I grew up in a family of 11 children, three older and seven younger than myself. In 1965, my oldest brother went off to college and a year later, one of my older sisters left. Of course, my parents needed to develop a kitchen table budget for these changes. I see several similarities between my family situation in the 1960s and a New Hampshire school’s situation in 2022 with students exiting public schools for homeschooling or private school education, made easier by the recent voucher program, a.k.a. Education Freedom Accounts.
My family had fixed costs in running the household, despite the fact that we were down one, then two members of our household of 13. My parents couldn’t pay 11/13 of the mortgage, electric or heating bills, or operate the car 11/13 of the time, just because two children were no longer at home. The homeowners’ insurance still had to be paid in full, and the house still needed to be maintained.
We still used the same number of rooms, because of course my brother shared a bedroom with a few of his other brothers, and my sister shared with three other girls. My parents may have saved a bit on food and clothes, but those costs were minor compared with the fixed costs. So it is with the schools.
Schools have the same fixed costs in maintaining the school structures as families have in maintaining their homes and more. If several children leave the school district to use their EFA for a private school or homeschooling, the electric and heating bills, insurance, maintenance, etc. continue to cost as much, and the schools have to continue running all their buses. A teacher who loses one out of 25 students does not have her salary reduced by 1/25, nor can the school reduce the pay of the custodian, school counselor, school nurse, etc. if a handful of students leave.
And by the way, schools have the added fixed cost of staff salaries and benefits. We have all heard how the school voucher program will save the taxpayers money, or as was blithely told to this writer by two elected officials, “Taxpayers will be keeping the education tax dollars in their pockets!” and “We will save costs by letting a teacher go or by combining classes.”
This is just common sense. We will not be saving money because of education freedom accounts. The district will be losing state funding for each child taking a voucher, during the three-year “phase out grants.” By the year 2023, school districts will lose $477,000 in adequacy aid.
The taxpayers will need to raise the same amount of money that was needed to operate and maintain the schools before the voucher program was ever implemented. To say that the taxpayers will be saving the difference between the average expenditure to educate a child in New Hampshire ($17,400) and the average amount of money deposited in an EFA ($4,900) is either ignorant or disingenuous.
(Maureen F. Prohl lives in Elkins.)