Longtime school choice Republican resigns from NH House

Republican Rep. Glenn Cordelli, a longtime advocate for school choice and the chairman of the Education Policy and Administration Committee, has resigned from the New Hampshire House, according to the clerk’s office.

Cordelli, of Tuftonboro, N.H., was included in an updated list posted by House Clerk Paul Smith Wednesday that names representatives who have resigned or died since the November 2024 election.

Cordelli was not available to comment on his departure Wednesday. Rep. Rick Ladd, a Haverhill Republican who served with Cordelli on the House Education Committee, said Cordelli had moved out of the state for family reasons.

Since becoming a representative in 2013, Cordelli has been a prolific sponsor of legislation to expand alternatives to public education. He was one of the earliest and loudest proponents of New Hampshire’s education freedom account program, which passed in 2021 after years of efforts by Cordelli to get support from then-Gov. Chris Sununu and fellow Republican lawmakers.

Kate Baker Demers, the executive director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, the nonprofit organization that administers the state’s EFAs, praised Cordelli Wednesday in a written statement, calling him “a steady leader on education freedom and student-centered education funding.”

“We sincerely thank Representative Cordelli for his trust in NH parents and his work to increase access to education freedom so that more of our children get the education and learning experiences they need to thrive,” Baker Demers said.

Cordelli was the face of many efforts to impose tighter state control over the content taught at public schools. That included bills to give parents greater power to challenge books and materials deemed obscene.

And until his resignation, Cordelli had appeared to be leading many of those efforts into the 2026 session. Earlier this month, he pushed forward an amendment intended to revive a bill vetoed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte that would allow for easier removal of books from schools.

He was also the prime author of legislation presented last week that would allow the State Board of Education to take control of school districts determined to be in a financial crisis or to be violating state rules. Presenting the bill last week, Cordelli cited the ongoing fiscal crisis in the Claremont School District as the impetus for that legislation, which would allow the board to appoint an administrator to take over a school district for up to a year.

For years, Cordelli sat as the vice chairman of the House Education Committee, working with Ladd, the chairman.

That committee was split into the House Education Funding Committee and House Education Policy and Administration Committee in late 2024.

In an interview Wednesday, Ladd said he valued his working relationship with Cordelli.

“I’ll miss him,” he said.

But Ladd admitted there were sometimes differences in their approaches to education policy.

Ladd, a former school administrator and principal, focused on school funding matters and often supported legislative approaches that empowered school districts. Cordelli saw many public schools as unaccountable, and championed legislation to allow the state to dictate curricula and finances.

The approach endeared Cordelli to conservatives, but did not always win over moderate Republicans like Ladd and Ayotte. When the governor vetoed Cordelli’s bill to more easily allow content deemed obscene to be removed from schools, she took issue with the underlying concept. “I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness,” Ayotte wrote in her veto message.

Ladd said the two often strove to bridge those disagreements.

“He had a quality to listen. I think he was genuinely concerned about children. He was reasonable. And there were times when I said, ‘Glenn, you’re out of the ballpark,’” Ladd recalled.

Frequently sporting a yellow scarf to symbolize the school choice movement, Cordelli was a regular presence on the House floor in support of education freedom accounts, charter schools, and homeschooled students.

Speaking in favor of a bill to expand the education freedom account program in February 2024, Cordelli encapsulated that lifelong view.

“School choice programs have the best form of accountability,” he said. “Parents can walk when they’re not happy with their kids’ education. In public schools, what happens if the school is failing? They get more money.”