By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD — The House Republicans ran roughshod over public education Wednesday on the first day of the 2026 session approving a book ban while killing two bills that would have provided more free school meals to poor children.

The House also killed an attempt to bring back the contents of a bill killed last year that would reverse years of business tax rate cuts and the interest and dividends tax repeal in order to meet the revenue requirements for two recent court decisions saying the state is not meeting its constitutional obligation to provide its children with an adequate education.

Book Bans

Although Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed a bill last session that would have allowed parents and anyone else to challenge the appropriateness of books or other materials in public schools and libraries, House Republicans brought a slightly different version back to the House Wednesday that sets up a process for anyone to challenge books or other materials in public schools as being inappropriate for a specific age level.

Opponents of the bill said it would lead to censorship, violates First Amendment Rights and will lead to costly litigation.

But supporters said protecting children is not censorship and questioned why public school libraries stopped protecting children from pornography.

The bill uses the same definitions and criteria from the bill Ayotte vetoed questioning if the state ought to be making literary judgements, and has the same challenge process, which is what is currently available to parents if they want to opt their child out of reading a book or material, but leaves the final decision to local boards and not the State Board of Education, which the vetoed bill did.

Rep. Lee Ann Kluger, D-Nashua, said: “This bill will lead us down a dark path to censorship, to overstep the boundaries of local decision-making.”

Materials and books in public schools are determined by the local school district, she noted.

“The state of New Hampshire should support the freedom to read,” Kluger said. “We cannot open the door to censorship, not now and not ever.”

But Rep. Melissa Litchfield, R-Brentwood, said the bill is a reasonable approach to protecting children while respecting constitutional boundaries and parental rights.

It recognizes that schools have age appropriate lines that need to be drawn, she said, but does not ban books nor silence ideas as children have a wide range of material available to them outside of school.

Sexually explicit material is not appropriate for minors to access, she said.

“Protecting children is not censorship,” Litchfield said.

Rep. Kristin Noble, R-Bedford, said a minor does not have a first amendment right to read pornography. “Why did school libraries stop protecting our children in this way,” she asked.

But Rep. Peggy Balboni, D-Rye, said, “This bill dictates a statewide process all must follow and that is an unnecessary intrusion on local control.”

The bill passed on a 181-157 vote and now goes to the Senate.

Revenue Resolution

Rep. Thomas Oppel, D-Canaan, introduced a resolution to allow the contents of House Bill 502, which was killed last year, to roll back business tax rate cuts that began about a decade ago, and the repeal of the interest and dividends tax in order to fund public education to the level set by two recent lawsuits over the state’s education funding system.

“Those tax cuts benefited wealthy individuals and large corporations in New Hampshire to the detriment of everyone else.”

He said residents’ property taxes keep rising while the state provides the least support for public education of any state in the nation even after three decades of court decisions that the system is unconstitutional.

Oppel said parents and other citizens are willing to raise their own property taxes because education is critical to their children and voters last year overwhelmingly rejected efforts to cap school budgets.

He said the bill was killed last session before the latest two education funding decisions were released.

Oppel noted large corporations mostly pay the business profits tax and the top 1 percent of earners paid most of the interest and dividends tax.

Those tax cuts and the elimination of the interest and dividends tax had little to no economic impact on families and children, he told his colleagues.

The generation that was in school when the first Claremont education decision was released now have children in school under the same education funding system found inadequate three decades ago.

“Parents and others need a tax cut to benefit them,” Oppel said, “and that is a property tax cut.”
But Deputy House Speaker Steve Smith, R-Charlestown, said the House Rules Committee voted down Oppel’s request unanimously, noting the proposal needs to go through the normal process to bring bills to the floor. 

Smith said while he shares the concern about property taxes, the House has rules. “The rules are there to keep us from making a mistake, that is why they are there.”

The House voted the bill down on a 280-57 vote. The 57 votes for the proposal is more than double the number of representatives voting in favor of the bill last session,

Education Funding

The House killed two bills that would have dealt with the state education funding system and its reliance on widely varying property tax rates to support public education.

House Bill 491 would have established a committee to study the impact of the state’ reliance on local property taxes to fund public education and ways to rebalance revenue sources to address the issue as well as new revenue sources.

The House also killed House Bill 651 which would have increased per-pupil adequacy grants to the $7,356 per pupil set in the Superior Court’s ConVal decision. ConVal  claimed the state has failed to pay for an adequate education.

The bill would have raised the per-pupil amount of differentiated aid for students on free and reduced lunch, receiving special education services or learning English as a second language, by the same173 percent increase as the base cost increase.

Higher Education

The House passed two bills that will affect the state’s higher education system.

House Bill 510 would guarantee due process rights for students, staff and faculty at the state’s higher education institutions if they go before a disciplinary hearing.

The bill goes to the House Finance Committee for review.

The House also passed House Bill 112, which would require students in the university and community college systems of New Hampshire to pass the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services civics naturalization test. The bill will also be reviewed by the House Finance Committee. 

The legislature passed a similar requirement for high school graduates several years ago.

Free Meals

The House defeated two bills that would have expanded the free meal program for students from poor families, House Bill 294 and House Bill 665.

Federal Grants

Under House Bill 658, federal grants to school districts would be treated as unanticipated revenue and for those greater than $20,000, school districts would have to hold public hearings.

Most school grants are automatic and do not require special school district meetings to accept, but under the bill that could be required.

Bullying

The House approved House Bill 131 which sets a new state policy on bullying and cyberbullying. The bill addresses retaliation; requires all staff, coaches, and bus drivers to report incidents of bullying; calls for notification of parents about steps to prevent further bullying of their child after an incident; and requires a conference with an alleged bully and their parents about impacts of bullying.

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