-
Gov. Kelly Ayotte introduces New Hampshire Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut after losing him in the crowd at the Executive Council chambers before signing the education freedom accounts program bill on Tuesday. -
Kearsarge Regional High School senior Lilah Bartholomew speaks in opposition to a proposed budget cap at a deliberative session on January 4, 2025. -
Jeff Blanchard casts his vote as assistant moderator John Herbert stands at the voting box during the Merrimack Valley School District meeting on March 6, 2025. Voters rejected the school board’s proposed budget for the 2025-26 school year. -
Students will have to adjust to a bell-to-bell phone ban next fall. -
Trinity Christian School in Concord, Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee, and Concord Christian Academy in Concord were all among the top five recipients of Education Freedom Account money during the 2022-23 school year. -
Lisa Walker, who spent a career in education, says she was driven out by the increasing hostility toward educators. She now works as an EMT.
It was an academic year marked by sweeping victories for advocates of education privatization and parental rights and by numerous defeats for proponents of public education. From Kearsarge to Concord, the battles played out in local annual meetings, at the state capitol, in the state’s federal courthouse, and all the way from Washington.
New Hampshire Republicans emerged from a bruising fall election season with an expanded trifecta in the statehouse and with what they perceived as a mandate to make the Education Freedom Account program universal, deliver a parental “bill of rights”, and ban books in school libraries.
President Donald Trump issued a series of precedent-breaking executive orders and other directives that immediately forced local school officials into uncharted territory with little guidance.
And residents showed up at deliberative sessions in droves, angrily reducing school budgets in some districts and successfully fighting back against proposed budget caps in others.
Amidst the political headwinds, area superintendents quit in droves, those across the political spectrum found rare agreement on banning phones in schools, and students and teachers accomplished phenomenal things.
Here are the six biggest stories from the 2024-25 school year:
Frustrated by the rising cost of public education, an expanded Republican majority in the legislature tried and failed to pass a law capping per-pupil school spending statewide. Meanwhile, in the first year that residents could bring local spending cap petitions themselves, districts across the state soundly rejected efforts to cap spending. The caps were universally unsuccessful. On a frigid Saturday in early January, more than 1,400 people packed the Kearsarge Regional High School gymnasium to vote down the district’s spending cap.
While capping school budgets proved unpopular, residents in several districts across the state voted to reduce the budgets proposed by their school boards during intense annual meetings in March. Closest to home, Merrimack Valley residents rejected a $3.4 million increase months after district leaders disclosed a series of financial challenges. We’ll be closely watching how the budget reductions affect districts next year.
Four years after the voucher-like school-choice program launched, lawmakers expanded eligibility to all families, regardless of income. The program reflects a profoundly new vision of government’s role in funding education, which is becoming increasingly prevalent across the country. The Monitor’s investigative series, Inside EFAs, examined how familiesspend their money, which institutions benefit the most, and how the program has caused a rift within the state’s home schooling community.
International students faced the revocation of their legal status, while school administrators faced difficult decisions on DEI and on how to navigate a complex and changing legal landscape surrounding transgender participation in sports and other issues. In March and April, the federal court in New Hampshire became a national epicenter, particularly in the DEI case.
Superintendents in six of the school districts that we cover most closely – Pembroke, Pittsfield, Merrimack Valley, Concord, and Hopkinton – announced that they would leave at the end of this or next year. Their reasons varied but some cited the increased financial and political challenges facing public education in New Hampshire. Lisa Walker, the superintendent of the Grantham School District, was particularly open about why she is leaving education to become an EMT.
The biggest evolution on an issue this year involved whether to ban phones in schools. Last September, school administrators and politicians expressed near unanimous agreement that New Hampshire didn’t need a statewide phone ban. Nine months later, we have one. It will be the most significant educational change in the state since the pandemic shutdown. A new Monitor series called Disconnected will bring you candid conversations about the ban with students, teachers, parents, and school administrators over the coming weeks.
Is there an education issue you want us to cover more closely in the coming year? Email Jeremy Margolis at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.
