AFT-NH Testimony on HB 748
From Debrah Howes, President AFT-NH
Thank you, Chairman Cordelli and Members of the House Education Policy and Administration Committee for reading my testimony.
My name is Debrah Howes. I am president of the American Federation of Teachers-NH.
AFT-NH represents 3,500 educators and school staff in pre-K through 12 public education, university faculty, and city and town employees across the Granite State. My members help tens of thousands of New Hampshire public school students learn and thrive every day. We are residents and taxpayers in the Granite State. We oppose HB 748 establishing a local education freedom account program.
HB 748 would create a local voucher program that could easily decimate our local neighborhood public schools, leaving students with a threadbare education. It also could rapidly increase already burdensome property taxes in any New Hampshire school district that adopts it. It would do this because it would require local districts to fund local voucher accounts for any eligible student who lives in their district at twice the state per pupil adequacy grant plus any differential aid, a sum of $8,364 to $13,668 per student.
HB 748 defines an eligible students as any student in the district who attends public school, charter school, is in kindergarten or is being homeschooled. Experience with the current state school voucher program has shown us that most students who use a voucher did not leave a public school; they were already in some form of private education. It is reasonable to expect that most of the students who would take up local vouchers would also be not current public school students, and therefore not planned for in the budget. When a homeschooled or charter school student takes a local voucher, the school district will take on expenses that it did not previously have and did not plan for before local vouchers. Adopting local vouchers will require raising more money from local property taxes to cover the education expenses of all eligible children in the district or facing possibly severe cutbacks in staff and programs to handle the unbudgeted for expense of vouchers.
It is difficult to envision local property taxpayers, particularly in property poor towns, coming up with the necessary additional money to cover the new spending on vouchers. That means local vouchers will further impoverish our neighborhood public schools, leaving our public school students with only a threadbare education. As school districts struggle to cover costs, we’ll see massive cuts: Music, art, lab science, student learning support from paraeducators, library, transportation, and sports would all be on the chopping block as local communities struggle to keep up with cutbacks necessitated by having to fund two systems of education. The NH Constitution places a duty on the state to provide and fund a robust public education for all Granite State children. This bill would oblige local taxpayers to pick up the tab for a second system of education based on families’ individual choices. Since there is only so much money you can wring out of local property taxpayers, the creation of this second system of education would lead to cutbacks in the constitutionally required public education system.
Some specific examples just looking at covering the cost of homeschooled students using data from NH ED:
- The Mascenic Regional School District has 223 resident homeschooled students. If HB 748 were adopted, it would need to go to local property taxpayers for an additional $1,865,172 to $3,047,964 just to cover the cost of funding vouchers for homeschooled students, or take that amount of teachers, paraeducators and programming away from students in neighborhood public schools..
- The Nashua School District has 161 resident homeschooled students. If HB 748 were adopted, the district would need to be prepared to go to taxpayers for an additional $1,346,604 to $2,200548 just to cover the cost of funding vouchers for homeschooled students, or take that amount of teachers, paraeducators and programming away from students in neighborhood public schools.
- The Derry Cooperative School District has 62 homeschooled students. It would need to go to local property taxpayers for an additional $518,568 to $847,416 just to cover the cost of funding vouchers for homeschooled students, or take that amount of teachers, paraeducators and programming away from students in neighborhood public schools.
- The Berlin School district has 43 homeschooled students. It would need to go to local property taxpayers for an additional $359,642 to $587,724 just to cover the cost of funding vouchers for homeschooled students, or take that amount of teachers, paraeducators and programming away from students in neighborhood public schools..
These estimates do not consider the number of public charter school students who might switch to a local voucher program. While public charter schools receive state funding, they are not funded through the local school district budget. A similar decision would need to made in each town that adopted local vouchers if this bill passed. Do we raise local property taxes further to cover the cost of vouchers under HB 748 or do we take teachers, paraeducators and other school staff, as well as programs away from the students in the local neighborhood public school. Money for vouchers has to come from somewhere.
Why are we even considering another voucher program when they have such a poor track record for student academic achievement? Independent studies of voucher programs in states across the country have found that children in voucher programs perform far worse than their peers. In fact, education researchers who study vouchers say their negative effects are larger than natural crises like Hurricane Katrina and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Poll after poll has shown the families across New Hampshire want to see the legislature improve and invest in our local neighborhood public schools so all of our kids can succeed. In late January 2025, a RABA Research survey of NH voters found that 78% of NH voters wanted their tax money used to strengthen public schools and did not want it diverted to private schools through vouchers.
Granite State families want quality, stability and predictability, which overall they get from their public schools. This program would have the opposite effect and could lead to bare-bones education instead of the robust education our students receive today.
For the 155,000 public school students who rely on their local neighborhood public schools and all the local property taxpayers in towns and cities across the Granite State we urge the committee to vote Inexpedient to Legislate on HB 748.
Sincerely,
Debrah Howes
President, AFT-New Hampshire