New Hampshire took another big step Thursday toward expanding Education Freedom Account eligibility to all families regardless of income after the state Senate advanced the measure on a party-line vote.
Debate over the popular school choice program during prior votes was frequently a heated and drawn-out affair, with Republicans praising the state-funded program and Democrats arguing it would take money from public schools.
But with a 16-8 Republican majority in the Senate, the vote was a foregone conclusion.
The EFA program allows families to take the state portion of their child’s funding, typically around $5,000, and use it for alternatives to the public school for which they are assigned — private school, home school, etc. The rest of the per pupil funding, often around $20,000 or more, stays with the student’s assigned school.
On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Rebecca Perkins Kwoka (D-Portsmouth) rehashed past Democratic arguments about siphoning funds from public schools and claimed universal EFA access “could cost us up to $52 million in the first year alone.”
“This is expanding the Education Freedom Account program to allow for all families, not just restricted to low income families, but allows for a cap that continues to expand as more and more families enroll,” Perkins Kwoka said. “We don’t need to continue to subsidize the wealthy families in our state.”
SB 295’s prime sponsor, state Sen. Victoria Sullivan (R-Manchester), questioned Perkins Kwoka’s $52 million claim.
“We keep hearing these numbers that are rolled out that we have no idea where they’ve come from,” Sullivan said.
The first-term senator countered Perkins Kwoka’s claim by citing a Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy study that found universal eligibility would cost state taxpayers just $20 million in the first two years combined.
The same study poked holes in Democrats’ claim that universal access to the program would wind up costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
“To reach that number, they included thousands of ineligible preschool students, out-of-state students, and current EFA students,” the Barlett Center reported. “They also assumed without evidence that every eligible student would take an EFA.
“No school choice program in the country has a 100 percent take-up rate among eligible students outside the public school system, and no program has a take-up rate that’s even in the same ballpark.”
Currently, for a family to qualify for an EFA account, its household income cannot be more than 350 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s $109,200 for a New Hampshire family of four.
Sullivan pointed out the current per-student public school cost in New Hampshire averages about $24,000.
“With EFAs at about $5,000 per student, that’s a savings to the taxpayers, while we’re also giving children the opportunity to have the education that is individually tailored for them,” Sullivan said. “Their families are choosing the education that best suits that child so they can be the person that God intended them to be. This is a wildly successful program.”
Results from an EdChoice Public Opinion Tracking poll completed in January found 68 percent of all New Hampshire adults support the program, including 70 percent of all parents.
Following the vote, Sullivan released a statement explaining that, if enacted, SB 295 would “remove the EFA income requirement cap and lets parents or guardians use these funds freely, regardless of their financial situation.”
“This creates a new pathway of school freedom for families and gives them more education choices for their child,” Sullivan added. “We have repeatedly fought Democratic efforts to dismantle, repeal, and restrict one of the most successful educational choice programs in New Hampshire.”
National advocates for education choice cheered the vote.
“New Hampshire will be the 16th state to pass universal school choice in the past four years,” American Culture Project senior fellow Corey DeAngelis told NHJournal. “Republicans in both chambers have shown that they respect the rights of New Hampshire parents to direct upbringing of their children.
“No more picking winners and losers. All New Hampshire parents will finally be able to take their children’s taxpayer-funded education dollars to the education providers of their choosing. New Hampshire will fund students, not systems.”
New Hampshire leads the Northeast in education freedom, and it’s not even close.
Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has stopped short of endorsing universal EFA access, however. Her budget instead calls for universal access to all Granite State students who have been enrolled in a New Hampshire public or charter school for at least one full academic year.
As of the 2024-25 academic year, there are fewer than 6,000 New Hampshire students enrolled in the EFA program.
Under Ayotte’s budget plan, more than 98,000 public school students would become eligible for an EFA beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
While New Hampshire Democrats complain EFAs would take students — and their funding — out of the public schools, House Democrats also opposed a bill allowing families to choose the best public school for their child, even if it’s not the one they’ve been assigned.
In related public education news, House Republicans also managed to use their majority to advance legislation that would give parents the opportunity to enroll their children in public schools located outside of their home district.
HB 741 would redefine “legal resident” of a school district to mean “a natural person who is domiciled in the state of New Hampshire,” creating open enrollment in public schools. In the past, opponents of vouchers have embraced so-called “public school choice” as an alternative, keeping resources in the public schools while meeting demands for options from frustrated parents.
New Hampshire Democrats, however, overwhelmingly opposed the bill, which passed the House Thursday 198-174, with the support of just two Democrats. Nine Republicans voted no.
Critics like state Rep. Muriel Hall (D-Bow) dismissed the proposal as “school-hopping legislation” and claimed the ensuing enrollment unpredictability “would be a logistical nightmare for districts.”
State Rep. Glen Cordelli (R-Tuftonborough), the bill’s prime sponsor, said in his floor remarks that the legislation has begun to receive support from some public school officials.
“We hear critics of education freedom calling to keep public dollars in public schools,” Cordelli said. “Well, that’s just what this bill does.”
