New Hampshire

Seacoast schools fight NH open enrollment, say it would create chaos

Published

2 months ago

February 10, 2026

Seacoast schools fight NH open enrollment, say it would create chaos

Fifty-plus New Hampshire public school superintendents and hundreds more school board members are opposing a fast-moving legislative effort to enact universal open enrollment throughout the state.

The bill, if it becomes law, would allow students to attend public school in any New Hampshire community, no matter where they reside. If a Somersworth student, for example, chooses to attend school in Portsmouth, Somersworth would have to send the money it spends per student to Portsmouth, too.

Funding, budgeting and staffing concerns are cited by the coalition of school leaders in an open letter sent to Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte and state lawmakers.

Christine Boston, superintendent of the Dover school district, pointed out that New Hampshire is ranked last in the nation in state public education funding per pupil, and this bill adds to dire funding issues.

“If it’s not the final blow, it’s a major kick when we’re down,” Boston said. “I don’t know if it’s the final blow because I don’t know how many parents can and will avail themselves to this (sending students to other towns), but it definitely does not put us in a position to budget and provide equal access to all kids.”

Boston is joined by numerous greater Seacoast superintendents in signing the open letter, including John Shea (Somersworth), Lois Costa (Hampton), Christopher Andriski (Exeter area/SAU 16), Robert Shaps (Oyster River), Meredith Nadeau (Winnacunnet/SAU 21) and Zachary McLaughlin (Portsmouth). Many School Board officials in these communities and more signed the letter, too, as did six Rochester School Board members, including chair Matt Pappas.

The letter calls for further analysis of open enrollment.

“Collectively, these gaps shift operational risk, legal exposure, and political accountability onto local boards and SAUs, forcing districts to absorb consequences they did not design and cannot control. Proceeding without resolving these questions places districts in an untenable position by design and puts students at risk,” the letter states.

Boston said it’s possible Dover schools could receive more students at Dover High School and the district’s Regional Career Technical Center if the bill becomes law, resulting in increased tuition revenue. But that’s only a possibility, and her concerns far outweigh that potential.

“It’s not tuition or revenue that we can count on because there are no guardrails on enrollment timelines or length of enrollment to any of the legislation that I have personally seen,” Boston said. “It really appears to let kids move back and forth at will.”

Without a public hearing, universal open enrollment was approved by Republican members of the New Hampshire Senate in late January, setting up a House vote soon on the amendment to House Bill 751. Because the proposal was added as a floor amendment to an unrelated bill, it advanced without a public hearing in a state Senate committee, drawing criticism from Democrats and many school leaders.

What does the public school universal open enrollment proposal say?

Each New Hampshire public school district would be required to determine the “capacity” to take in new students at each grade level at every school in its system.

“Each school district in the state shall report annually to the state commissioner of education the number of transfer applications, acceptances, denials and the reason for each denial,” HB 751 states. “The department of education shall publish the data annually on its web site and provide reports to the senate and house education committees, and the state board of education.”

The bill calls for sending school districts to pay the school district receiving the student between 80% and 100% of the sending district’s average cost per pupil, as determined by the New Hampshire Department of Education. In addition, the sending district would need to pay special education expenses, though no guidelines for those additional costs are included.

Parents or guardians of the transferring student would make up any difference in cost between the sending and receiving districts average costs per pupil. That difference would be paid as tuition to the receiving district.

“Sending districts may pay less than 100 percent of the sending district’s average cost per pupil provided that the sending district demonstrates the need for a lower tuition rate relative to fixed costs,” the bill adds. “If the transferring student’s resident district average cost per pupil is less than the receiving district’s average cost per pupil, such difference shall be charged as tuition and paid by the pupil’s parents or guardians to the receiving district prior to the start of each semester.”

Critics have opposed the bill’s language about tuition costs, arguing local taxpayer dollars would be sent out of their home district to support other public schools. Proponents say it supports parental choice in public schooling.

