If her fellow Merrimack Valley school board members were truly confident in the education the district provides, Amanda York wanted to know why they felt it necessary to block any students from enrolling elsewhere.
“To me personally, this sounds like finances first and students second,” York said Monday, as the board debated adding a restrictive open enrollment warrant article to its annual meeting agenda next month.
The comment struck a nerve with some of her fellow board members, all of whom supported a policy that would bar all Merrimack Valley students from leaving for another school at the district’s expense.
“I’m sorry, but finances do have a lot to do with it,” Lorna Carlisle of Salisbury responded.
As school boards across the state rush to adopt policies protecting themselves from unpredictable tuition bills prompted by a Supreme Court ruling last fall, the divide between York and her fellow board members highlights the core political tension of open enrollment: Should schools be forced to compete for students to produce better outcomes or does giving families the choice weaken the fabric of public education by catering only to individuals who can leave to the detriment of the rest?
“There are students that would thrive better at a different district,” said York who represents Loudon, and has frequently found herself in the minority on a range of issues since being appointed to the board last May.
She argued that Merrimack Valley’s policy should allow at least “one or two students” to enroll elsewhere.
But fellow board members said open enrollment would exacerbate inequality among students and lead to logistical chaos. Families would be responsible for transportation, and under a new law under consideration in the state legislature, they would potentially have to pay a portion of the tuition to their child’s new school.
“I feel like we would be doing a disservice by allowing kids to leave, taking those monies away from other students whose families cannot do that, and in the end, creating a kind of domino effect of losing services,” said Jessica Wheeler Russell, an at-large board member from Penacook.
The debate in Merrimack Valley is a microcosm of the one playing out statewide, as the House lawmakers prepare to vote on a bill passed in the Senate that would mandate open enrollment for all school districts in New Hampshire, making local policies inconsequential.
Hundreds of school board members from a variety of districts have signed an open letter opposing the legislation, citing a host of unanswered questions about how it would be implemented.
“I think we’re absolutely putting our students first by trying to give them the most stable possible environment we possibly can,” Merrimack Valley school board member David Nesbitt of Webster said Monday.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte has said she too has “some concerns” about the bill.
“I think there’s much more work that needs to be done on this bill because of some of the local feedback that we’ve heard in our office,” she told WMUR over the weekend. “And again, education is so important to the state. We’re spending a historical amount on education per pupil in the state, but we want to make sure that at the local level, that we’re not disrupting their ability to serve each child and serve them well every single day.”
If the universal open enrollment law is not passed before March, the local policies in Merrimack Valley and other districts would go into effect if they pass at annual meetings and school district elections.
All but three school districts in the Concord region have either already adopted open enrollment policies or will vote on them next month.
Only one of those districts — Hopkinton — has proposed a policy that would allow students to leave at the district’s expense. It set the number at 1.
The lack of a permissive open enrollment policy doesn’t prevent students from enrolling in other district public schools. Families who can afford to do so can pay tuition to other public schools. They can also pursue best-interest and manifest educational hardship processes.