By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org

Seventeen towns have passed warrant articles asking state officials to hold off on expanding the school voucher program until there is greater public accountability for how those taxpayer funds are being spent and whether students who receive them are getting a good education.

“I don’t want to give my tax dollars to somebody without knowing how they’re being spent and whether it’s benefiting society. I mean, wasn’t there something in the American Revolution about that?” said Leslie MacGregor, of Grantham, who first came up with the idea for a warrant article.

New Hampshire started offering school vouchers, known as “Education Freedom Accounts,” or EFAs, three years ago. The program is serving more than 5,000 students this school year, at an estimated cost to the state Education Trust Fund of $27.7 million. The money, an average of $5,200 per child this year, can be used for private and religious school tuition or homeschooling.

This year, household income must be lower than 350 percent of the federal poverty level, or $112,525, for a child to qualify. But the House approved a bill last week that would increase that to 400 percent next year and remove income limits altogether the following school year. The Senate passed a similar bill.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, did not respond to an email asking whether the governor would sign either of the bills. However, her budget proposal was more cautious, seeking funding to extend vouchers to children in families whose income exceeds the current cap only if the child has been in public school for at least one year.

That addresses a major criticism of the EFA program, which is that vouchers are primarily going to well-off families who already homeschool their children or send them to private schools, not to lower-income families who couldn’t otherwise afford to switch schools.

The EFAs are administered by a nonprofit in New York, the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which keeps up to 10 percent of EFA funding for its costs, or close to $3 million in fiscal 2025, under a contract with the state Department of Education.

The Department of Education and the state Attorney General’s Office maintain that financial information and user data from the program are the proprietary information of the Children’s Scholarship Fund – although the contract says the data belongs to the state.

The state legislature passed, and former Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill in 2022 requiring an audit of the EFA program by the Legislative Budget Assistant, but state auditors have been stymied by the fund’s refusal to share most of its data and the Education Department’s refusal to require the fund to release it. A limited audit is due out this spring.

That lack of accountability is what bothers MacGregor, who said she contacted a lot of people and organizations last fall, seeking help in drafting a warrant article to place on her town ballot. Public taxpayer dollars and student outcomes should be accounted for publicly, she said.

“Why wouldn’t voucher advocates want to build a system that’s transparent and accountable?” she said.

The Sullivan County N.H. Democrats took up the cause, assembling a task force and drawing up a model warrant article that was adapted by sponsors in each town. The idea then spread to several towns in Merrimack County, as well as a couple of towns in Hillsborough and Carroll counties.

Of 18 towns that considered the warrant articles at their March town and school meetings or elections, all but one passed it: Croydon, where it was tabled. More town and school district elections are scheduled for April and May.

Many of the towns that passed it, including Weare and Wolfeboro, consistently elect Republican state legislators, said Je Austin of Claremont, a key task force member. That was by design, Austin said.

“It was very much a nonpartisan approach,” she said. “Some of us are not entirely anti-voucher; some of us think they may be appropriate in certain situations. It was about finding common ground and figuring out a way to talk about them … without fighting with our neighbors.”

David Trumble, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate against Ruth Ward, R-Stoddard, last November, said the warrant article he introduced in Weare sought three things from the state’s elected officials: financial accountability, including annual income verification for families in the program; information about voucher students’ educational outcomes, which research has shown are worse than for students in public schools; and rights for students with learning disabilities whose families want to use EFAs.

“If you apply for any other public assistance program (such as food stamps or Medicaid), you have to show that you qualify every year,” Trumble said. “For the EFA program, you qualify until your child graduates from high school.”

Those sponsoring the warrant articles are also concerned about the rising costs of education for local taxpayers – and the fact that EFA funds come out of the public school districts where the children are located, Trumble said.

In New Hampshire, the state provides 20 percent of the actual cost of K-12 public school education – the lowest percentage in the country, according to U.S. Census figures for 2022 – while local property taxpayers pay for 70 percent and 9 percent comes from the federal government. That last funding is uncertain, as President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.

The state Department of Education issued a statement Thursday saying that EFAs account for less than 1 percent of total education spending in New Hampshire.

“Since the start of the EFA program in 2021, public schools have seen an increase in taxpayer funding of over $400 million, while the number of students has continued to decline, and (they) now cost taxpayers over $4 billion dollars per year. The EFA program costs taxpayers $27.7 million per year,” the statement said.

“Traditional public schools receive over $21,500 per student from New Hampshire taxpayers,” the statement said. “Education Freedom Account students receive $5,200 per student from New Hampshire taxpayers.”

However, that $21,500 figure includes local property tax revenues and federal spending. The state provides the same base per-pupil aid for public school and voucher students, although additional state aid for English language learners, low-income students and students who need special education services may push the per-pupil average slightly higher for public schools, which serve more of those students.

Ward, Trumble’s erstwhile rival and chair of the Senate Education Committee and the Education Freedom Accounts Oversight Committee, did not return a phone message and email requesting comment, although three towns in her district – Weare, Sunapee and New London – passed warrant articles. Neither did Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, a member of the oversight committee whose district includes part of Wolfeboro.

Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, who is also on the EFA oversight committee, said she hadn’t heard about the warrant articles, but hoped that more towns would introduce them. She said spending could double if the income cap is lifted, further draining the Education Trust Fund and harming public schools, which have fixed costs.

“We give more and more money to this EFA program,” she said. “It gets thrown into a big black box, and the only people who get to see it on the other side is this company that’s outside New Hampshire.”

“There’s no accountability,” Altschiller said. “The state hires third-party contractors to do all kinds of things, and we audit the contracts to see if deliverables are being delivered. … We do that with every single contract except this one.”

Altschiller introduced a bill this session, SB 203, that would have moved administration of EFAs into the state Department of Education so that legislators could examine it. The Republican-dominated Senate killed it last week.