By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — In the next week or two, the fate of the expansion of the Education Freedom Account program will come into focus.
While Gov. Kelly Ayotte has said she supports “universal Education Freedom Accounts” she wants to restrict the expansion to students who actually are in public schools for a full school year before joining the program.
Currently about 75 to 80 percent of the students were in private or religious schools or homeschool programs when they joined the program.
And if you look at the phaseout grants to school districts for students who left public schools to partake of the EFA program, it appears to be more like 5 percent.
Ayotte’s budget proposal also would not do away with income limits until the second year of the 2026-2027 biennium, which would mean the 2026-2027 school year when she allocates approximately $50 million for the EFA program, up from the $33 million her budget estimates the program will cost this school year, which is $5 million more than the Department of Education said it would cost just a couple months ago.
Lawmakers have held public hearings on two bills that would remove any salary cap for the program, but neither the House Education Funding Committee, nor the Senate Education Finance Committee has made a recommendation on either bill as yet.
The question is has Ayotte’s agreement to begin “universal EFAs” made these bills mute for the session, or does her proposal not go far enough for the most adamant voucher supporters.
Some groups aren’t waiting to find out what the Republican leadership has worked out with the Republican governor and have begun advertising on traditional and social media in favor of the bills.
The national conservative Republican organization Club for Growth once had an office in New Hampshire back in 2010 when it was trying to influence the Republican nomination for the US Senate race among Ayotte, Ovide Lamontange, Bill Binnie, Jim Bender and several others hoping to replace retiring U.S. Sen Judd Gregg.
The organization made another splash in 2021 when it announced in New Hampshire it was establishing a nationwide campaign to push school choice attracting then potential presidential candidate, former Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with former Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a longtime supporter of school choice like other oligarchs the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer and more.
At the campaign’s kickoff, Club for Growth president David McIntosh praised New Hampshire lawmakers for passing its Education Freedom Account program that spring as part of the state’s biennial budget package after it failed to stand on its own as a bill and was retained by the House Education Committee.
“Under Gov. Chris Sununu, New Hampshire has taken bold steps to create better education opportunities for the state’s most needy students,” said McIntosh. “We’re coming to New Hampshire to learn from folks there about what matters most. Education Freedom Accounts help families get a better education and ensure more tax dollars follow the student as opposed to the bureaucrats.”
Last month the group announced it would begin a “six-figure” ad campaign supporting universal freedom accounts in the legislature and released a poll from WVA, a conservative Republican marketing and consulting firm that has worked for a number of Republican candidates such as Ted Cruz, showing 54 percent support for the freedom accounts “after hearing a brief description of it,” and 38 percent opposed. That is very similar to other polling the group did for Club for Growth in other states the organization is pushing universal vouchers which are Texas, Idaho, South Carolina, Wyoming, West Virginia and South Dakota.
They also ran a campaign in Tennessee, which recently passed universal vouchers, as did the Idaho legislature last week.
The Club for Growth ads running in all those states have many of the same scenes of children in schools or getting off school buses or walking with parents. The ads are geared to the states where they run.
In New Hampshire the dramatic ad opens with “Live Free or watch their dreams die,” as a picture of a child appears.
The ad mentions the favorite phrase for anti-public school advocates, “government schools” and pushes the “freedom” aspect of the program.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott is the star witness as much of the ad is of him and his push for school choice, which to date has been unsuccessful, but may make it this session after Abbott with the help of Club for Growth went after a number of Republican lawmakers from rural areas who opposed the program because it would offer little help or nothing for their constituents.
Club for Growth’s agenda is almost identical to the Koch Foundation-funded Americans for Prosperity’s with its anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-union, socially regressive libertarian leanings.
But instead of the Koch Foundation funding the group, the Club for Growth’s primary funders are other oligarchs, Jeff Yass, who owns Susquehanna International Group, which is a major investor in Tik Tok among other interests, and Richard Uihlein, a Schlitz Brewing Company heir who also owns Uline, a shipping and supply company.
Americans for Prosperity have run their own social media ads in favor of universal vouchers and has long advocated for the program and promoted education fairs to entice parents to obtain EFAs.
The program currently has more than 5,300 students who receive grants ranging from $4,182, the basic per-pupil adequacy grant, to $8,670, when additional money is added in for students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, special education services, English is not their first language.
The program has grown rapidly and so has the cost that draws its funding from the Education Trust Fund, which according to Ayotte’s budget proposal will be out of money after this fiscal year although just two years ago, the fund had a $225 million surplus some lawmakers wanted to use for other purposes besides education.
According to her proposed budget, $26.1 million will have to be drawn from the general fund to cover the costs of what the fund is tasked with paying in the first year of the biennium, and $79.6 million from the general fund the second year when the universal vouchers would begin.
That is one more sticky problem budget writers have to face in making the next biennial budget balance, at least on paper.
Billionaires are paying a minuscule amount of their wealth to try to convince more and more parents to sign their children up, including parents who currently do not qualify because they make too much money to use scarce taxpayer dollars as a subsidy for a private or religious school education or homeschooling.
The ranking Democrat on the House Education Funding Committee, David Luneau, said he saw the ad and “it raised a lot of questions for me.”
But he noted, despite all former Gov. Chris Sununu, Department of Education Commission Frank Edelblut and Ayotte have done to promote this voucher program in its fourth year, it has attracted hardly any public school students to drop out and seek some other option.
“It’s hard to compare to New Hampshire public schools — we have some of the best outcomes in the country,” Luneau said. “We set a high bar. The (EFA) student outcomes cannot come close.”
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.