We understand that the House Finance Committee is likely to amend SB 193 to limit the bill’s impact on the state budget.  One result will be that local property tax payers will bear the full burden of sending students to private and home schools.  The other is that New Hampshire will have begun an inevitable multi-year process of expanding a second voucher program, as is happening with the first one from 2012.

Here, from the Washington Post, is a glimpse of the national drum to which local sponsors of SB 193 are marching:

ESAs are personal accounts created by a state for parents to use for a range of educational costs — including private school tuition and fees, as well as private tutoring — with state education funds. The trend in ESAs is that there is no means test, part of a larger shift in some parts of the school choice movement from advocating for choice being for low-income students to escape failing traditional public schools to choice being for all families…..

“My personal opinion is that the 12,000 or 13,000 government-run, unionized, politicized monopolies — we call them school districts — is not the best governance model for the world we’re moving towards.” — Jeb Bush

…

If you are not familiar with Education Savings Accounts, you should be. During a recent three-day seminar in Indian Wells, Calif., hosted by the billionaire Koch brothers, ESAs were announced as one of their identified legislative priorities of 2018. And they have already gotten started. The Koch’s 501(c)4, Americans for Prosperity, is pouring millions into an effort to defeat a November ballot referendum to overturn the expansion of ESAs in Arizona.

[The Daily 202: Koch network laying groundwork to fundamentally transform America’s education system]

Last year, the Arizona legislature narrowly passed a bill making ESAs eventually available to all K-12 students in the state — despite reports of lax oversight and fraudulent spending in the state’s small existing program. Following the passage of the bill, a scrappy group of parents and teachers came together to form Save Our Schools Arizona, gathering enough signatures to put ESAs up for a public vote. The Kochs have fought to shut down the referendum in the courts and on the airwaves ever since.

We’ve seen how high a priority SB 193 is for Koch and American’s for Prosperity here in New Hampshire, testifying to committees that schools REALLY DO save money when their students leave for schools, and even send out mailers extolling the virtues of legislators who support the bill (Americans for Prosperity going for broke on SB 193, the voucher bill)

But SB 913 is not about serving a few needy kids in New Hampshire:

Of all the various school privatization programs, Educational Savings Accounts are the most market-based and the least accountable. What they ultimately do is reduce society’s obligation to educate our nation’s youth to the dropping of tax dollars onto a debit card…..

There is no obligation that the curriculum that is used to teach students who use ESAs to attend private schools be developmentally appropriate, challenging or even accurate. Although a few states require parents to promise that their children receive instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, science and social studies, what content is taught and what is learned is immaterial…..

….Jonathan Beckam of Step Up for Students described how his organization, with the help of “two big companies,” created “the largest online marketplace for ESAs.” Here is how he described his work:

“So from a family’s perspective, it’s really like an Amazon shopping experience. I can log on to this private marketplace. I can see thousands of products and services that are preapproved for acceptable use for my program. I can click into those products and get detailed product information and availability for it. I can add it to my shopping cart and check out using my ESA funds directly.”

The opportunity to get off this train is now.  Let members of the House Finance Committee and your own representative know how you feel.