Not the correct way to fund a voucher program.
New Hampshire has one of the more generous school voucher programs in the nation. Now a suit has been filed charging that it violates education funding statutes as well as the New Hampshire constitution.
Education Savings Accounts, a kind of super-voucher, have been pushed in New Hampshire for several years, championed by Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, a businessman/legislator who homeschooled his children and has long championed school choice. Edelblut bowed out of a gubernatorial race with Chris Sununu, and was subsequently appointed to the head education spot by Sununu, where he butted heads with the Democratic-led legislature.
In 2020, the GOP flipped both the House and Senate. One of their first orders of business was a new voucher bill. They used the name “education freedom accounts,” an echo of Betsy DeVos’s ill-fated national voucher plan. The state would hand its share of a student’s education funding to a scholarship organization to give to families for a wide assortment of expenses, with loose limits on who could get the voucher, few limits on how it could be spent, and no oversight of the taxpayer dollars.
The hearing for this bill drew 3,800 people to speak, only 600 of whom were in favor. Opponents warned that the cost of the program would be far higher than the $130,000 advertised. Rather than buck the wave of public opinion against the bill, the legislature turned it into a last-minute addition to the state budget.
The vouchers are funded by the state’s Education Trust Fund. That fund was established in 1999 as a result of Claremont School District v. Governor of New Hampshire, a case that resulted in an agreement that the state would kick in a larger share of school funding.
The Education Trust Fund was where that state funding would be held, and the current rules are pretty clear on how the funds may be used. The funds
shall not be used for any purpose other than to distribute adequate education grants to municipalities' school districts and to approved charter schools...
In short, the law does not indicate that the funds may be used for vouchers, education savings accounts, or Education Freedom Accounts.
It has also turned out that the estimated price tag of $130,000 was hugely lowballed. In September, the Department of Education announced that the program had handed out $14.7 million (so the original estimates were off by about 11,000%). Some observers on the ground believe that enrollment rate may have been influenced by flyers and door-to-door canvassing by American for Prosperity.
The Department argues that these students would cost more to educate in public schools, but by their own figures (here and here), roughly 75% of the students using the EFAs were never in public school in the first place. School funding was reduced by the cost of the voucher, but school expenses were reduced by $0.00, so that local taxpayers are left to choose between cutting services or raising taxes).
And while the Department also says that the students using EFAs are from “economically disadvantaged homes,” the program cuts off eligibility at 300% of federal poverty guidelines. Roughly half the participants are eligible for Free or Reduced Prices for lunch, a common proxy for low-income students.
The EFA program currently serves about 3,000 of New Hampshire’s roughly 170,000 students.
The voucher funds may be used for a variety of education-related expenses including tuition, educational materials, software, online classes, uniforms, tutoring, transportation, and “any other educational expense approved by the scholarship organization.”
The organization is the Children’s Scholarship Fund New Hampshire. They have the responsibility to determine which families are eligible for the program, disburse the funds, and determine which vendors may be on the receiving end of the voucher money. This company takes over the functions we would expect from a state department of education, which is the other critical point of the suit.
This diversion of public education funding is central to the State’s goal for the program: removing students from public school systems by using the EFA as a substitute for the State’s duty to provide an education.
Further, the suit alleges, “the EFA program delegates virtually all authority to CSF with no meaningful oversight.” In fact, as is the case with many such voucher laws, it expressly forbids the state to “impose any additional regulation of education service providers.” One of the great fears of voucher program fans is that where state money goes, state regulations may follow, and so many proposals try to limit that possibility.
The lawsuit rests upon two ideas: that the state is using Education Trust Funds for purposes not allowed by the law, and that with the EFA program, the state is unlawfully delegating its duty and authority.
The plaintiff is Debrah Howes, a New Hampshire taxpayer and president of the New Hampshire branch of the American Federation of Teachers. The defendant is Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut. The complaint was file on December 8; put it on your list of education cases to watch for in the new year.
