Education
Lawmakers Seek Education Freedom Account Expansion
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Under a cloud of shrinking state revenues some lawmakers are proposing a bill that could add $102 million or more a year in state spending.
InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/author/garry-rayno-indepthnh-org/page/9/)
Under a cloud of shrinking state revenues some lawmakers are proposing a bill that could add $102 million or more a year in state spending.
But in recent years, the New Hampshire legislature has been attempting what was once the unthinkable in our Granite State, trying to upend once precious “local control.”
With the 2025 fiscal year half over, the state faces a revenue deficit large enough to wipe out last fiscal year’s surplus and end the biennium in red ink.
If you followed the New Hampshire legislature the last few terms and listened to Education Freedom Account advocates, you would think public schools are cesspools of indoctrination, obscene materials, bullying and protectors of perverts.
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.
Thirty years ago Republicans had long controlled state government until Jeanne Shaheen and other Democrats helped make NH a two-party state in the latter part of the 20th Century.
New Hampshire lawmakers have decreed that most of the “gifts” from the state do not go to the needy, but to those on the other end of the economic spectrum.
The early turmoil in the Republican House caucus over the Majority Leader’s position does not bode well for what lies ahead for the GOP majority in the upcoming session.