West Lebanon
House Education Committee Chairman Rick Ladd on Friday said his panel likely will take up SB 193, which would create “education freedom savings accounts,” on Tuesday and will either retain or amend the bill.
The legislation, which passed the New Hampshire Senate last month in a straight party-line vote, 14-9, with all Republicans supporting the measure, would allow parents to use up to 90 percent of the adequacy aid that the state would otherwise have paid to a public school for their children to instead send them to private school.
But along with concerns about whether it would include students attending parochial and other religious-based schools, Ladd said there are questions about how much money would be taken from a public school district, transportation costs, and whether it include people who are already home schooling their children.
“There are some policy considerations that we don’t have the answer for right now,” said Ladd, a former principal. “There are a lot of issues that have to be resolved here.”
Ladd also noted a major difference between the House and Senate versions of related legislation, the so-called “Croydon bills” that would allow educational districts to send children to private schools with tax dollars, provided the districts do not offer public school for the grades those students are in.
The two pieces of legislation are named for the Croydon School District, which has been fighting a court battle against the New Hampshire Department of Education over the handful of students that it sends to the private Newport Montessori School using public funds.
Ladd said the House bill he authored would only allow money to be used in such purposes for students attending nonsectarian schools. The Senate version of the Croydon bill would allow students to attend any type of school that has been approved for attendance by the Department of Education.
“We feel that to send (public education funds) to religious schools it would be contrary to language in the New Hampshire Constitution, and would open up room for litigation,” Ladd said.
The school voucher bill also would have to rule out religious-based schools to pass muster with him, Ladd said.
“If it goes forward (out of the House Education Committee), it would have to say ‘nonsectarian,’ ” he said.
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has voiced support for the Croydon-related legislation, expressed concern about potential harm to public schools from school-choice legislation during a taped interview aired Friday morning on New Hampshire Public Radio.
“Whatever we do, we have to make sure we’re not harming public schools, we’re not just removing funds out of those schools … ,” he said. “I do have concerns when you start using state funds, whether it be a voucher program or all the different terms that you want to put forward, to schools of a non-public nature. Whatever we do, we have to take things stepwise. I think that’s the most important thing rather than jump into everything all at once.”
Meanwhile, state Sen. Ruth Ward, R-Stoddard, a co-sponsor of the Senate’s Croydon bill, this week announced the passage of a separate piece of legislation that she said would allow Croydon to continue sending children to private school using public money. Ward’s Newport-area district includes Croydon.
The bill in question, HB 620, directs the State Board of Education to take fiscal impact into account when making rules to keep the state in compliance with federal law. The provision that helps Croydon says that any school seeking full accreditation with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges will be deemed to provide an “adequate” education under New Hampshire’s constitutional standards.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “It’s a beginning.”
A Superior Court judge has ruled that Croydon may not pay for students’ education at the Newport Montessori School using public funds, and Ward said she didn’t know whether the legislation would supersede this court order.
Senate Education Committee Chairman John Reagan, R-Deerfield, said that HB 620 would apply to private schools that already are accepting public funds, but would not offer the same sweeping change as the Croydon bills.
“The amendment would allow any other school, like the Montessori who has already started the process, to continue,” he said. “It probably only applies to the Croydon students there now.”
HB 620 passed the Senate on Thursday on a party-line vote.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.