By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — Former New Hampshire Department of Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut has been appointed to the Children’s Scholarship Fund’s Board of Directors.
Edelblut was education commissioner when the scholarship fund was awarded a no-bid contract to administer the Education Freedom Account program in 2021.
At the time, the organization oversaw the state’s Education Tax Credit Scholarship Program and had since its inception in 2013.
In a document Edelblut sent to the Executive Council prior to a vote on the 2021 contract, he noted the state law requires a non-profit organization either incorporated or qualified to do business in the state.
He notes only two organizations qualified under the provision, the Children’s Scholarship Fund and The Giving and Going Alliance, which told the department it was not interested in the contract.
“Because of the short implementation timeline and lack of qualified organizations in New Hampshire, it was not possible to run a competitive bid process in this first year of implementation,” Edelblut wrote.
He also said the department intends to put the contract out to competitive bid in future years.
A press release from the CSF dated March 30 announcing Edelblut’s appointment to the board, credited him with doing “many things to broaden pathways for Granite State students, including helping to move the New Hampshire Education Freedom Account (EFA) program from a legislative concept to a working program in partnership with Children’s Scholarship Fund New Hampshire and other approved scholarship organizations.”
As commissioner, Edelblut touted school choice, privatizing education, and various other programs such as experiential learning, learning pods and appeared at education fairs sponsored by the Koch Foundation’s American for Prosperity to encourage families to sign their children up for the state’s new voucher program, or Education Freedom Accounts.
Edelblut often championed what are referred to as the culture wars and wrote letters to several school districts telling them they should remove various books and materials from their schools and held a meeting in Concord with school librarians and others reading from books he found offensive and said he would use the Attorney General’s Office to help remove these books from library shelves around the state.
After the state’s divisive concepts law passed as part of the 2021-2022 state budget, as did the EFA program, Edelblut put a form up on the department’s website for parents to report teachers suspected of breaking the law, which caused Moms for Liberty to post a bounty for the first teacher found guilty.
Edelblut championed a financial literacy program from Prager University, a far-right organization that touts itself as promoting “the American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” while claiming “woke agendas are infiltrating classrooms, culture, and social media.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center says the organization “specializes in promoting far-right propaganda through professionally produced media.”
After several well attended State School Board meetings with most people opposing allowing the Prager on-line course to satisfy the state’s requirement for a financial literacy course, the State School Board approved it.
After the vote, Edelblut appeared in a promotional video for Prager University touting the program.
Edelblut served as New Hampshire’s Commissioner of Education from 2017 to 2025. He was named to the post by former Gov. Chris Sununu, who barely won his primary election over Edelblut in 2016.
Before running for governor, Edelblut served as Representative for Hillsborough County District 38. He has also served as water commissioner for Wilton since 2014.
Edelblut founded Control Solutions International, a provider of independent internal audit, compliance, risk management, and technology programs, which he sold in 2009 to an international consulting firm.
“For the past eight years, I have had the privilege of working as the Commissioner of Education for the State of New Hampshire to create opportunities for children throughout the state,” Edelblut said in the CSF press release. “I am honored to join a highly qualified team of like-minded professionals at the Children’s Scholarship Fund to continue creating bright futures for our children across the country.”
CSF President and CEO Darla Romfo said, “On behalf of the Board of Directors, we welcome Frank to the board and look forward to benefiting from his entrepreneurial spirit and his passion for education freedom.”
The Children’s Scholarship Fund was founded in 1998 by Theodore J. Forstmann and John Walton, to provide low-income students scholarships to attend private schools.
The fund also manages many states’ voucher programs as they do in New Hampshire.
Forstmann founded a private equity firm, and Walton is the son of the founder of Walmart. Both men are longtime advocates for school choice.
The state’s contract with Children’s Scholarship Fund NH allows it to retain up to 10 percent of the grants awarded to parents enrolled in the Education Freedom Account program for administrative costs.
The company said earlier this year it has its administrative costs down to about 8 percent.
This year the state will pay an estimated $52 million for the program serving 10,510 students, with the vast majority attending religious or private schools or home school programs.
About 80 percent of the participants were in private or religious schools or homeschool programs when they joined the program.
The EFA was originally touted as a way for low-income parents to provide alternative educational opportunities for their students if they did not do well in the public school environment.
The program has grown from 1.635 students costing $8 million during the 2021-2022 school year to 10,510 students costing $52 million this school year.
The state’s Legislative Budget Assistant’s audit division is working on a performance audit of the EFA program, but was originally stymied when the Children’s Scholarship Fund refused to share its data with auditors at Edelblut’s suggestion.
Initially the organization was cooperating with auditors until Edelblut raised separation of powers concerns between the legislative and executive branch over the information needed for the audit.
He claimed, and the attorney general’s office agreed, the legislature could not have access to the data from an executive branch contract with the program’s administrator.
With Edelblut no longer commissioner, the LBA and DOE are working on an agreement that would allow the auditors to access the data.
Edelblut could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday evening.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said the DOE didn’t put the EFA contract out to competitive bid after the first no bid contract, when it did put out an RFP in 2023.