Public education and democratic governance are being dismantled in New Hampshire — deliberately, methodically, and right in front of us — by the state legislature.
This post is going to be specific. It names bills, names sponsors, and names what they’re actually doing. Because the volume is the strategy. File enough bills and most fly under the radar. By the time communities realize what happened, the damage is done.
Not this time.
I. The Money — Starving Schools by Design
Let’s start with the money, because the money is where they always start.
For over thirty years, courts have told this legislature the same thing. The Claremont decisions in 1993 and 1997. The ConVal ruling in 2023. Every single court that has looked at the question has reached the same conclusion: the state of New Hampshire is not funding public education adequately, and the constitution says the state — not your property taxes — bears that obligation.
So what did this legislature do?
Representative Rick Ladd of Haverhill introduced HB 1121, which redefines what “adequate education” even means. A judge said we’re spending about $4,200 per pupil — roughly half of what it should be. Instead of spending more, HB 1121 strips school nurses and superintendent services from the definition of adequacy. If you shrink the definition of what schools need, suddenly the funding looks less inadequate. That bill passed the House and is in the Senate right now.
Representative Bob Lynn of Windham — one of the wealthiest towns in the state — introduced HB 1815, which declares that education funding is a “shared” state-local responsibility. Translation: the legislature is trying to legislatively overrule every court decision that says the state has to pay its fair share. It’s the legal equivalent of covering your ears and shouting. Property-poor towns like Claremont, Berlin, and Franklin? They stay screwed. And the sponsor comes from a town that can make up the difference without blinking.
Then there’s HB 1300, sponsored by Representative Ross Berry of Weare. This one’s clever. It forces every school district to vote on a tax cap every two years, tied to the average CPI inflation rate. Sounds reasonable until you know that special education costs rise eight to twelve percent annually, that health insurance premiums increase six to ten percent per year, that heating oil and transportation are volatile. When your budget is capped at three percent but your costs are rising six to eight, the math only works one way. Cuts. And here’s the cruelest part — once you cut, the cap applies to the new, lower number. Each cut makes the next year harder. It’s a ratchet. It only turns one direction. And that is not an accident. That is the design.
Meanwhile, Representative Dick Ames introduced HB 1799 — the bill that would have actually required the state to fund education at the levels courts have said are constitutionally required. It was killed. 185 to 159. Every Republican on the Education Funding Committee voted against it.
And HB 366 — the one bill that even opponents of public education should have supported — would have increased state funding for school building aid. Kids across this state are learning in buildings with leaking roofs, outdated electrical systems, and ventilation from the Eisenhower administration. That bill passed the House with bipartisan support, 195 to 155. Then the Senate killed it.
Let that contrast burn into your memory. They killed school building aid. They killed court-ordered funding. But they found the votes to sign four culture war bills into law. Their priorities could not be more clear.
II. The Voucher Machine — Privatizing Profits, Socializing Costs
Vouchers are the engine that converts public education dollars into private profit.
When Education Freedom Accounts were created, supporters swore they were for low-income families. That was always the foot in the door. Senator Victoria Sullivan of Manchester sponsored SB 295, which removed the income cap entirely. Now a family earning half a million dollars a year gets the same taxpayer subsidy as a family earning thirty thousand. Governor Ayotte signed it into law. The bait-and-switch is complete.
But they didn’t stop there. Representative Bill Ohm of Nashua introduced HB 1817, which is the most brazen grift in the entire voucher playbook. Here’s how it works: a family takes their Education Freedom Account money — five thousand dollars or more in state funding — and spends it on private school. Then HB 1817 says that same family can send their kid back to the public school for classes, sports, special education services, whatever they want. And the district gets zero state funding for that student. The full cost comes out of local property taxes.
Think about what that means. A family privatizes the revenue and socializes the cost. They take the state money, spend it on private school, then hand the bill for special education — which is expensive and federally required — back to the public school district. The House Education Committee recommended this bill pass. It’s moving.
And then there’s HB 292, sponsored by Senator Tim Lang. This one is a masterpiece of cynicism. Struggling school districts — the ones courts have repeatedly said are underfunded — can borrow money from a state revolving loan fund. Sounds like help, right? Except any district that takes the loan must open itself up to universal vouchers. It’s predatory lending meets voucher expansion. It’s like offering a drowning person a concrete life preserver.
III. The Charter Endgame — Dismantling Public Schools from the Ground Up
If you want to know where all of this is heading, look at HB 1358. This bill was introduced by House Majority Leader Jason Osborne — the second most powerful Republican in the New Hampshire House. It creates a commission to study converting every single public school in the state into a charter school.
