In the world of education in America, you have the right to choose what schools your child can go to: public, private, charter or homeschool, among others.
Public schools are funded by public tax revenue, while the others have tuition-based systems of funding. There is a program that New Hampshire lawmakers approved in 2021 called the Education Freedom Account (EFA). N.H. has enlisted the help of a non-profit called Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF) to help organize and allow families to have access to the state’s annual education budget.
Now, if you reach certain parameters, you can apply to get money from the organization to send your child to a private school, essentially taking the money that would have been spent at public schools and instead using it to assist with paying for the private school.
This system is not just for anyone. In N.H. you have to live in-state and you are not allowed to have over a certain amount of income per year. The goal of the system is to help underprivileged families to still have the freedom to choose what school their child goes to; however N.H. has found a few issues with the program.
The state of New Hampshire found that CSF had made multiple errors in their selection process. Out of a random selection of 50 applicants, a whopping 24% had not met the requirements but were allowed funding anyway, which is just ridiculous. CSF had only paid back the state for two of the 12 in that survey that were not eligible as well.
Let us take a step back and examine the poverty level and moreover, how much money you receive. If your family is under the 350% poverty level in the state they are eligible for money, roughly $4,100.
If you fall under the 185% poverty level you would get roughly $6,400, plus an additional $2,100 for students in special education and an extra $800 if you are still learning English. That is the only requirement when it comes to level of income.
Families exceeding those thresholds were getting access to this money, preventing others from having access to it and taking it away from public schools around the state. The budget for education is fought and debated over every year, and taxpayers do not want to have to pay more for schooling than they already do, and now people who have enough money are taking advantage of the taxpayers dollars to send their kids to private schools.
The CSF decrees that this is a “teeny” problem, saying that the policies will change to make sure this will not happen again. If only someone could have seen this coming; Well, someone did.
“From the outset, Democrats warned of a potential for massive fraud in the voucher program, which is why we proposed legislation this session to establish common sense guardrails and greater transparency,” said House Democratic Leader Matt Wilhelm. “House Republicans killed every one of those efforts, and now Granite Staters are quite literally paying the price.”
Thank you, Republicans, for wasting two years of money from education from the taxpayers of N.H. It is really appreciated; In all seriousness though, it is absolutely ridiculous that heavier restrictions were implemented to prevent this from happening. It is such an easy solution with heavy repercussions for the people living in N.H.
Thomas Czwakiel can be contacted at
