InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/category/op-ed/)
The advocates for opening the state’s school voucher program, Education Freedom Accounts, to all students in the state regardless of their parents’ income did a massive public relations and organization effort before the public hearing last week on House 115, which would remove the salary cap from the four-year old program.
This picture was taken in Dover, N.H., on July 12, 2019 with candidate Joe Biden.
With all of the uncertainty swirling about education in NH as a result of school funding lawsuits and cretinous efforts to micro-manage what is taught in schools and who can use which bathroom, Governor Ayotte’s leading new policy announcement was (drumroll) to ban cellphones in schools. Republicans cheered.
As a New Hampshire citizen/taxpayer, and as a past home education parent who did not seek or receive any voucher, tax credit, or other taxpayer funding during our homeschool years, I find the ongoing debate about expansion of New Hampshire’s EFA (Education Freedom Account) program particularly fun to follow.
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.”
There has never been a better example of the need for term limits than demonstrated recently in the mud wrestling over the federal budget.
My former Sunday School students will recognize the name of Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve as a member of a presidential cabinet. It’s important to know about her and what she accomplished, and helped FDR accomplish.
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.
Have I told you the story of Croydon, NH? It’s an example of how people, working together, can make a difference at the local level.
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.
