The New Hampshire House decided to hold off for a year with the universal voucher bill, that would funnel public money to religious schools, home schoolers, and anyone else who wants public money. However, the State Senate is barreling ahead with the same legislation.
On Thursday, February 18, the House Education Committee unanimously voted to retain HB 20, the statewide voucher bill, delaying further action until next year.
Moments later, the Senate announced a public hearing for SB 130, a nearly identical bill, on Tuesday, March 2, 2021. Both bills would create the most expansive voucher program in the country, and SB 130 would cost the state $100 million in new state spending in its first year alone.
The public fiercely opposed HB 20 during the public hearing, noting that the bill included no protections for students, less transparency and oversight of taxpayer dollars, and almost no accountability for ensuring that programs funded by taxpayer dollars would be used appropriately or effectively.
Altogether, 5,218 people signed on in opposition to the bill and 1,107 signed on in support over the course of the two-part hearing, which began on February 2 and had to continue the following week due to unprecedented turnout.
SB 130 is nearly identical to the original HB 20, and would give families between $3,700 and $8,400 per student per year in taxpayer-funded “Education Freedom Accounts,” or vouchers, to pay for private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, computers, and other education-related costs.
“Our communities continue to struggle under the weight of an inequitable and inadequate school funding system, but this legislature continues to pursue an agenda that will divert resources away from our public schools and communities,” said Christina Pretorius, Policy Director at Reaching Higher NH. “Granite Staters have made it clear that they would rather be talking about expanding opportunities for all of our children, offering property tax relief, and investing in our communities, instead of siphoning off state funds for private education and downshifting costs to cities and towns,” she said.
The public hearing for SB 130 will be held on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 9 AM. Members of the public can register their support or opposition, and register to testify, using this link.
HB 20: Historic Opposition and Last Minute Amendments
During a day-long executive session on Wednesday, House Education Committee members combed through a new amendment to HB 20 that attempted to address concerns that were brought up in the public hearing, but did not go far enough and in many cases, made the bill worse, according to Committee members.
The amendment included income eligibility requirements and accountability measures, but did not address broader concerns with regard to discrimination against students and famillies, the potential for fraud and misuse of funds, and the fundamental concern with diverting public tax dollars to fund private and home school programs.
The marathon executive session also revealed critical technical errors in the bill, particularly around the funding of the program. “A bill of this significance needs to be right. This Committee [is] the folks to do that, this is a good move to pause and reflect and get this done the way it should be,” said Representative Jim Allard (R-Pittsfield).
Proponents of the bill are quick to point out that this doesn’t mean the conversation around HB 20 is over. Committee members will take the rest of the year to work on the bill, and have the opportunity to re-introduce it next year.
“I think that if it’s going to be done, it’s going to be done correctly, we have to have bipartisan support and it has to be proven it has to be beneficial to everyone, to taxpayers, children, mostly for the children,” said Committee member Barbara Shaw (D-Manchester).
About the amendment
The amendment created an income cap for eligible students, stating that only families with household incomes at or less than 375% of the Federal Poverty Limit would be eligible. For a family of four, that number would be about $99,375, which is higher than the median household income in New Hampshire.
Even with the change, HB 20 would be the most expansive voucher program in the country, and could cost New Hampshire roughly $50 million in new state spending its first year alone.
The Granite State is known to be parsimonious in spending on schools but the sky’s the limit when it comes to vouchers for religious schools and home schoolers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m guessing DeVos marching orders … not to mention money … behind it all
It all comes down to whether you believe the government needs to serve the public good or whether the individual is responsible for supporting his own needs. The flip side of this equation is what the individual owes to society. If we are all acting only in our own self interest, what does it take for us to consider/realize how our own welfare is affected by the inaction of society as a whole? When everything is privatized, then all relationships become transactional. That may work okay for the one horse town, so to speak, (although history might tell us otherwise), but the more people who have business to conduct, the more the necessity for regulation/ governance becomes obvious. The system of governance we choose affects the lives of everyone. Do we let the rich and/or powerful direct that relationship, or do we choose to care for society as a whole? Do we choose self interest and/or altruism as a model for the structure of society? Under what common understandings are we more likely to have not only a free society but a just one as well? Maybe someone else can figure out what the heck I am attempting to say.
If it’s any consolation, what you have written makes sense to me.
Thanks, Duane. It is.
It makes sense to me too. I see it as individualism versus collectivism. With individualism the self is more important than the others, but with collectivism the belief is we all have to work together. It is also the difference between competition and collaboration.
It has nothing to do with individual freedom — unless one means the freedom of one individual (in particular, the quasi-legal fiction of a “corporate person”) to amass by any means necessary such an overwhelming imbalance power as to negate the freedom of every other individual.
The fiction of corporate personhood sooner or later turns every so-called libertarian into a fascist.
In sum, it’s corporatism (= fascism) versus democracy.
Jon Awbrey The problem is that, the more freedom(s) we have, the more questions about human development (intellectual, moral, social, political, spiritual) come starkly into view. In a democracy, that development automatically comes into tension with those freedoms.
In other words, a democracy won’t last if a good number of “the people” are stupid, ignorant, immoral, anti-social, bully-authoritarian-fascist, or religious zealots. CBK
Below is a related article from WAPO/opinion where the author gives a brief but informative background . . . with maps showing Blue to Red change over decades . . . of how the Republican Party has sought and, in many cases, won a takeover of STATE legislatures. In case it’s “walled,” I have added a couple of snips below the link, but in reading the full article, I could recognize the remote sound of organizations like ALEC in the narrative. CBK
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/18/republicans-now-enjoy-unmatched-power-states-it-was-40-year-effort/?arc404=true
“Republicans now enjoy unmatched power in the states. It was a 40-year effort.”
