materials look like they are somehow on the wrong side of this issue. But a careful reading of the bill shows why that impression is mistaken. The bill opens with a graphic catalogue of the kinds of content this bill’s authors deem obscene. It’s pretty disturbing how this bill dwells so much on defining graphic material. What’s even more disturbing though, is the damage it will do in our schools. It will take away parental voice and local control. The sneaky way it broadens the definition by adding subjective categories harmful to minors and age-inappropriate material until that could apply to almost anything. The way it demonizes, instead of supporting, reading.

SB 375 looks to limit students to playing on student athletic teams that coincide with their ”unambiguous sex” at birth. Human life is not nearly that simple or unambiguous, and we cannot all be neatly divided into one category or another, nor can the students in our schools. AFT-NH stands in opposition to this bill because in order for students to be successful in school they need to feel welcome, safe, and a part of the school community.  When children and young adults play sports, it is often a place where they feel they belong most, a place where they are taught work with a team and a place where they forge peer relationships with others their own age.  Please note there was a similar bill in the House, HB 1205, which AFT-NH opposed as well.

While the courts have ruled that it is legal for the State to not contribute, that does not mean it is right. The State should lower local property tax burdens and support HB 1279. This bill does not bring us back to the 40% the State originally contributed, but just to 7.5% to help ease municipal budgets and to give Granite Staters a break on their property tax bills.