N.H. Senate Education Committee to Hear Testimony On Croydon School Choice Bill

Concord — The New Hampshire Senate Education Committee on Tuesday is scheduled to hear testimony on a bill that would allow children in districts without schools for their grade to attend private school elsewhere — much as students now are doing in Croydon.

Croydon School Board Chairwoman Jody Underwood said the bill would help clarify a law that now is the subject of debate in her panel’s court case against state officials, who have demanded the board stop sending children to private school on the public’s dime.

“This is a clarification of the law that gives school districts the power to send students to approved private schools,” she said in an email.

Underwood said she planned to testify at the hearing, which is scheduled for 10 a.m. on April 12 in Concord in Room 103 of the Legislative Office Building.

The bill, which passed the New Hampshire House of Representatives last month, 208-143, allows children to attend a private school that “has been approved for attendance by the department of education.”

Ralph Boehm, R-Litchfield, one of the bill’s sponsors in the House, said this provision was “currently the lowest rules the Department of Education has” and had been recommended by Croydon’s attorney.

“Residents and tax payers should be assured that schools their students are being sent to meet some level of approval,” he said in an email.

Route 113 Repairs Set to Begin Early Next Week

Thetford — Major repairs to an 8-mile stretch of Vt. Route 113 are scheduled to begin on Monday.

The work is expected to run through October, and will take place from the intersection with Vt. Route 244 to the New Hampshire border.

VTrans announced in a news release last month that Pike Industries, which orchestrated the interstate bridge slide project in White River Junction last year, would handle the Route 113 improvements.

Those will consist of “drainage improvements, milling and reclaiming the existing roadway, new guardrail, paving of three new layers of new pavement, and pavement markings,” according to the release.

Work will take place during daytime hours and possibly on some Saturdays, the agency said. State officials also warned motorists to use caution driving through the construction zone and to expect delays.

Officials: No Administrative Delay to Local Option Tax

Hartford — A paperwork delay should not prevent Hartford’s local option tax from being approved by the Vermont Legislature this spring, according to the Windsor lawmaker who chairs the committee in charge of charter changes.

Hartford Interim Town Manager Pat MacQueen told the Selectboard last week that a set of meeting minutes that documented part of the charter changes were not immediately available, prompting concerns that a failure to produce adequate documentation could hold up the the state’s ratification of those changes.

But Rep. Donna Sweaney, D-Windsor, said late Thursday that the House Government Operations Committee, of which she is the chairwoman, had enough slack in the timeline to process the paperwork without an issue.

“I just got the information this afternoon, but we will take it up,” Sweaney said. “There’s not a problem, timeframe-wise.”

— Staff reports