Letter to the Editor:
This letter provides additional information about Education Freedom Accounts (EFA). Part 1 was published May30, 2024 in the Granite State News. The first year EFA families received $3,500 per student from the state, via the Children’s Scholarship Fund. In this, the third year on average students receive $5,255. At this rate of increase where will we be in 10 years? Note, I have been told our state legislature did not approve the proposed increase in adequacy education grants to public schools. So ETA recipients are receiving more than public schools receive from the state.
As well, families can apply for additional funds along with their EFA, including EFA’s supplemental Free or Reduced Price Meal Grant (FRPM). Of the students receiving EFAs this year, about 44 percent are enrolled in free or reduced price lunch program. These families make below 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or $55,500 for a family of four. (Note again, you do not need to file a tax return to qualify for an EFA in which case income verification is unclear.) As well, some EFA recipients, 6.3 percent this year, receive additional state funding for special education services.
4,211 New Hampshire students are participating in the Education Freedom Account program in 2023-4, the program's third year. This is a 158 percent jump from the first year’s enrollment. In total, the state spent $22.1 million toward EFAs this year, up from $8.1 million in 2021-2022 and $14.7 million in 2022-2023. Again, where will we be in 10 years?
Plus, among the 4,211 students receiving EFAs (this year 1,577 are new to the program and 2,634 returning) there is a significant portion who have never been in public school or were already in private school. All these students represent an added cost to the state and thus to us the taxpayers.
EFA funds are administered by the Children’s Scholarship Fund. They receive state monies and deposit those funds into accounts for each student, not to the educational institution/program they are attending/participating in. In fact recipients are not required to be registered in any school or education program.
It is not clear to me why, but if a homeschool family applies for an EFA they have to sign out of the state's homeschool program. As an EFA recipient, their day-to-day experience may continue to look the same except they do not report to an agency which reports to the NHDOE about each of their students. Instead, they report to the Children's Scholarship Fund. Rather than the homeschool family being responsible for retaining all records, the scholarship program is responsible for reporting receipt of the annual record of educational attainment - without any personally identifying information and reports that to the NHDOE. Since the CSF only provides aggregate data, the NHDOE does not have any information about the progress of individual students. This begs the question of accountability for those dollars and the students, but also this is apparently causing problems in the state's auditing process.
Karen Burnett-Kurie
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