Garry Rayno: Education Voucher Advocates Seek National Solution
Writing for InDepthNH, Gary Rayno puts the New Hampshire voucher in the broader context of anti-democracy movements in this country.
The drive to create doubt and even rejection of these long-standing pillars of our society is to eventually destroy the underpinnings of government to create a new order where the rich will flourish even more with all the advantages, while everyone else will fight over the crumbs of the plutocrats.
The current large target in this fight to turn democracy into an oligarchy is the public school system.
The first blow to the public school system in New Hampshire was the push for charter schools, which are still public schools but without the regulations and requirements traditional public schools must meet.
Charter schools have had to ask the state for more and more per pupil money to stay afloat, about double the per pupil adequacy grant amount for traditional schools.
The charter schools that found a niche have been successful, but many have fallen by the wayside over the years even with federal grant money approved during the Trump administration for start-ups and expansions.
And until recently, they have not strayed into the Christian Nationalist area that has been widely promoted by Hinsdale College in Michigan and adopted by some states.
Then came the voucher push sold as a way of helping low-income families find a more suitable education environment for students who do not do well in the public-school setting.
After several unsuccessful attempts, proponents, who include Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and State School Board Chairman Drew Cline, lawmakers successfully approved the Education Freedom Account program as a rider to the 2022-2023 biennial operating budget after it failed to pass the House and was retained.
Since then attempts to expand the eligibility of parents by raising the income cap passed two sessions ago, but failed in the recently completed session.
Instead of helping the low-income families with educational options the program has largely been a subsidy program for parents with children who were already in religious or private schools and homeschooling.
Only about 10 to 15 percent of the increasingly expensive draw on the Education Trust Fund have left public schools for alternative education programs.
What proponents ultimately seek is a “universal program” which would be open to any New Hampshire student regardless of his or her parents’ income, although a similar program has nearly bankrupted Arizona and put public education at risk in Ohio, where it is being litigated.
New Hampshire is not alone in the push to do away with public education as we know it.