State Sen. Tim Lang says students would not ‘flee’ hometown schools

State Sen. Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton, who presented the amendment last month, said he believes universal open enrollment would do little to shift the current makeup of New Hampshire’s public schools. In an interview, Lang stated maybe “1% to 2%” of existing New Hampshire students would move to a different public school district.

He called it a “flawed argument” to say “people would flee” their hometown schools.

“This bill is balanced to be able to take in students to make up for losses and allow for parents and children to get the best education,” Lang said.

Lang and Timothy Broadrick, superintendent of the Alton, Barnstead and Prospect Mountain Schools, wrote a joint letter in support of expanding open enrollment throughout the state.

Prospect Mountain High School became an open enrollment institution in 2023 and has since accepted 62 out-of-district after opting into the state’s existing policy.

Lang and Broadrick emphasized the decision on how many non-resident students to potentially accept lies with local district school boards.

“The program also offers opportunities for school districts,” Lang and Broadrick wrote. “This is a chance for public schools to stand out, to tell success stories about public programs, and to be more responsive to families’ needs. One district might concentrate on STEM and become a magnet for students who want to excel in math and science. Another could invest in arts programs, drawing talented students from the surrounding area. Every child is unique, and each school can’t offer everything. Expanding options across ZIP codes lets the public school system meet more students’ needs, even when they don’t live in the same district. Our focus should be on students.”

SAU 16 in Exeter area asks voters to accept 0 students

According to Lang, a public school district could set its capacity for new students at zero.

In SAU 16, the Exeter Regional Cooperative School District, school officials are attempting to do exactly that, recommending voters approve a warrant article in March.

Article 3 on the district’s school warrant asks whether voters approve admitting zero non-resident students into the district’s middle and high schools, in addition to not allowing any students to leave SAU 16 for other schools.

Andriski, Exeter’s superintendent, says some out-of-district students may want to come to Exeter for its Division I athletics programs, but SAU 16 is considering its own budgeting processes, and the impact open enrollment may have on smaller school systems.

“Our local residents are being asked to do more with less, and I’m not sure that that can be sustainable for a long time,” he said.

NH public education funding falls far short of judge’s ruling

An August report from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute found the state ranks last in the United States for public school education funding. In fiscal year 2024, per the institute, New Hampshire allocated $4,629 per full-time student, compared to the national average of $11,683 per student.

State Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, reports state public education funding has dipped further to roughly $4,100 per pupil. Last year, in response to a lawsuit challenging the state’s public education funding, Rockingham County Superior Court Judge David Ruoff ruled that the “conservative minimum threshold amount” the state should pay per pupil is $7,356.

Altschiller criticized the open enrollment proposal, saying educators and school staff will be burdened, administrators will experience budgeting woes and local taxpayers will be asked to foot the bill.

“This is setting up our public school system to be starved and failed,” she said.

Altschiller expects a House vote on open enrollment before the end of February.

A Democrat-backed bill in the House proposes a commission to study open enrollment, though the legislation has been referred to the House’s Education Policy and Administration Committee.

Somersworth superintendent says bill ‘fundamentally doesn’t make sense’

Shea, superintendent of the Somersworth school district, said he supports parental choice in education. But he is an outspoken critic of HB 751.

He is concerned the bill is moving fast toward passage in the Republican-majority House. If it becomes law, Shea said, the state must increase public education funding.

“There’s no getting around the fact that you’re asking the neighbors of the kids who opt out of the school district to pay more taxes so the kids can go to a different school. It just fundamentally doesn’t make sense,” Shea said.

Shea recently wrote an opinion column stating the bill could be the “knockout punch” and “death knell” for public education in the Granite State.

Shea is concerned smaller communities with a lower value tax base would lose students to property-rich communities, and would not attract students to make up for those losses. Wealthier families who can find a way to get their kids to another town could jump ship and seek out a new school district for a more intensive curriculum, athletics or arts programs.

Shea worries about those left behind in sending districts that don’t have the funds to invest more into their staffing, programming and facilities.

“People need to understand that we’re sinking the ship without regard to who is still left on it when it goes down,” Shea said. “That is the part I think people are missing.”

