Universal open enrollment, the most high-profile education policy under consideration by the legislature this year, officially died a quiet death on Thursday.
The Senate voted to table a heavily amended version of the open enrollment bill without discussion. It was a muted culmination to five months of legislative maneuvering, which featured a surprise vote, a pair of major amendments, and dissension within the Republican Party.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s decision last week to voice opposition to the proposed legislation ultimately spelled its collapse.
Throughout the spring, Republican leaders in the House and Senate had pushed for a law that would allow students to attend any school in the state with space for them at no cost to their families. The proposal was met with criticism by Democratic lawmakers, many public school leaders, and members of the public, who voiced a host of concerns about how the change would affect public education in the state.
The proposal pitted two visions of education against each other. Proponents of universal open enrollment argued that students’ educational opportunities should not be dictated by where they live. Opponents countered that allowing students to migrate to high-performing districts would exacerbate inequalities, leaving those students stuck in low-performing schools even worse off.
The law would not have funded transportation for students, leaving that responsibility to families. Therefore, opponents of the legislation argued, only children of a certain level of means would have been able to participate.
An initial version of the law would have required school districts that lose students through open enrollment to pay tuition to the students’ new district. In response to opposition, lawmakers ultimately proposed a funding model that would mirror that of charter schools, relying on the redirection of state education aid. Lawmakers also proposed capping participation at 500 new students in the program’s first year.
Those changes were not enough to appease Ayotte, who said at a press conference Wednesday that the bill still had “a number of issues,” though she did not identify them. Ayotte said she wanted lawmakers to garner more feedback from school district leaders before enacting new legislation on open enrollment.
The failure of the legislature to pass a new law leaves at least three dozen students expected to participate next year in an optional open enrollment program in limbo.
Under the current law, school districts can choose to allow students from other districts to enroll, but they can also elect to prohibit students from leaving. Before this year, just one school, Prospect Mountain High School in Alton, operated an active open enrollment program.
However, in response to a Supreme Court ruling last November, dozens of districts passed warrant articles both establishing open enrollment programs and blocking students from leaving their districts to enroll in another school’s program.
That flurry of local activity means that many of the approximately 40 students expected to enroll in Prospect Mountain next year reside in districts that are not likely to pay the tuition bills they receive. Tim Broadrick, the outgoing superintendent of Prospect Mountain, told the Monitor earlier this spring that students would not be turned away or forced to pay tuition themselves due to the changing legal landscape.
The lack of a universal law could also affect students who enroll in other newly created open enrollment programs. At least 83 districts established new programs this year, according to data collected by Reaching Higher NH, a pro-public education advocacy organization. It is unclear how many students intend to enroll in these programs.
The future of the push for universal open enrollment in New Hampshire is now unclear. Republican Sen. Tim Lang of Sanbornton, the prime sponsor of one of this year’s bills, said he would “start over again next year” if he gets re-elected.
In New Hampshire, universal open enrollment has been conceived as part of the conservative “school choice” political agenda, though nationally it is not inherently partisan. Democratic-controlled states like Colorado and Vermont offer universal open enrollment, for example. (Vermont’s policy applies only to high schools.)
According to opponents of the universal open enrollment bills in New Hampshire, the difference between those states and this one is the way that public education is funded. In New Hampshire, the proportion of education funding that comes from the state is the lowest in the country, placing an abnormally high burden on local property taxes.
The largest educators’ union in the state, NEA – New Hampshire, celebrated Thursday’s vote.
“The open enrollment proposals considered this session failed to answer critical questions about how districts would maintain class sizes, transportation, special education services, extracurricular opportunities, and student support systems if enrollment and funding shifted unpredictably from year to year,” Megan Tuttle, the president of the union, said in a statement.
