Lawmakers want to audit N.H.’s new education freedom account program in 2023

Home and Senate lawmakers have handed laws requiring a efficiency audit of the training freedom account program in 2023 in a uncommon level of bipartisan settlement over a divisive new initiative.

In a unanimous voice vote Might 5, the Senate authorized Home Invoice 1135, which might require the state’s legislative price range assistant to look at how properly the Division of Training is monitoring who will get entry to this system, what the funds are spent on, and the way public faculties are reimbursed.

Handed within the state price range in 2021 and launched that fall, the training freedom account program permits income-eligible mother and father to take state funds that might ordinarily comply with their little one to public college – typically between $4,000 and $7,000 per yr – and use them for personal college or home-schooling bills.

This system, which is out there to households making as much as 300 p.c of the federal poverty degree, or $83,250 for a household of 4 in 2022, is run by a non-public nonprofit group that contracts with the state, the Kids’s Scholarship Fund.

HB 1135 would require the legislative price range assistant to overview this system’s efficiency in: figuring out whether or not dad or mum expenditures are acceptable; assessing members’ preliminary and ongoing eligibility; and discovering and reclaiming improper expenditures or funds.

The audit should look at how properly public faculties are reimbursed with this system’s “phase-out grants,” which give restricted aid to high school districts for the primary few years after a scholar leaves and takes an EFA, in response to the invoice.

The invoice additionally requires auditors to overview the demographics of the scholars utilizing this system, and evaluate their circumstances the yr earlier than and after this system launched.

Supporters of the EFA program, who embrace Gov. Chris Sununu and Division of Training Commissioner Frank Edelblut, have stated it ranges the taking part in discipline for lower-income households who will not be happy with their public college by offering state cash for various academic strategies.

However Democrats and different opponents have argued that this system improperly diverts that cash away from public faculties, and warn it might result in native college price range crunches and pressure state training funding.

HB 1135 comes after different makes an attempt by Democrats to rein in and even repeal the EFA program have been defeated by Republican Home and Senate lawmakers. However the audit invoice has moved forward with bipartisan help.

Rep. Sallie Fellows, a Holderness Democrat, argued the audit was crucial as a result of the construction of this system – a nonprofit distributing state funding and figuring out eligible households and bills – is uncommon.

“We’d like as a lot info as doable to foretell how a lot cash we must always put into the price range for this program,” she testified at a Senate listening to in April. “This can assist make sure the state funds are being correctly managed.”

The Senate-passed model of the invoice moved the efficient date from June 2023 to October 2023. The tweaked invoice is heading again to the Home this week for a ultimate vote.

New Hampshire Bulletin is a part of States Newsroom, a community of reports bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: information@newhampshirebulletin.com. Observe New Hampshire Bulletin on Fb and Twitter.