If proposed enhanced plan passes, already squeezed homeowners will be left holding the bag

FUNDING EDUCATION

If you own property in New Hampshire, you could be in for sticker shock as New Hampshire Republicans are doubling down on their costly, risky school voucher agenda.

If their latest proposal passes and you have schoolage children, you will face an untenable situation — stick with your community’s neighborhood public school with the teachers and paraeducators you know and trust but would be grossly defunded, or use a property taxpayerfunded voucher (no matter how rich you are) for a private school or educational program that won’t have to answer for how it spends the money. Either way, already-high property taxes will go through the roof. This scheme isn’t an extremist pipe dream; it could actually become reality.

Last summer, over the objections of parents and community members who testified more than 6-1 against the bill, Republicans rammed through the state voucher, the highly controversial school voucher program that pays parents for educational costs at any private or religious school or for homeschooling with little to no accountability for how the money is spent. Not only did the state underfund the program by 5,000 percent in its first year, but most of the funds, incredibly, went to families whose children were already enrolled in private school or being homeschooled.

So what do lawmakers want to do now? Make a bad situation worse and further raise your property taxes to pay for yet another unaccountable voucher program, this time taking the local property tax dollars that are already being used to fund your neighborhood public school.

Under a new voucher bill, which had no public hearings and comes up for a full House vote in early January, a second new voucher program would be established, paid for with your local property taxes. If a town chooses to use the new program, thousands of dollars would leave the school system for each child who taps into the local program.

For instance, $11,462 would leave Newfields for each student, $10,787 in Rumney, $4,871 in Conway and $8,870 in Deerfield. A town could vote to use locally funded vouchers on top of state vouchers, devastating funding for neighborhood public schools.

School districts would be left struggling to cover costs and provide any semblance of a well-rounded education. We’d see massive cuts to music, art, learning assistance, libraries, transportation and sports, with fewer teachers and overcrowded classes. It’s not a stretch to say that some schools would have to close for lack of funding. Any way you look at it, property taxes would skyrocket.

Neither voucher program provides a modicum of financial or academic accountability. It’s a take-the-moneyand-run scheme that favors the provider, not the student.

Outside contractors would take 10 percent for “administrative costs” for each child’s voucher. That’s 10 percent less for students’ education. And the contractor would act as the program’s gatekeeper, meaning the program has its own fox watching the henhouse.

Adding insult to injury, this new voucher program has no limit on parental income. So a wealthy family could save their money and give their child a free private school education, courtesy of their town’s homeowners. That takes some nerve.

Another serious problem: When local property taxes are diverted for vouchers, less goes to fund essential local services like roads and parks and, of course, neighborhood public schools.

Because of a lack of accountability for the local vouchers, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that kids will get the quality of education they need. Privateers will be counting their money and never having to worry about anyone looking over their shoulder to check the quality of education they’re providing or how they’re spending the hundreds of thousands they receive. If students are studying world history, there’s no provision preventing a family from using the voucher money to go to Epcot. Likewise, there’s nothing preventing a student from buying a snowmobile under the guise that it’s for physical education.

These voucher schemes are fiscally irresponsible, educational malpractice and an attack on our neighborhood public schools and the wider school communities.

It’s the ghost of former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos coming back to bite the Granite State, starve public schools, kick them to the curb and turn over public taxpayer dollars to unaccountable privateers.

We can do better for our students and taxpayers. In addition to the misguided ideology that private is better than public, New Hampshire’s share of funding for public education is already the lowest in the country, requiring property taxes to beef up the state’s share. If this latest local voucher program passes, already-squeezed homeowners will be left holding the bag.

Let’s stop robbing property taxpayers and invest our state and local dollars in a high-quality, well-rounded public school education that allows every child to thrive and ensures a strong future for New Hampshire.

Deb Howes is president of AFT-New Hampshire.