By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome
For the next few weeks, House lawmakers will be able to submit legislative service requests (LSRs) to draft bills for the upcoming session.
The Senate’s two-week period ended Friday with 96 LSRs which is down substantially from normal, as it appears that body seeks to avoid the negative consequences of moving most of the legislative hearing rooms to Granite Place, a mile-and-a-half or so from the State House, while the Legislative Office Building is being rehabilitated.
Whether the House follows the Senate’s example remains to be seen, but some bills need to be filed in the upcoming session to begin to put some guardrails and accountability around the Education Freedom Account program.
Last session, the legislature approved — with Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s signature — universal vouchers potentially giving all state parents access to at least $4,265 dollars of state money to spend for their child’s non-public school education regardless of their earnings.
The greatly expanded program reached its cap of 10,000 students this school year and will likely reach its new cap next school year at 12,500 students.
The program will cost state taxpayers more than $100 million this biennium, more than double the cost from last biennium.
With the state scratching for money in charity gambling casinos, a plethora of fee increases, charging poor parents premiums for their children’s health insurance and co-pays, and selling state buildings and property, more than doubling the cost of a new and so far unaccountable program with little transparency could be viewed as fiscally irresponsible.
As with most of the voucher programs proliferating around the country, Republican advocates want little to no regulation or oversight saying parents are the best judges of their child’s education.
So in essence there are 10,000 different educational standards in place for the 10,000 students participating.
Without standards and student performances to judge, it would behoove the legislature to begin trying to close the barn door before the entire stable of dollars in the Education Trust Fund are gone never to be seen again.
The first year of the program, the administrator the state hired, The Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, published a list of where the money was spent.
Although the single biggest recipient was Amazon, the largest category of money going out of the state coffers was money to religious and private schools, some of whom received hundreds of thousands of state tax dollars.
Trinity Christian School of Concord was the highest for tuition payments at $251,300, while Laconia Christian Academy was second at $232,830.
The first year of the program the total spent was $8.1 million, well over the $300,000 estimate from then-Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and only 17 percent of the 1,635 students left a public school for the EFA program, which continues to be reflective of the breakdown of students who join the program meaning about 80 percent were in religious or private schools or homeschooled when they joined the program and not from public schools, while the program was sold as an opportunity for low-income parents to find an alternative education for their students if they did not do well in public schools.
Some of the other interesting items listed that first year included $565,248 dollars for computer hardware, other expenses for summer camps, theater and music performances, and skiing tickets.
Since that first year, the Children’s Scholarship Fund has failed to publish another list of where the money went although you certainly could expect the money for religious and private school tuition to have grown substantially with the number of students.
A recent study by The National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH Center), a university based research institute funded by US Department of Education grants, indicated the 11 states, including New Hampshire, with universal voucher programs have had little success drawing students out of public schools for alternative programs.
However, the study notes universal vouchers benefit the parents of students in private and religious schools and new small non-Catholic private schools with low enrollment and tuition.
But the study found vouchers make it easier for private institutions to increase tuition from five to 10 percent as many of the smaller private schools raise their tuition to the average voucher grant.
REACH does research to determine how state’s could change school choice policies to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students, including low-income, underrepresented minorities, special education and English as a Second Language students.
Another problem that has plagued the state’s EFA program is a loophole that allows an end run around reimbursements for purchased materials.
For example, a parent may purchase an office chair for their student to sit at a desk for an on-line course. However, after the purchase has been approved and the parent reimbursed, there is no mechanism in place to prevent the parent from returning the chair and receiving their original payment back, which would give them state cash to spend how they choose and it does not have to be for educational materials or supplies.
While House members have the opportunity to request bills be drafted, it would go a long way to help oversight of the program to introduce a bill requiring the Children’s Scholarship Program NH to list where the money is spent as it did the first year.
That way the public can see how much state tax money goes to Catholic schools or other religious affiliations, and to other private schools and to homeschooling.
Also it would allow the public to see where these children are educated and the other related costs such as books and fees and the dreaded school uniforms that many of the schools require judging from the list of spending the first year.
The academics also need more accountability if the state is going to pay students’ education just as public schools face scrutiny for their spending every year at their annual meetings.
If they are serious about this program, lawmakers should want to improve it and ensure children receive the education their parents seek for them and to assure taxpayers their hard-earned money is not wasted.
It’s likely any legislation putting guardrails around the EFA program will have to come from Democrats. To date, Republicans have successfully fought any attempt to rein it in since it originally passed in 2021 as part of the budget package after it failed to garner enough support as a stand alone bill.
The more than $100 million this program costs this biennium would help many property-poor school districts improve their students’ education and provide a little property tax relief to their property owners.
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.