. . . “According to former GOP chairman Haley Barbour, Republicans saw longtime Democratic majorities as reversible but needed time to build local political strength to become competitive. ‘We tried very hard as a principal goal to have self-reliant state parties,’ he recalled. The Republican brand had improved under Reagan — especially in the South — but national popularity wasn’t enough to pry statehouses away from Democrats. Republicans slowly and steadily built up fundraising and organizing capacities in Democratic strongholds — and then waited for those gains to pay off.”
“That first shift came in 1994, when Newt Gingrich, who would become House speaker, turned a round of congressional elections into a national referendum on President Bill Clinton and the Democrats.
“Gingrich’s strategy was two-pronged: He attacked Clinton for moving too far left on issues such as taxes and health care, often using ads to tie conservative Democrats to the sitting president. At the same time, he rolled out a ‘Contract with America’ that included a balanced-budget amendment, a tax credit for parents, cuts to welfare programs (including to minor mothers) and funds piped from social spending to prison construction and increased law enforcement.” . . .
“After the 1994 election, the GOP held both chambers in 19 states. Republicans solidified their hold on Western states such as Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Arizona and Utah. They flipped the lower chambers in North and South Carolina — an early incursion into a region that they’d fully convert over the next two decades. And they won in the industrial Midwest — setting them up to stay competitive there for the next 16 years.” MORE . . .
Curious to find out what triggered the Koch brothers to launch their half a century war against the U.S. Consitution and the federal government, I found this.
“For Koch, it is all about a government that has clearly gone way beyond his minimalist ideal. “He sees everything through the lens of what makes you freer, and the First Amendment,” says Holden, his general counsel, and he has a particular reverence for the Constitution’s Fifth and Sixth Amendments, which bar the illegal seizure of property and guarantee due process.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/charles-koch-overcriminalization-115512/
And this:
“With assets of more than $80 billion, the Koch brothers, who control Koch Industries, are together richer than Bill Gates. As a recent Rolling Stone expos (“Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire”) by investigative reporter Tim Dickinson details, the Kochs made that money largely by polluting the Earth and heating up the climate, with massive oil and gas holdings. And, through their network of far-right foundations and front groups, they lobby for policies and fund politicians in line with their free market, fossil fuel interests. …
In its materials for teachers and students, the BRI cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home its libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit. As one lesson insists: “The Founders considered industry and property rights critical to the happiness of society.” This message—that individual owners of property are the source of social good, their property sacred, and government the source of danger—is woven through the entire Koch curriculum, sometimes with sophistication, other times in caricature. For example, in one “click-and-explore” activity at the BRI website, showing the many ways that government can oppress individuals—”Life Without the Bill of Rights?”—a cartoon character pops up with a dialogue bubble reading “The gov’t took my home!” An illustration shows his home demolished. …
“But what makes the Koch brothers’ focus on public schools so profoundly cynical is that the Koch brothers hate public schools. As Resmovits and Wilkie point out, this can be traced back as far as 1980, when David Koch was the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee. The Libertarian platform that year was unambiguous: “We advocate the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
Lloyd Thanks for this brief but well-focused narrative on the Koch Brothers. Two issues that surfaced for me in the reading:
(1) The Koch’s built their wealth in a time when their products’ capacity for environmental destruction went largely unnoticed and, when WE did start to recognize it, the insights came slowly and were fought-off tooth and nail . . . and where that notice (from my understanding) only started to grow exponentially circa 1962 with the publication of Rachel Parson’s book Silent Spring (though its roots go way back to muckraker writers like Upton Sinclaire who wrote “The Jungle” circa 1906).
The point: by the time environmentalism got going, like Big Oil or Tobacco, the Koch’s were already heavily invested, and WE (as in “the world*) were heavily dependent in their products. Needless to say, neither group is “hep” on unravelling that hairball of interdependence, even in the name of some sort of spiritual, ethical, or political conversion. And . . .
(2) From your quote: “Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals.”
This is much easier to critique: “indoctrination of children” is code for “children’s
minds will be freed-up to think (don’t miss the irony here) clearly and even to criticize the powers and states that BE . . . oh no! we cannot have that!” Children might end up giving a bad name to environmental destruction and the poisoning of OTHER human.
It’s Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM on display in our time . . . again. CBK
CORRECTION: It was RACHEL CARSON’s book, Silent Spring, not Parsons. . . . CBK
Simply insert “private schools” for “government” in para (2), Koch Bros will approve. It’s just that the fee choice being interfered with is acceptable since nothing but the right choice can be made.
if government schools ‘lead to indoctrination,’ what do private schools do…
Re: “We advocate the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”
Randish To English Translation —
“Universal Free Public Schools interfere with the indoctrination of children by the Korporate Kapitalist Kult.”
“vouchers for religious schools…” Two goals are lower taxes and labor’s impoverishment.
Intercept reports that Amazon has hired a Koch-backed anti-union consultant to fight union organizing at an Alabama warehouse. Russell Brown is reportedly paid $3200 a day. One of his former clients is St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center Hospitals. There may be more than one institution with that exact same moniker but, the one that comes up in an internet search is on Holy Cross Pwy. in Mishaka, Indiana. It is the 4th largest Catholic health system in the U.S.
Indicators of the some of the costs of legitimizing religion in the U.S. can be found in the research of Prof. Andrew Whitehead of Indiana University. His c.v. is available on line and provides links. One paper is titled, “Belief in a masculine god predicts support for harsh criminal punishment and militarism”. In Whitehead’s 9-21-2020 article (Religion Dispatch, “Nostalgia Voters? Not Really…” he concludes that Trump voters, “long for the days in which white, masculine, Christian, native born, culturally conservative, middle class Americans were the unquestioned center of culture. Trump restored them to that place of privilege.”