In a reversal for Republican legislative leaders, the New Hampshire House has rejected — at least for now — creating universal public school open-enrollment. The Republican push to allow any student in public school to transfer to any other public school district fell 16 votes short Thursday.
This was the latest version of an open enrollment bill that has evolved over this year's State House session and would allow a district receiving a new student to collect the state dollars for that student’s education.
Twenty-one GOP lawmakers joined Democrats to oppose the bill, which Republicans leaders argued would boost opportunities for students to thrive and schools to innovate.
“This is not about dismantling public education; it is about strengthening it,” said Bedford Rep. Kristin Noble, who leads the House Education Policy Committee and spoke in favor of the bill. “It is about a student who would be safer or more supported in another school."
Critics, meanwhile, called the open enrollment bill ill-conceived and destined to leave local school districts in a financial hole.
“Property taxes will rise, and students in property poor communities will take the biggest hit,” said Rep. Hope Damon, a Democrat from Croydon.
Read more: Open enrollment: school choice or a 'wrecking ball' for NH? Here's what you need to know.
Under the proposal, the state would pay receiving school districts up to $9,000 per pupil, but the student's home district would pay costs associated with special education, including transportation. The new district would meanwhile have to pay for accommodations required under a different disability protection, known as Section 504.
This approach was adopted after an earlier version of the bill, which said a student’s home district would have to send both local tax dollars and state aid to the student’s new district, was scuttled due to pushback from school district leaders and taxpayers.
Critics of the latest bill said the new approach would still carry financial uncertainty, while inviting fresh legal risk.
“Disputes over placement decisions and services of special education and 504 students could end up in due-process hearings and the courtroom. This bill opens the door to discrimination complaints and federal oversight,” said Democratic Rep. Muriel Hall of Bow.
School district leaders have also raised concerns about how open enrollment could disrupt planning, due to less predictable enrollment numbers. And while the bill allowed districts to limit, and even prohibit, students from outside the district from enrolling if they didn’t have capacity, the bill would not allow them to bar current students from leaving the district to enroll in schools in other districts.
John Shea, the superintendent of the Somersworth School District, told NHPR that the vote to reject the latest bill was the “best news out of the State House in quite some time.”
“Parent choice is certainly a good thing, but it has to be grounded in a fair funding system,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s all just a big mess train wreck in the making. And horrible for our kids — short term and longer term. I do think that our legislators now understand this.”
In March, more than 100 communities voted to limit the numbers of students who could enroll in or leave their districts. Without a law addressing open enrollment, those communities’ policies would stand.
But this debate, regardless of Thursday’s action in the House, may not be over.
A separate bill dealing with open enrollment remains alive as part of a Committee of Conference. House and Senate leaders may use that committee to take another run at passing open enrollment this year — perhaps in the very form the House rejected Thursday.
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