The phone ban, the single biggest change to New Hampshire’s schools in 2025, was hardly a given when the year got underway. As recently as last fall, while other states adopted bans, state leaders expressed bipartisan opposition to taking statewide action, citing the Granite State’s love for local control.
But nine days into 2025, newly elected Gov. Kelly Ayotte flipped the tide on the issue. In an inaugural address to the legislature, she declared the banning of personal electronic devices in schools a policy priority.
In a year in which school funding, the expansion of the state’s education freedom account program and the future of open enrollment continued to divide people — often along partisan lines — banning phones in schools largely united a state increasingly worried about the negative effects of technology on young people. Early reports from students, teachers and administrators have been overwhelmingly positive as schools across the state approach 100 school days in their new phone-free reality.
Phone-free schools
After Ayotte’s January declaration, the question that pervaded the winter and spring was not whether a law would pass, but how far it would go. A Senate bill emerged that would ban phone use during instructional time alone, while the House’s version took a more all-encompassing approach, banning phone use from bell to bell.
It was not clear which approach would win out until, in June, Ayotte made her support for the most restrictive option clear. During a frenzied final week of the legislative session, doubt emerged about whether the Republican-controlled Senate would go along, until they ultimately agreed to the new law’s inclusion in the biennial budget.
From there, the issue moved from the legislature to the local district level, where school boards convened in hastily assembled meetings to hash out the specifics of their new policy before the school year got underway. The law provided little direction about how exactly to separate preteens and teenagers from devices that had become practically extensions of their hands, and boards considered a range of options, including buying locking pouches at their district’s own expense. Ultimately, most high schools settled on the least restrictive options, allowing students to carry their phones in their pockets or store them in their backpacks.
Meanwhile, students, parents and teachers weighed in on their hopes and fears for this educational sea change.
As the school year got underway, students, teachers and principals reported the new law was having a largely positive effect. It did, however, come with some kinks to iron out and some unintended effects.
In 2026, some lawmakers appear interested in making some tweaks. A bill sponsored by a group of Democratic representatives would authorize superintendents to allow limited use of students’ personal laptops in schools.
School funding brings court decisions and local challenges
The first major education news of 2025 played out at Kearsarge Regional High School, where more than 1,000 residents gathered on the first weekend of the new year to overwhelmingly vote down a proposal to cap the district’s annual budget. Over the rest of the spring, voters in all seven other districts with a proposed cap followed suit, striking down their warrant articles, too.
The votes were hailed as signs of support for funding public education in the state. But the year also brought continued challenges in this regard.
The Pittsfield and Merrimack Valley school districts announced that they had discovered overspending in previous years’ budgets, which, in the latter case, prompted voters to reject the school board’s proposed budget for the upcoming year.
School leaders also reported continued challenges covering rising costs, particularly related to special education. Meanwhile, efforts to change how the state’s funding model works failed to garner enough support in the legislature.
On the first day of the new fiscal year, the Supreme Court released a decision that could force the legislature’s hand, ruling 3-2 that the state’s current per-pupil adequacy payment to districts is unconstitutionally low. However, the Republican-controlled legislature has not committed to heeding the order.
How they respond in the State House will be a key issue to watch in 2026.
School choice options expand
2025 was a very successful year for proponents of school choice.
Four years after launching the state’s education freedom account program, Republican lawmakers voted to remove its income eligibility cap, and within months, participation nearly doubled.
The state is expected to pay at least $51.6 million for the program this year, up from $30.3 million last year. The total enrollment cap will increase from 10,000 students to 12,500 next school year.
As the program has grown, so too have questions of accountability and transparency, particularly from critics. A five-part Concord Monitor series published earlier this year found that nearly 90% of EFA dollars spent on tuition go to religiously-affiliated schools, which have seen a corresponding enrollment boom since the program launched. Families who spend their dollars on homeschooling expenses enjoy extraordinarily wide latitude over where their money gets spent.
Next year could bring increased scrutiny of the program. In a December surprise, the bipartisan legislative committee tasked with oversight elected a Democratic senator as its chair.
The other major development on the school choice front this year was open enrollment. The Supreme Court clarified that school districts are liable for tuition costs when their residents enroll in other schools, even if the district where the student resides does not offer open enrollment.
The decision could pit public schools against each other in competition for students. A quirk in the law, however, means school districts may increasingly adopt open enrollment provisions to safeguard against student flight. The law allows open enrollment districts to set the percentage of students who can enroll elsewhere at zero, effectively nullifying their risk of being on the hook for tuition to other schools.
In addition to watching how individual school districts react, the new year will also likely bring renewed debate in the legislature about a universal open enrollment law, which would surely change the landscape for public education in the state.