Dover, Portsmouth superintendents question open enrollment proposal

Some local superintendents are raising questions about how universal open enrollment would affect long-term tuition agreements with other school districts.

Students from Barrington and Nottingham attend Dover High School under district tuition agreements. Should all the existing students from the two neighboring towns remain at Dover High School, but choose to do so under open enrollment, the absence of the tuition agreements would equal a roughly $500,000 loss for SAU 11, according to Boston. If all the Barrington and Nottingham students were to attend other high schools and leave Dover, Boston estimated a combined $5 million loss.

“I don’t want to represent that they all would leave. I don’t think that’s the case at all,” she stated. “It’s really all the unknowns that worry me. We could be sending Dover taxpayer funding to a completely different district.”

The Portsmouth school district has a similar agreement with SAU 50, for students from Greenland, New Castle, Newington and Rye to attend Portsmouth High School.

That tuition agreement has been in place for decades, noted Portsmouth Superintendent Zach McLaughlin.

“This shared experience has shaped what it means to be a Clipper and what Portsmouth High School represents as a regional institution,” McLaughlin wrote in an email. “I worry about what would happen to the cultural fabric of our greater community if an agreement that all of these towns deliberately entered into in the 1970s were effectively washed away without careful thought or planning.

“In the current moment, it is not even clear whether that would occur. The proposed legislation does not clearly explain how existing (tuition) agreements would interact with statewide open enrollment, which creates uncertainty not only for Portsmouth, but also for SAU 50 itself,” McLaughlin added.

Boston largely opposes universal open enrollment with a straightforward outlook on the proposal: “New Hampshire is a state of local control and Dover taxpayer money should fund Dover public schools.”

“Even though Portsmouth might appear, on the surface, to be better positioned than some districts, we believe the current proposals would be destabilizing for Portsmouth, disruptive to regional collaboration, and ultimately harmful to public education across New Hampshire if implemented without further study and refinement,” McLaughlin said.

Public education advocates cite concerns for taxpayers, educators

The New Hampshire School Boards Association and the New Hampshire School Administrators Association are also opposing the universal open enrollment proposal.

Mark MacLean, executive director of the NHSAA, said it “usurps local decision-making” and has not “fully considered the ramifications and dynamics of changing enrollment statistics.”

Despite its objection to the proposed open enrollment system, the organization wants to broaden student choice in New Hampshire public education.

“Through the NHSAA’s resolutions, we strongly support local governance and locally determined enrollment decisions,” MacLean said. “We believe that strong public schools create strong communities. A cornerstone of the ‘New Hampshire advantage’ is the authority of local citizens to determine how their tax dollars are invested and to hold their towns and districts accountable to those decisions. To ensure these new opportunities succeed without compromising the stability of our districts and communities, any enrollment policy must respect local governance and be thoughtfully developed through a transparent process that empowers communities to lead the way.”

Barrett Christina, executive director of the NHSBA, noted this time of year is budget season for many school districts. Budgeting without certainty is going to “create chaos” for local school boards and taxpayers, Christina stated.

“Voters and local taxpayers would not be able to determine how their money is being spent,” Christina said.

Megan Tuttle, president of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association, the state’s biggest teachers union, said open enrollment would be harmful to education in the state.

“Mandatory open enrollment will fundamentally destabilize our public school system by severing the link between a community and its public schools,” Tuttle said in a statement. “While a student’s zip code should never determine the quality of their education, this proposal completely ignores the real problem — New Hampshire’s overreliance on local property taxes to fund public schools. Until that structural inequity is addressed, open enrollment is not a solution — it’s a diversion. … Schools already struggling to meet student needs would lose funding, staffing, and programming as dollars are redirected to subsidize out-of-district enrollment.”

What’s next for open enrollment bill

Lang expects the House could vote on the bill in a matter of days.

The House’s approval could then move it to Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s desk for signature. A spokesperson for Ayotte did not respond to a request for comment on whether the governor supports the bill.

Editor’s note: State Sen. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, is the wife of Howard Altschiller, Seacoast Media Group’s executive editor.

