Betsy DeVos gave New Hampshire $46 million to. Double the number of charter schools.
The state commissioner of education said, illogically, that adding charter schools was a good way to handle declining student enrollment. If that doesn’t make sense, It is because it’s nonsense. Adding new charters is sure to accelerate enrollment declines.
The legislature’s fiscal committee voted on party lines to table the first $10 million, pending a study of the fiscal impact on existing schools.
Since neither Governor Chris Sununu nor State Commissioner Edelblut care about public schools, this is not their concern.
“On Friday, DOE Commissioner Frank Edelblut told the fiscal committee that the money will help districts better serve at-risk students and create schools prepared to deal with New Hampshire’s declining student enrollment.
“[Traditional public schools are] really just trying to tread water with the funding they have.” Edelblut said. “This allows us to invest in that community so that they can find a way to modify the instructional model that can allow them to manage that continuing decline that we know will continue into the future.”
”New Hampshire was awarded the largest grant of this kind in the country. In its application, the N.H. DOE emphasized the needs of at-risk and disadvantaged students and identified a group of “high-quality charter schools” that could serve as a template for the new schools.
”However, of the seven schools listed, the majority of them have far fewer economically disadvantaged students enrolled than traditional public schools do in that same district. Most also have fewer students with special education plans and students who are English language learners.”
The usual lies meant to advance privatization by rightwing extremists.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Although NH has 200 yrs of conservative history, it has been a swing state for 27 years – trifecta Dem govt as recently as 2006 – in 2016, voted Hillary, & clocked in at “even: Rep-Dem” despite by then having a Rep trifecta; in 2018 Dems won control of both houses state legislature. Sununu doesn’t even pretend to be a moderate Rep: he’s a rabid pro-Trumper. Yet his nomination of Edelblut (Ed Commissioner) tho criticized by Dems & praised by Reps was confirmed by the 3-2 Dem-majority NH Executive Council.
But it’s an idiosyncratic state. Pro-choice since 1973 (& still: proposed bills to curb rights die every year). Anti-gun-control (their wiki chart on permits/ licenses reqd is the opposite of NJ’s: all “no’s”). They lean libertarian, not evangelical; they favor privacy. I’m thinking Edelblut was OK’d because he’s taken a strong stand against CCSS and its aligned assessments. Taps into widespread NH sentiment, which is formed of concern over undermining local control of ed, mining student data, & ‘dumbing down’ NH’s pre-CCSS long record of high ed achievement. His other strong stand is pro-privatization, but he’s not getting much traction on that (except from Sununu & DeVos). NH voters/ pols seem to be rather pragmatic, & as Diane points out, expanding private options makes little $ sense in a rural/ small-town state w/declining school enrollment.
Bellwether wants to change the view about rural charter schools. They have a new site, RuralCharterSchools.org.
This year, Bellwether advised ed reformers to reach out to churches to achieve their goals.
Let’s hope they understand that this money is bait to try to hook them. It is asking the state to disinvest in its public asset. Privatization undermines public schools and communities. The towns in the state will be devastated.
Divest of public assets – The Putin strategy that filled his pockets and created the Russian oligarchs that solidify his control.
Wikipedia reports that Edelblut has 7 children who were homeschooled. He’s a businessman with no experience in education. He was a theology major while at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.
Paul Weyrich, founder of the religious right (along with Jerry Falwell) and founder of the Koch’s ALEC and the Heritage Foundation left the Roman Catholic Church to join a more conservative church, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.
The US Catholic Conference of Bishops identify themselves as strong advocates for school choice since the beginning.
I found an article justifying school choice/ privatization at Granite Institute’s site– apparently a rightwing org dedicated to bringing school choice and right-to-work laws to NH. GI site speaks of the threat of “demographic winter,” i.e., younger folks moving elsewhere for better opportunities. I get the connection [debatable] w/right-to-work, but school choice is clearly just ideological & piggybacked onto it, w/ the tenuous connection to ‘Live Free or Die’ as explanation.
GI site invokes the “NH Advantage” (no state or local indiv income tax nor sales nor estate tax) & exhorts NH to expand it in order to stave off demographic winter. They’re failing to connect the dots: two-thirds of all taxes paid in NH are property taxes. The citizens of New Hampshire pay a higher percentage of income in property tax than any other state. In average #’s they’re neck&neck w/NJ [NH citizen’s proptax bill on median-priced home is 6% less than NJ’s—but their median income is 8% lower, and the market value of their median home is 15% lower]. As one Concord Monitor article notes, “It is a system that makes homes unaffordable to young families because the monthly property tax bill often exceeds the mortgage payment”– there’s your culprit for demographic winter!
Expanding the pubschsys w/ a smorgasboard of publicly-funded privates is a choice that either raises RE taxes or lowers quality of ed services or both. Meanwhile the article linked here ignores the economics (and other important factors like fragmenting small communities); basically just says hey we’ve already been doing this, why not do it more. Even uses that pathetic rightwing argument, “what about all the for-profit privates we ‘publicly fund’ [not!!] to provide textbooks, heating, repairs, yadda yadda.”
Click to access NH-PrivateSchoolFundingPaper-WEB.pdf
As a result of gas and electric deregulation in the state, Ohioans pay higher rates for the services than they did before. N.H. deregulated recently. Presumably utilities now cost more which discourages home buying.
What is the state’s inheritance tax? The benefit of England’s high inheritance tax was a reduction in concentration of wealth. And, it limited land holdings by the richest 0.1%, freeing up property for ownership by a middle class..