Jeremy Margolis - Concord Monitor

Former University of New Hampshire Police Chief Steven Lee's resignation was effective April 1, 2026, according to a UNH spokesperson.

The newest version of the open enrollment bill says local taxpayers wouldn't have to pay another school district to educate leaving students; instead, the student's state adequacy grant would leave the district with them.

Steven Lee, 50, was arrested in the early morning hours of Jan. 22 after an officer spotted his SUV swerving and nearly colliding with an 18-wheeler on Market Street in Portsmouth.

As Gov. Kelly Ayotte tasks the New Hampshire Department of Education with examining the factors driving successful literacy education at the highest-performing schools, the Concord Monitor’s analysis could offer some hints as to what the department will find.

Under the bill, families would no longer need to notify their child’s school district, public school or the Department of Education upon commencing a home education program, unless they intend to continue using public school resources.

In a statement in response, state Rep. Kristin Noble wrote that “it’s funny to watch the Democrats feign outrage when I thought they’d be supportive of managing their own schools, with libraries full of porn, biological males in girls sports and bathrooms and as much DEI curriculum as their hearts desire.”

The New Hampshire Attorney General’s office has spent at least $1.5 million defending against a pair of school funding lawsuits that reached the state Supreme Court last year, according to a review of public records.

The students say the university has allowed the companies to deploy “surreptitious online tracking tools” on its student portal to gather the information, in violation of federal privacy laws.

The new chair, Sen. Suzanne Prentiss of Lebanon, a Democrat, said she plans to look into the program’s effect on public education funding and how families become eligible for an additional special education stipend.

A Penacook representative to the Merrimack Valley School Board said she was troubled by a high school committee’s decision to remove the "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" from the required curriculum in four tenth-grade English classes in response to a parent’s objection.