By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD — With the House budget writers facing two court rulings now awaiting state Supreme Court decisions, they took little action to address the challenges to the state’s education funding system, while adding tens of millions of dollars for the Education Freedom Account Program and charter schools above what Gov. Kelly Ayotte requested.

The two court orders would require the legislature to approve more than $500 million in additional state adequacy aid to schools, and to change the administration of the Statewide Education Property Tax so that $27 million does not remain with the “donor towns” and instead goes to the state to distribute to needy school districts.

The change in the SWEPT is included in the House’s proposed budget, but the additional aid is not, although there would be a $27 million boost for special education in the second year of the biennium.

However, budget increases in the House’s plan for the current fiscal year, as well as for the 2026 and 2027 biennium over the governor’s budget proposal for the Education Freedom Account program total nearly $30 and increases for charter schools total $20 million.

The changes to the EFA program are based on the House-passed House Bill 115 which would increase the earning cap to 400 percent of the federal poverty level for the 2026 fiscal year and remove the cap for the 2027 fiscal year, meaning every family in New Hampshire with school-age children is eligible for the grants that average $5,270 this school year.

Ayotte’s proposed budget did not change the current 350 percent of poverty earnings cap in fiscal 2026 and removed the cap the following year, but students had to have been in public school for one year before joining the program.

Currently about 75 percent of the students in the EFA program were in private or religious schools or homeschooled when they joined the program, and not in public schools.

“Budgets are about the choices made that reflect the values of the people who craft them,” said Megan Tuttle, president of the NEA – NH. “The politician who crafted this budget believes it is OK to give tax dollars to wealthy families for subsidies.”
 She noted other choices made by House budget writers like 

 requiring Medicaid recipients to pay a premium and copays, changing Medicaid eligibility, reducing services to the developmentally disabled and cutting higher education funding will impact students and citizens across the state.

“Kids thrive when local schools have the resources they need to foster learning,” Tuttle said. “As I said before, public dollars belong in public schools.”

Vouchers take the focus away from neighborhood public schools which educate about 90 percent of the state’s students, she said.

And she noted she believes the lawmakers — as they have to date on the EFA program — are underestimating the true cost of removing the salary cap noting one estimate is as high as $100 million a year.

Rep. Keith Erf, R-Weare, said the committee used estimates for increases in the EFA program under universal access done by Drew Cline, the president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and State School Board chair.

The center, like the group Americans For Prosperity, both have advocated for the EFA program and its expansion and are affiliated with the Koch Foundation.

Cline’s projected enrollment increases under universal access to EFAs were significantly lower than the ones devised by Reaching Higher New Hampshire, which estimated the potential cost to be around $100 million, and lower than the ones given the committee by Kate Baker Demers, the Execute Director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund — NH, which administers the program for the state.

Instead of spending taxpayer dollars on EFAs, Tuttle said, the state needs to step up and make up for the years and years of not adequately funding public education.

But instead of increasing funding for public schools, the budget includes a statewide budget cap on school district spending tied either to the rate of inflation or the average daily attendance at a district’s schools.

Numerous attempts were made to cap funding this year after the legislature last year passed a bill allowing 25 people to petition to place a per-pupil budget cap on a school district warrant.

All but one or two failed overwhelmingly.

House Finance Committee Chair Rep. Kenneth Weyler, R-Kingston, noted the cap when the committee voted to approve its budget plan Thursday, saying the state education aid reflects the diminishing enrollment in public schools.

The cost of public education has increased above inflation without any seeming reason to do so.

“So, we’ve had a lot of complaints about the taxes. Interestingly enough people vote for school budgets that raise their taxes and then complain to us that property taxes went up,” Weyler said. “So we did put in a bill, that I believe will pass, to limit the increased rate of school budgets going forward. That should be a big help on property tax increases but unfortunately it doesn’t help for the property taxes people are presently paying.” 

Weyler had complained at the public hearing on the budget about the number of people testifying for the need for more state education aid, noting they know it is a problem, they don’t need to hear more complaints.

EFA advocates say the program saves property taxpayers money, but not enough students leave public education under the program — less than 5 percent statewide — for school districts to make significant reductions due to built-in costs such as utilities, staff, and maintenance.

The program was originally sold as a way to offer low-income parents alternatives to traditional public schools if their child did not perform well in that environment.

Instead, the program mostly provides subsidies to wealthy families for tuition without any guardrails, Rep. Mary Jane Wallner, D-Concord, told her colleagues on the House Finance Committee Thursday while the Republican backed budget devastates many needed services for the state’s most vulnerable.

Tuttle noted comparing public schools and the EFA program is like comparing apples to oranges when advocates say it is much cheaper than public schools.

Private and religious schools can decide who they take as students and don’t have to provide special education services, she noted.

“It really is coming down to two separate school systems,” Tuttle said. “You can’t compare them apples to apples.”

She noted that the House budget is a snapshot in time, and soon the Senate will begin work on its version of the budget and she will wait to see what changes they make that reflect their values.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.