AFT-NH Legislative Bulletin (2024-10)

Support the Freedom to Read (HB 1311)

More voucher expansion. The legislature was back in the swing of things this week after the winter break.  The House and Senate both met this week. The Senate acted on SB 522 this week passing a yet another voucher expansion bill out of the Senate Education Committee. This voucher expansion bill creates a voucher system for Pre-K even though the State of New Hampshire does not even mandate kindergarten and has no public Pre-K’s available for Granite State families. Families who are most in need and already qualify for the high-quality early child care scholarship could also see less money due to this voucher expansion. As a workforce issue, this could mean less childcare is available if this measure is approved, since the bill would mean less reliable funding for existing high quality childcare programs in favor of parceling out smaller amounts of money to greater number of families through a newly created school voucher program. Childcare programs may have to cut back on overhead and staff, which translates into fewer placements available for actual students, less daycare available for parents who need it and fewer working parents available to work. It will quite likely endanger the current federal funding underpinning of workforce childcare. SB 522 has enormous downsides.    

As the legislature continues to expand vouchers, it still has failed to meet its constitutional obligation to all Granite State children and local property taxpayers to equitably fund an opportunity for a robust public education through local neighborhood public schools. Despite this failure, the legislature keeps trying to give away the money from the Education Trust Fund to every voucher scheme that is proposed.

Freedom to Read. Next week the full House will be voting a series of bills including HB 1311, a bill coined the “Freedom to Read” that would appropriately set standards and policies for school boards to examine whether materials that are in schools libraries are appropriate for students. Unlike some bills we have already seen this year that would ban books in schools, this bill requires school boards to make policies and require a reconsideration policy on any decision made that is based on community standards. That is the appropriate constitutional test to consider when evaluating a work as a whole, not only a selected passage or illustration, to decide whether it should remain in a school library collection or be removed.  It also ensures that books are not banned just because they may be written by or talk about LGBTQ people or people of color. You can read AFT-NH testimony in support of this bill HERE.

ACTION NEEDED

Please CONTACT YOUR STATE REPRESENTATIVE and ask them to vote to pass HB 1311.

Town Meetings

We are in town meeting season. We encourage you to vote in your local elections. Decisions made at the local level can have a direct and significant impact on your local schools and municipal services. Contracts for teachers, police and first responders, and public employees around the state will be on the ballot. Please support these contracts. We support our colleagues across the state.

Please make sure to review the AFT-NH Town Meeting Guide to find information for AFT-NH locals that will have contracts on the ballot. Important contracts to be voted on will be in the following places: Fremont (Ellis School Support Staff), Henniker (Henniker Community School Support Staff), Hillsborough (Hillsborough Town Employees), Hudson (Hudson PSRPs), Pittsfield (Pittsfield Town Employees), and Timberlane (Timberlane Teachers’ Association).

Legislative Action Toolkit

For breaking news and other legislative information, please be sure to like us on Facebook at AFT New Hampshire or follow us on Twitter @AFTNewHampshire to receive the latest news.  Please share this with friends so they can sign up for this bulletin at http://nh.aft.org/.

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 or in a work session 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.

 Legislative Tracker – Week of March 11^th