By GARRY RAYNO, Distant Dome
With larger GOP majorities in the NH House and Senate in the upcoming session, the push will be on to expand the Education Freedom Account Program.
The program in its fourth year has grown from 1,635 students its first year to 5,321 students this school year, an increase in four years of 225 percent.
The program’s costs have grown even more, going from $8.1 million the first year to an estimated $28 million this year, an increase of 233 percent all coming from the Education Trust Fund, which is the primary source of state aid for traditional public and charter schools.
The program has been a copious gift to many struggling religious and private schools who receive the bulk of the money doled out from state coffers.
Of the 10 top grant recipients from data published by the Children’s Scholarship Program NH — the program administrator — nine of the top 10 private schools are religious schools, only one has no religious affiliation, according to the latest vendor information for the 2022-2023 school year, two school years ago.
During that school year, nearly 70 percent of all state grant money was paid as tuition to private and religious schools, while public schools received $27,000 in state grant money.
While the program was touted as a way for low-to-middle-income parents to provide educational alternatives for their children if they did not excel in the public school environment, few children have left public schools for greener pastures and the vast majority of participants were not in public schools when they joined the program.
According to the latest data released last month by the Department of Education, 493 students were switchers, which means they left public education for the EFA program, or 9 percent of the students.
A year earlier it was 8.7 percent, and before that 9.8 percent and 16 percent the first year. You can see the trend.
Anywhere from 85 to 90 percent of the students were in private or religious schools or homeschooled when their parents applied for EFA grants which means the programs main function is to provide subsidies for the parents who were paying the full cost of non-public education until the state tax dollars became available.
Currently New Hampshire has an income cap of 350 percent of federal poverty or an income of $109,200 or less for a family of four.
The average grant this year is $5,204, down slightly from last year.
Last session, the House approved a cap of 500 percent of poverty, but the Senate proposed 400 percent, and a compromise of 425 percent failed on the final day of the regular session in June.
In legislative sessions last year, a number of states moved to universal voucher programs with no salary cap including North Carolina, whose Democratic governor vetoed the measure, but the Republican dominated Legislature overrode the veto.
According to a ProPublica report much of the money is flowing to “segregation academies” established in the 1960s and 1970s to skirt desegregation of the state’s school systems.
North Carolina found so many students applied for the vouchers after the cap was removed, there is a waitlist of 54,000, more than double the number of students currently receiving the vouchers. To eliminate the waitlist, the cost is estimated to be $250 million.
If all eligible students in New Hampshire join the EFA program with no income cap, the cost is projected to be about $100 million annually, which would take about two years to end the over $200 million surplus in the state’s Education Trust Fund which funds adequacy grants to public schools and provides about double those grants to charter schools.
With the state facing a difficult budget process with declining state revenues after four or five years of significant surpluses, responsible lawmakers will have a difficult decision to make about expanding EFAs with $75 million to be committed annually for the next 10 years for the Youth Development Center settlement over the sexual and physical abuse of detainees at the hands of state employees, and about $50 million a year in capital costs for a new men’s prison.
The universal voucher program in Arizona is bankrupting the state and in Ohio, the state is being sued over its program with claims it is destroying public education for those not fortunate enough to be able to receive a subsidy for a private or religious school education or homeschooling.
The Texas legislature has had a difficult time with vouchers even with Gov. Greg Abbott’s strong support. Many Republican lawmakers in the state’s rural areas believe there are few to no alternative educational opportunities for their constituents’ children.
A similar situation exists in New Hampshire where students living north of the notches have few options outside of homeschooling as alternatives to public schools.
A rough estimate from Department of Education data from this year would indicate about 150 students are homeschooled north of the Notches of the 4,000 statewide.
Nonpublic schools north of the Notches are few and would require some lengthy travel to attend for many students.
Coos County for example has two nonpublic schools in Berlin, the Enriched Learning Center specializing in special education and Unity Christian Academy both for grades one to 12, the Salve Regina Academy, a religious school, and Gammon Academy in Lancaster, with a focus on special education.
Carroll County has two nonpublic schools, Cornerstone Christian Academy in Ossipee for grades one to eight, and the private Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro.
Grafton County has two nonpublic schools in Bethlehem, Bethlehem Christian School and Woodland Community School, both serving grades one to 12.
Haverhill hosts Oliverian School for grades nine to 12, while Lyme has Crossroads Academy for grades one to eight and there is the Waterville Valley Academy for grades one to eight.
Plymouth hosts the Holderness School and Mount Prospect Academy specializing in special education services.
In the Department of Education report on EFA students from towns in the three northern counties, only 12 communities have 10 or more EFA students.
They are Berlin, 61; Wolfeboro, 45; Littleton, 40; Haverhill, 35; Gorham, 28; Tamworth, 14; Bethlehem and Lancaster, 12; Bath and Grafton 11, and Dalton, 10.
Compare that to Manchester with 659 EFA students, Nashua, 279; Rochester, 170; Concord, 153 and Rindge, 117.
However, there are a plethora of nonpublic schools in the areas in and around those communities.
Much like Texas, the more populated areas in the lower half of the states have many more opportunities to access EFA approved programs than those in the less populated rural areas in the north.
The other issue is what does the average grant of $5,200 buy a parent at a private school that isn’t religiously affiliated.
The taxpayer grant is not going to allow a low-to-middle-income parent to send their student to St. Paul’s of Phillips Exeter, or Brewster Academy, Holderness, Proctor or Kimball Union with their tuition costs.
If those who claim the program has been wildly successful were really honest, they would say it does a poor job of helping kids who do not thrive in the public school environment whose parents are poor, but does a great job subsidizing kids already in private or religious schools or being homeschooled.
If EFA supporters insist on removing any salary cap for parents as other states have done, there is every reason to believe the same thing will happen in New Hampshire that happened in the other states: the well-to-do will collect taxpayer money for pocket change while putting public school funding in peril.
Is that a good use of taxpayers’ money with the state facing a budget crisis?
That is a question the legislature needs to ponder long and hard during the next few months.
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
