AFT-NH Legislative Bulletin (2024-06)

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.

Reaching Higher New Hampshire estimates that HB 1665 will cost about $66 million a year, all while the state continues to underfund our local neighborhood public schools and the continues to short change the 165,000 Granite State public school students.

More voucher bills next week. We cannot sit back as two more voucher bills are on the docket next week. There is a shortened House Session on Thursday but that session will include two more attempts to expand vouchers. We need for you to have your voice heard again.

The two voucher bills up for a House vote next week are summarized below.

HB 1652  is a Local School Voucher bill. This takes a bad idea and just makes it worse. Instead of just covering the state cost of education under the current voucher program, this bill requires payment from the local municipality in the amount of 2x the amount of adequacy aid in addition to the state voucher. Remember, the vouchers apply to students who are not currently in public schools. This bill would cripple municipal budgets and dramatically raise property taxes. OPPOSE

HB 1677  removes the income limit for families within the “geographic area” of a public school with less than 25% proficiency. In addition to draining resources from our schools and students who need them the most, “geographic area” is not defined and could easily be a statewide unlimited voucher system. OPPOSE

Both of these bills once again represent MASSIVE expansion of the current school voucher scheme here in NH. We once again need your voices to tell your Representative to vote against any voucher expansion.

Urgent Action Needed   Please click the following link to tell your state representative to vote no on these two voucher bills. Click here to Tell Your Legislator to Vote No to Voucher Expansion.

Subpoena Power to Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut?  Next week in the House Judiciary Committee is another bill being heard that would give Frank Edelblut and the DOE subpoena power.

HB 1353  would give subpoena power to Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut. He has shown nothing but contempt for public school educators, who has used his power to harass educators, and who has repeatedly tried to weaponize the code of conduct is bad and dangerous policy and the House Judiciary should reject any such attempt. Hearing is on February 14^th at 9:00am. OPPOSE

Please take action here.  Please make sure your opinion is registered with the House Judiciary Committee. It only takes a moment to submit your position. Here’s the link to REGISTER YOUR OPPOSITION.  Fill out the form. Select House Judiciary Committee, February 14^th, HB 1353, and OPPOSE.

Legislative Action Toolkit

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You can also read written testimony submitted to the legislature at STATE HOUSE NEWS.

We will post next week’s schedule of bills we are monitoring at the end of the weekly bulletin. If you want to find out more information about any bill, you can simply enter the bill at the following link:  FIND A BILL.

We encourage you to take action on other bills. Please note our position is not noted on the current tracker for bills that have already been heard and are now pending executive session action in committee since the period for testimony has passed.

For any of the bills scheduled for a hearing you can register your position on any bill scheduled for a public hearing at the following link: SUBMIT YOUR POSITION ON A BILL.

Upcoming Legislative Hearings