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New Hampshire

In rare move, House votes for review of lawmaker’s ‘hate-filled’ social media posts

Published

3 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

In rare move, House votes for review of lawmaker’s ‘hate-filled’ social media posts

In a rare move, the New Hampshire House voted to initiate possible disciplinary proceedings against Republican Rep. Travis Corcoran Thursday over a series of inflammatory social media posts. The decision comes as partisan tensions and caustic behavior continue to flare in the House.

At issue for Corcoran — who maintains a busy schedule of social media traffic — are recent posts on X, in which he called for a “final solution” in response to a karaoke night invitation from a Jewish lawmaker, and another in which he talked of deporting a fellow lawmaker who was born in the Philippines: “She has to go back,” he wrote.

House Speaker Sherman Packard had condemned the posts earlier, and on Thursday the full House moved to send Corcoran’s case to the Legislative Administration Committee for what Packard described as “review and report.”

Read more: Why it’s so hard to police bad behavior in the NH House

The referral came at the request of the House’s top Democrat, Rep. Alexis Simpson of Exeter. Such referrals are rare: The Legislative Administration Committee hasn’t been asked to consider sanctioning a lawmaker since 2017.

But Corcoran’s online conduct, which often includes inflammatory and offensive posts, has been under scrutiny in Concord for some time. A letter Packard sent Corcoran this week indicated his office has been receiving complaints about his social media activity for more than a year.

“Your verified public writings are negative, targeted and purposely written to leave a hate-filled interpretation,” Packard wrote Corcoran. “In sum, your statements are disrespectful, inappropriate and unworthy of the dignity of our state legislature.”

The “Letter of Caution” Packard sent Corcoran followed Corcoran’s failure to respond to voice messages left by a bipartisan panel of lawmakers tasked with reviewing public complaints about members of the Legislature.

Records from the House clerk’s office show the group, formed in 2019, has sent nine caution letters to lawmakers over the years, taking up a range of conduct issues.

They include rude behavior by a lawmaker at a state DMV office; another lawmaker telling members of the public to ‘shut up;’ and another being dismissive to people weighing in on legislation who are not from New Hampshire.

But several of the letters involve lawmakers’ behavior on social media. One admonished a lawmaker for posting the address of an antagonistic voter on Facebook. Another letter tells a longtime lawmaker that a bipartisan review panel “was unanimously disappointed that you defended your use of the hashtag ‘NHGOPTaliban.’ ”

According to several advisory group’s members, Corcoran has apologized for being non-responsive to the group’s phone calls, but on Thursday he seemed disinclined to back away from his social media posts, or explain himself.

“My only comment for NPR, is that NPR is regime media, the end,” Corcoran said when asked by an NHPR reporter about the House’s action Thursday.

Precedent would suggest Corcoran’s political future will likely fall to voters in his hometown of Weare to decide, as the Legislature rarely censures its members. Lawmakers facing scandal sometimes choose to resign, but the last time the House voted to expel a member was in 1913 and involved bribery allegations. The House’s top Republican says Corcoran’s case boils down to speech rights.

“We’ll see what happens,” said House Majority Leader Jason Osborne. “I think at the end of the day, everyone realizes that members have free speech, and you might not like all of it.”

Behind the headlines you read on our website, there’s a dedicated team of journalists working hard to bring you local news you can trust. On any given day, that can look like:

• Reporters hustling to track down sources, get the facts and hold powerful officials accountable
• Producers coordinating interviews with people who offer perspectives that go beyond soundbites
• Editors carefully vetting our stories to make sure they’re accurate, fair and easy to follow

I believe that journalists, when we do our jobs well, can play a crucial role in connecting people and making communities stronger. But we can’t do this work without you.

Your donations, in any amount, can help keep independent journalism vibrant in New Hampshire — and accessible to everyone, no paywall required.

