.png)
Governor’s Voucher Plan to Cost Granite State $100M Over Next 11 Years
Concord, N.H. - Governor Chris Sununu will seek to defund New Hampshire’s public schools if he’s re-elected this fall, costing the Granite State $100M over the next 11 years. During the past legislative session, Sununu made every effort to pass the school voucher bill SB 193, modeled after the voucher agenda of President Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Sununu’s plan will transfer taxpayer dollars away from public schools to fund unregulated private, religious, and parochial schools, downshifting the costs to towns and raising property taxes.
Despite the financial burden this plan poses to Granite Staters, Sununu has already promised that this would be, once again, a top priority as governor if re-elected.
“Chris Sununu’s radical education plan has no place here in New Hampshire,” said NHDP Chair Ray Buckley. “It really comes as no surprise that Sununu is focused on pursuing his out-of-touch, corporate-sponsored agenda, making clear he doesn’t care about the thousands of students, teachers, school board members, and even Republicans who opposed this legislation. New Hampshire is lucky Sununu was so ineffective that he wasn’t able to pass a bill with Republican majorities in the State House and State Senate. That’s why we’re so confident in Molly Kelly, a proven leader who is committed to strengthening public schools instead of tearing them down.”
Republicans joined Democrats to defeat the bill on three separate occasions. According to an analysis by Reaching Higher NH, under this amendment:
School districts could lose between $2.4 million and $6.3 million in state aid in year 1;
The state could incur new costs of between $900,000 and $2.4 million in year 1;
Private scholarship organizations could receive between $110,000 and $290,000 of public dollars in year 1; and,
Financial impacts of the new amendment would be challenging for some of NH’s largest and least affluent districts, like Manchester, Nashua, Rochester, Laconia, and Claremont; each could lose between $95,000 and $850,000, annually if the maximum number of students allowable participate.
###