(The Center Square) — New Hampshire lawmakers are considering changes to the state’s school voucher program, which uses taxpayer money to fund private, religious and home schooling education amid claims from critics that the system lacks accountability and transparency.
The Education Freedom Savings Account Oversight Committee, a Republican-controlled panel of lawmakers, is preparing to issue a report with proposed changes to the three-year-old program. During a hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the issue bickered over whether the program needed an overhaul.
Democratic lawmakers, pushing for changes in the program, argue the new law is rife with loopholes that could impact the state’s finances and lacks taxpayer oversight or accountability.
State Sen. Debra Altschille, D-Stratham, is pushing for an annual recertification review of families that qualify for the scholarships to determine whether they have exceeded their income requirements to receive the funding. She said the state also spends millions of dollars on the school voucher program without verifying how the recipients use it.
Under the law, public school dollars follow K-12 students if they decide to attend private or charter schools. Families apply for annual grants averaging $5,300 per student. Participants must be making under 350% of the federal poverty level, or $109,000 for a family of four, according to the state’s criteria. Currently, the state doesn’t require recipients to verify their income annually to determine if they are above the threshold.
“To say that we should continue to subsidize families who are well above the income level it’s not fair to the rest of the state,” Altschille said in remarks during Tuesday’s live-streamed hearing. “It’s also not a good use of this money that we throw it into this program and then don’t ask how it is spent. We don’t know where the money goes.”
But state Rep. Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill, said the school voucher program has proven to be successful and doesn’t require a major overhaul. He argued that parents are best suited to determine how their children are educated, either through the public or private systems or homeschooling.
“There are parents out there that see this as the best fit, and their children are succeeding,” Ladd said in remarks on Tuesday. “I’m at the point where I’m saying it’s time to stop bickering between one choice and another and for us to support all these options available, without cutting one or the other down.”
The program, approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature, is administered by the Children’s Scholarship Fund, a private, nonprofit organization that works under contract with the state.
Interest in the program has exceeded the expectations of state education officials. The state Department of Education said there were more than 4,200 students in the program as of September, compared to 1,572 in the 2022 school year when it was launched.
New Hampshire is one of at least a dozen states that have authorized the use of school vouchers for private, religious and home-schooling.
School choice advocates describe the programs as a “parent revolution” and say it empowers families to make the best decision for their children’s education while creating competition between public and private schools that leads to better student outcomes.
Critics say the programs siphon funds from already cash-strapped public schools while subsidizing affluent families who already send their children to private schools. They say the programs also lead to poor educational outcomes for students who leave public schools.
Nationwide, 32 states provided an estimated $6.2 billion in subsidies to nearly 1 million students through vouchers, education savings accounts, tax credits, charter schools and other forms of school choice in the 2023-24 school year, according to EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group. That’s more than double the amount spent in the 2019-20 school year, the data shows.
The battle over diverting taxpayer money to private and religious schools has become a central issue in the presidential election. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump supports school choice, and the Republican National Committee adopted the policy as part of the party’s platform.