Sincerely,
Dan Barrick
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New Hampshire

Female Ride Day to stop in Rochester, end in North Hampton

Published

15 hours ago

April 9, 2026

Press Room

Female Ride Day to stop in Rochester, end in North Hampton

Staff reports
| Foster’s Daily Democrat

Motorcycle enthusiasts from across New England will hit the roads Saturday, May 2 for a charitable ride supporting women in recovery.

The International Female Ride Day event is organized by the New England Motorcycle Group, according to a community announcement. The ride will start at Big Moose Harley-Davidson in Gorham, Maine, and will end at Seacoast Harley-Davidson in North Hampton, NH, with a stop at Harley-Davidson of Rochester along the way.

The event is open to all riders, regardless of gender, experience level or type of motorcycle, according to the announcement.

Proceeds from the ride will benefit Dismas Home of New Hampshire, a residential treatment and re-entry program for women recovering from incarceration. The organization, based in Manchester, is currently constructing a new, larger campus in Rochester, which is expected to open this summer and serve an additional 20 women at a time.

Registration

Registration for the ride is $45 per person, which includes breakfast, a mid-ride snack, a cookout and one raffle ticket. A $60 option is also available, which includes a commemorative International Female Ride Day 2026 Challenge Coin. Participants are encouraged to register online in advance and arrive with a full tank of gas. Registration can be completed at dismashomenh.org.

Schedule

On-site registration and check-in will take place from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., with the group ride beginning at 10 a.m. The midpoint stop at Harley-Davidson of Rochester will offer riders a chance to snack, socialize and refuel. The ride will conclude around 2 p.m. with a community cookout, remarks and an opportunity to hear from Dismas Home residents about their journeys. Raffle winners and 50/50 prizes will also be announced.

Last year, more than 150 riders participated in the event.

This story was created by Kimberly Green, KGreen@usatodayco.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.

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New Hampshire

New Hampshire Bettors Wagered More Than $25M During March Madness, Lottery Says

Published

1 day ago

April 8, 2026

Press Room

New Hampshire Bettors Wagered More Than M During March Madness, Lottery Says

CONCORD, NH — New Hampshire Lottery players made more than 550,000 wagers totaling more than $25 million on this year’s men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, according to the lottery.

The tournaments began with conference play and continued through the NCAA brackets. Michigan won the men’s tournament, while UCLA won the women’s title.

“March is a special time of year for basketball, there’s nothing like these tournaments,” Charlie McIntyre, the executive director of the New Hampshire Lottery, said. “Dozens of games at all times of the day to kick off, buzzer beaters that send home tournament favorites, Cinderella runs from unassuming small schools, all culminating in two teams on the top of the mountain — and hopefully lots of wagers won by our New Hampshire players. With so many ways and opportunities to bet, March Madness is our largest sustained sports betting driver every single year. While I love watching as many games as I can, the best part of the tournaments is seeing all these wagers come in to support New Hampshire public education.”

Before the tournaments began, New Hampshire players heavily wagered on UConn, Florida, and Duke to win the men’s championship, according to the lottery. On the women’s side, the pre-tournament favorites among New Hampshire bettors were UConn, South Carolina, and UCLA.

The lottery said only one pre-tournament favorite for New Hampshire bettors won a title this year: the UCLA women. UCLA defeated South Carolina in a game oddsmakers had expected to be close. On the men’s side, Michigan won its first national title since 1989 in a championship game against UConn, which the lottery identified as New Hampshire’s betting favorite.

Sports betting has generated significant revenue for education since it launched in the state on Dec. 30, 2019, according to the lottery. Granite Staters have wagered nearly $4.5 billion, generating $187 million to support New Hampshire public education.

The lottery said New Hampshire residents can place wagers through the DraftKings Sportsbook app, the exclusive digital sportsbook operator in the state. The agency also said DraftKings offers responsible gaming tools, including My Stat Sheet, limit setting, cooling-off periods, and self-exclusion.

The New Hampshire Lottery said it has contributed more than $3 billion to education in the state since 1964. The commission, based in Concord, manages lottery operations in New Hampshire and regulates charitable gaming, simulcast racing, fantasy sports, and sports wagering.

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