And Osborne has been honest about what it does. He said converting all schools to charters would make education funding debates “go away.” He’s right. You can’t underfund public schools if there are no public schools.
The bill also lowers the conversion threshold from a two-thirds supermajority to a simple majority and moves the vote from town meeting to the general election ballot, where it’s easier to bury. Charter schools in New Hampshire are publicly funded but privately managed. They don’t have to follow the same rules on teacher certification, curriculum, or collective bargaining. This bill would eliminate democratic local control over education, end teacher unions, and hand public money to private management organizations.
This is the quiet part said out loud. The free-state movement’s endgame isn’t reform. It’s elimination.
HB 751 — open enrollment — is the same strategy applied systemwide. Any student can attend any district, with eighty percent of per-pupil funding following them. Small rural districts lose students and money, but they still have to heat the same buildings and run the same bus routes. Meanwhile, wealthy receiving districts control capacity and can cherry-pick. The predictable result is a death spiral for rural schools. And then the legislature gets to point at the ruins and say, “See? Public schools don’t work.”
IV. Silencing Teachers — The CHARLIE Act and the Censorship Machine
Defunding schools is only half the strategy. The other half is controlling what’s taught and terrorizing the people who teach it.
HB 1792 — the CHARLIE Act. Here’s what that stands for: “Countering Hate And Revolutionary Leftist Indoctrination in Education.” It is named after Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA. This bill lets any parent sue a school district for up to ten thousand dollars and get a teacher’s license revoked for teaching about systemic racism, LGBTQ+ identities, gender fluidity, or anything deemed “identity-based ideology.”
The terms are left deliberately vague. What counts as identity-based ideology? Nobody knows. And that’s the point. The chilling effect IS the goal. Teachers will self-censor rather than risk their careers and their families’ financial security. Even the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office — not exactly a radical outfit — testified that this bill is unconstitutionally vague. The House passed it anyway. 184 to 164.
SB 434, sponsored by Senator Daryl Abbas of Salem, is the industrial-scale censorship machine. It expands the definition of restricted “materials” beyond books to include textbooks, classroom instruction, plays, artwork, displays, health curricula, visiting speakers, and any printed or visual content. A single parent complaint can restrict material for ALL students. The terms that trigger review — “harmful to minors,” “age-inappropriate,” “otherwise offensive” — are left deliberately undefined.
This is the infrastructure for organized censorship campaigns. Groups like Moms for Liberty have already built playbooks for flooding school districts with coordinated complaints. SB 434 gives them the legal machinery to make those complaints stick. A small group of motivated parents could systematically strip entire curricula. That is not parental rights. That is minority rule over public education.
And the Parental Bill of Rights — HB 10 — is already law. It’s the scaffolding that these censorship bills plug into. The legal framework for opt-outs, challenges, and notification burdens that will drown teachers in paperwork while making the profession even less attractive in a state already facing a teacher shortage.
V. The Culture War — Telling Students Who Belongs and Who Doesn’t
Three culture war bills are now law. Read that again. Three culture war bills are now law.
HB 1132 — the Pride flag ban. Schools can only display flags from an approved list: US flag, state flag, POW/MIA, military branches, and town flags. Everything else is banned. Fines up to a thousand dollars. Let’s not pretend this is about flags. This is about telling LGBTQ+ students — who already face higher rates of bullying, mental health challenges, and suicidal ideation — that the state legislature went out of its way to make sure your school cannot display a symbol of your existence and belonging. That takes effect this September.
HB 1448 bans World Economic Forum materials in schools. No school in New Hampshire was using WEF materials. This is pure conspiracy-theory legislation — red meat for the “Great Reset” crowd. It costs nothing and does nothing, except signal that this legislature would rather chase imaginary threats than fund real schools. They found time to protect your children from Klaus Schwab but not from leaking roofs.
HB 1793 — the “Protecting College Students Act” — forces every public college and university in the state to allow anyone to carry firearms on campus. No permit required. Every university president opposed it. Every faculty senate opposed it. Every student government opposed it. Every campus police chief opposed it. The legislature overrode all of them. This from the coalition that claims to champion “local control.” Local control only applies, apparently, when the locals agree with you.
And then there’s HB 1122, which would have made firearms education mandatory in every high school. Not an elective. Mandatory. Let that juxtaposition sink in: the same legislature that wants to ban teaching about systemic racism wants to require teaching every teenager how to handle a gun. It died in committee, but it tells you exactly what this legislature thinks children should and shouldn’t learn.
