AFT-NH Legislative Bulletin (2024-11)

Help us Stop the Subpoena and Part-Time Teacher Bills

Town Meeting Results.  This week the growing disconnect between the slim majority controlling the State House in Concord and the wants and needs of Granite State voters in many of our communities was on full display. On town meeting day voters showed they valued and support our public school students, the hard-working professionals who work every day in our schools supporting students, and the valuable town employees who keep our towns running by approving contracts in towns across the state.  Thanks to the hard work of our local leaders and members reaching out to friends and neighbors in their communities, AFT-NH locals in Campton, Fremont, Henniker, Hudson, and Timberlane school districts as well as our town employees in Hillsborough and Pittsfield earned support from voters for fair contracts for the valuable services they provide to their communities.

Attacks continue. Meanwhile, at the State House, the attacks on public schools and the professionals that work in them continued. While we have a good number of legislators who support our public school students, teachers, and school staff and we are truly thankful for their staunch support, they cannot prevail if a handful of legislators are missing when key votes come up.

It was a busy week this week at the State House. The House and Senate Education Committee met this week to discuss and vote on numerous bills as the House begins to send bills to the Senate and the Senate sends bills to the House.

Freedom to Read.  The full House also met this week. In some good news the House passed HB 1311—the Freedom to Read bill which balances the constitutional rights of students to access a wide variety of material in the school library with the need to maintain local control over decision making for school policies and allowing due process for parent concerns with specific library materials. HB 1311 allows communities to set their own community standards—as it should be, and is required under US Supreme Court decisions.

Divisive Concepts Law.  HB 1162, the repeal of the Divisive Concepts law, a vaguely worded classroom censorship law which makes it challenging to teach honestly about the connection between historic events and current racism, sexism and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, failed to get enough support to pass the House today. The Divisive Concepts law is one of the laws cited as creating a hostile workplace in the teacher shortage task force by the legislature last year, but that did not move enough representatives in the hall to vote for repealing it. Even more discouraging was losing HB 1312 by 1 vote. That bill expands the definition of what constitutes objectionable content related to sexuality, gender orientation and gender identity that requires a two-week notice to parents. The concern with this bill is that broadly read it could be applied to history and literature, not just health and sex education. We cannot stress enough the importance of our public education champions to be in their seats and voting at every session day. There will be a lot more bills that effect public education over the next 3 months and will need every vote.

Time to defeat the subpoena and part-time teacher bills. These next two weeks are prime examples of us needing our supporters in their seats to vote. Next week we will have HB 1353, the bill that allows Frank Edelblut our anti-public education commissioner the right to request a subpoena based simply on his belief that an educator may have done something wrong. We already know that the commissioner is prone to fishing expeditions and has already attempted to intimidate educators, and this would make it even worse.

The following week HB 1298, the part time teacher bill, which would allow anyone to teach up to 30 hours a week with no credentials or qualifications. This bill further weakens our neighborhood public schools and widens the divide between our public schools in property poor towns and the schools that can afford and attract qualified teachers.  Having un-trained teachers will not help our students learn.

Action Needed

We need you to contact your representative and tell them to vote ITL on both HB 1353 and HB 1298! 

Please click the following link, Please vote ITL on HB 1353 and HB 1298,  and ask your representative to stop the attack on professional educators.

Thank you for your attention and hard work during this challenging legislative session.

Legislative Action Toolkit

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

We will post the 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 18^th