Can you imagine any NH state department, agency or commission using $45 million of our tax dollars but putting roadblocks in the way of a performance audit of the program? The commissioner of education is hoping you don’t care enough to know. Our community public schools are overseen by school boards that we elect. Their budgets, curricula, policies and assessment scores are open to everyone in the public, not just those with children in the system. The schools and other “education service providers” supported by Education Freedom Accounts (vouchers), on the other hand, keep their information close to the chest. Their budgets, their teachers’ qualifications, their students’ achievements are not accessible to us, though taxpayers pay a chunk of the bill.

Now Commissioner Edelblut has chosen to put limits on the legislatively mandated audit by holding back information from state auditors, saying it belongs to the program’s private administrator. In fact, the contract with that administrator states he can get this information simply by asking for it. And privacy, another concern he raised, can be protected. Why is the commissioner reluctant to provide to the public the same data about vouchers that’s required of public schools? Close to 70% of town budgets are connected to public education budgets. Want to slow the rising property taxes? Stop sending state funds to vouchers where there is no accountability. Use them instead to defray public schools costs and provide transparent data for the taxpayers who fund them.

Renia Woods

Concord