HB 360 prohibits schools from performing surgical procedures and prescribing drugs. Schools do not perform surgery. School nurses do not have DEA prescribing licenses. This bill bans something that is not happening and cannot happen — and the 183-to-155 partisan vote tells you it’s not about medicine. It’s about targeting trans-related healthcare fears and chilling the health services that schools can provide.
VI. Pulling Up the Ladder — Defunding the Future
HB 1774 directs the University System of New Hampshire to ensure no state funds support “low-earning degree programs.” Education degrees are, by definition, low-earning. Teachers in New Hampshire start at thirty-five to forty-two thousand dollars. So in a state with a desperate teacher shortage, the legislature wants to defund the university programs that produce teachers. They want to defund social work programs, art programs, music programs — the very programs that produce the counselors and support staff that schools desperately need.
The message to anyone considering a teaching career in this state: the people who run this place are actively working to eliminate you.
HB 1515 repeals fifteen million dollars in child care workforce grants — at the exact moment when the federal government also cut TANF funding for child care. Research overwhelmingly shows that quality early childhood education is the single most impactful intervention for school readiness. This legislature cut both the federal and state lifelines at the same time. The children affected will show up to kindergarten behind. Many will never catch up.
HB 1337 repeals the Council on Autism Spectrum Disorders — a volunteer body that costs virtually nothing to operate but coordinates educational, healthcare, and social services for some of the most vulnerable students in the state. Stripped away. Passed 178 to 155.
And HB 1268 eliminates nearly all homeschool oversight — no notification, no evaluations, no portfolio requirements. The state would have zero visibility into whether homeschooled children are actually being educated. It also exempts homeschooled students from child labor restrictions. No educational oversight plus relaxed work restrictions. Think about what that combination means for the most vulnerable children.
VII. The Big Picture — The Strategy Is Coherent
Look at all of these bills together. Because individually, each one can be debated on its narrow terms. But together, they form a strategy so coherent it cannot be accidental.
Step one: Redefine what the state owes. HB 1121 strips the definition of adequacy. HB 1815 tries to legislatively overrule thirty years of court decisions.
Step two: Cap what communities can spend. HB 1300 imposes budget caps that slowly strangle districts. HB 564 strips democratic deliberation from budget meetings.
Step three: Drain the money. SB 295 opens vouchers to millionaires. HB 1817 lets voucher families use public schools without funding them. HB 292 forces struggling districts to accept vouchers as the price of a loan they shouldn’t need in the first place.
Step four: Silence the teachers. HB 1792 threatens their licenses and their savings accounts. SB 434 gives organized groups the legal machinery for mass censorship. HB 10 buries them in paperwork.
Step five: Build the off-ramp. HB 1358 is the blueprint to convert every public school to a charter. HB 751 creates the death spiral for rural districts that will make conversion look inevitable.
Step six: Kill everything that actually helps. HB 366 — school building aid — dead. HB 1799 — court-ordered funding — dead.
That is not reform. That is demolition with a sequence and a schedule.
The Contrast Is the Argument
This legislature signed into law a ban on Pride flags. A ban on World Economic Forum conspiracy materials that no teacher was using. A bill forcing guns onto college campuses over the objection of every university in the state. And universal vouchers for families earning half a million dollars a year.
This same legislature killed funding for crumbling school buildings where children spend their days. Killed the bill that would have required the state to meet its constitutional obligation to fund public education. And is advancing a bill — right now, in the Senate — that would let any parent end a teacher’s career with a ten-thousand-dollar lawsuit over a lesson they didn’t like.
They found the votes for Charlie Kirk. They found the votes for Klaus Schwab conspiracy theories. They found the votes for guns in dormitories.
They could not find the votes for school nurses in the funding formula. They could not find the votes for leaking roofs. They could not find the votes for the children of Claremont and Berlin and Franklin.
This is not happening by accident. It is happening because people with power decided that public education is expendable, that teachers are the enemy, that LGBTQ+ students don’t deserve to see a flag, and that the children of poor towns are someone else’s problem.
It is happening because they are counting on you not to pay attention. They are counting on the volume of bills to exhaust you. They are counting on your silence.
Do not give it to them.
What You Can Do
Show up at your school board. Show up at your town meeting. Show up at the State House. Call your senator — because these bills are in the Senate right now. Tell them you see the strategy. Tell them you see the pattern. Tell them you are paying attention.
Share this post. Send it to your neighbors, your school board members, your PTA. The volume of bills is the strategy — and the antidote is making sure people see the full picture.
We track every one of these bills at nhpolitics.org. Bookmark it. Check back. Stay informed. And see who’s responsible.
Because the only thing standing between these bills and the schools your children attend is you.