Keene Sentinel: Don’t let state lawmakers turn tax money into subsidies for private schools

The Keene Sentinel published an editorial on SB 193, the bill that would create a statewide voucher system through education freedom savings accounts. Here’s an excerpt:

…Last spring, Senate lawmakers, in a strictly partisan vote, passed Senate Bill 193, a truly terrible would-be law that aims to allow parents to use public education funds to pay private school tuitions…

SB 193’s real danger isn’t that some parents might choose to use the money for religion-based schools. It’s that if enough parents choose to use it at all, our public schools would be devastated. The bill would make that 90 percent of adequacy aid — about $3,205 — available to parents of home-schooled children, those in charter schools and, eventually, all private-school students.

That could result, according to former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Mark Fernald of Sharon, in a loss of up to $63 million from state education aid to local public schools.

As Porter noted, most Granite State private schools have tuitions far higher than the $3,205 they’d be getting from taxpayers, so those taking advantage of the “education freedom” accounts would be, primarily, wealthy families that can afford such payments. In other words, taxpayers would simply be subsidizing private school for the rich.

And even if several thousand New Hampshire students move to private schools, the burden of funding public ones won’t change. Local taxpayers will still have to provide public education. And with up to $63 million of state aid missing, their taxes will be even higher.

Senate Bill 193 is an unconscionable attack on public education and Granite State taxpayers. It’s now back off the table and in the hands of the House Education Committee.

Let your representatives know you’d rather the state pay its share of public schools than to magically turn your tax money into a scholarship for wealthy parents sending their kids to private schools.

Source: Attacking education: Don’t let state lawmakers turn tax money into subsidies for private schools | Keene Sentinel