Establishes a commission to study public school open enrollment and suspends RSA 194-D until the final date of the legislative session following submission of the commission's report.
establishing a commission to study public school open enrollment.
I urge you to support this bill for a thorough exploration of open enrollment; the funding and logistics of it, the cost and management obstacles, and to speak with districts about concerns and management so that we can have all the issues and concerns ironed out before implementing it on a greater level.
I absolutely support establishing a commission to study public school open enrollment.
One only has to have attended a recent deliberative session or watch a recent school board meeting there is no question that a study commission is in order. We cannot compare Nh to other states that pay their fair share to public education. Please support this bill.
I am against open enrollment because of the way NH fails to adequately support public education. Until the tax structure is fixed in an equitable way, open enrollment will solidify inequities and destroy local schools. This commission is necessary to truly study open enrollment and find out if it is even possible in NH. Utterly necessary because the current bill is appalling— short-sighted, destructive, misleading, and incomplete.
This bill will help to strengthen our public schools.
Establishing a commission to study public school open enrollment is an excellent idea.
I support HB 1280. Public school open enrollment raises significant questions related to funding structure, transportation responsibility, special education obligations, and equitable access across districts. These issues deserve careful, coordinated study before further implementation. HB 1280 appropriately: • Establishes a diverse commission including educators, school board members, legislators, administrators, and parents • Requires development of a funding mechanism that prevents direct invoicing between public schools • Calls for a random and equitable enrollment process compliant with civil rights laws • Directs examination of transportation and special education responsibilities • Emphasizes shared state and local responsibility for providing an adequate education The temporary suspension of RSA 194-D during the review period allows space for thoughtful evaluation rather than piecemeal expansion. Open enrollment can affect district capacity, local budgeting, and access for students with disabilities or limited transportation options. A structured commission process ensures these impacts are analyzed transparently and deliberately. Studying the system before further operational changes is prudent governance. For these reasons, I respectfully support HB 1280. Respectfully, Steven J. Snelling Charlestown
Open enrollment is among the most consequential policy changes New Hampshire could make to its public education system. It touches school budgets, property taxes, special education, staffing, transportation, and local control. A policy with that reach deserves a deliberate, informed process — not the fast-track approach we have seen with HB 751, which was amended onto an unrelated bill, bypassed committee hearings in both chambers, and is advancing toward law while school districts are finalizing budgets they built under existing statute. HB 1280 offers what HB 751 does not: a structured process to hear from the people who will live with the consequences. This commission would bring superintendents, educators, parents, school board members, and the Department of Education to the same table to address the hard questions that remain unanswered — questions about funding mechanisms, capacity, special education cost allocation, and how to ensure equitable access for all students, including those whose families lack the means to transport them across district lines. New Hampshire's unique reliance on local property taxes to fund education makes this work especially critical. What functions in other states may not function here without careful adaptation. Members of the SAU 24 School Board and administration support expanding educational opportunity. We also believe we owe it to our communities to get this right. HB 1280 gives us the tools to do both. We urge the committee to recommend this bill ought to pass.
I support this bill that will create a commission to explore the issue of open enrollment and would identify and highlight its ineffectiveness as an approach to an adequate public education. The legislature needs to meet its court-ordered obligation to fund an adequate education for all children as well as continue to improve the quality of education.
I support this bill because I think it would be wise to study how this bill might affect public education on the local level before implementing the open enrollment program.
HB 1280 Establishing a Commission to Study Public School Open Enrollment Position: In Support My name is Jodi Adams, Executive Director of the NH Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and I am testifying in support of HB 1280. While this bill does not currently include chartered public schools, it raises important policy questions that could have significant implications for our sector. Chartered public schools have operated as open enrollment schools since their inception, and we have extensive experience navigating many of the issues under discussion. As the committee considers this legislation, it may be helpful to include perspectives from the chartered public school community—particularly regarding how special education services are delivered and billed across districts, how transportation is coordinated, and how proposed open enrollment policies could unintentionally widen existing funding disparities between traditional public schools and chartered public schools. To ensure a well-informed and comprehensive discussion, I respectfully suggest appointing a representative from the NH Alliance for Public Charter Schools, along with a chartered public school leader, to serve on the committee
As I have learned from serving on the Pembroke School Board, the current pressures on our towns are likely without precedent. The core inflation that impacts our daily lives affects our schools as well. The cost of serving our most vulnerable students receiving special education has outstripped general inflation, as have our statutory transportation obligations. Expanding State regulations and directives have increased our legal expenses. Spiraling health care expenses are the greatest driver of cost increases. Pembroke was quoted a 30% increase in next year’s expenses from SchoolCare, which is more than double the highest year-over-year percent increase in recent memory. Meanwhile, per-student adequacy aid from the State continues to fall well short of that deemed minimally necessary by our courts. The State could have alleviated these pressures by prioritizing aid to towns. Instead, it chose to fund Education Freedom Accounts to the tune of $51 million, allotting funds for home schooling and private school tuition, where students can be turned away for any reason, little oversight is required, and many regulations that attach to public schools do not apply. A full 90% of this funding has gone to private religious schools. Universal open enrollment will make our collective situation worse. Universal open enrollment creates an open public school system across the state without creating a state-wide funding structure. Local property taxes will still be collected for local schools, but those dollars can be removed by individual families at will. Yet there is no process for students to declare which schools they will attend, no deadline for such declarations, no process for switching schools, no limit to the number of times a student can change schools, and no set tuition rate across the state so that school boards can begin to gauge costs. Such a change will erode local control of schools and school budgets, and it will likely result in the weakening or even closing of some rural schools. Universal open enrollment will absolutely increase the cost of public education. Absent the control mechanisms listed above, there is no scenario where a school board or SAU can budget with any clarity. We will have no idea what number we need to budget for outflowing students, and we will not be able to plan for any tuition from inflow students, as we cannot anticipate revenue beyond local taxes. Under this bill, we will be forced to guess how many students, and as such how much tax revenue, will leave the town under open enrollment. An earlier version of UOE legislation concedes this point in its methodology section: “it is not possible to predict this bill’s impact on state aid programs, or local school district revenues or expenditures.” That is quite the concession–and one easy to make, since the State will not bear any of the costs that it cannot calculate. For towns, though, the consequences could be drastic. Even a seemingly small number of outmigrations result in a large revenue shift. In Pembroke, for instance, a mere 5% outflow of students (n=46) to open enrollment would cost over $700,000 each year. The town’s taxpayers would be on the hook for 100% of that additional cost, as SB101 does not provide any additional funds for this venture. Universal open enrollment threatens to upend public education without regard for consequences. It is government by flailing ideological conviction, unmoored by reality, practicality, respect, or competence and done under the banners of “choice” and “freedom.” But this “freedom” will shackle our communities and threaten the bedrock principle of local control that has defined American education since Horace Mann established the first Common School. Our current public school system and funding structure may well be ripe for reform; there is nothing magical or particularly sacred about one form over another. But this legislation does not represent reform. It represents an effort to accelerate the multi-decade assault on public education by those who choose not to see its virtues as essential to the common good and who do not believe that those virtues should be equally available to all in every instance, as is necessary to maintain a functioning democracy. Wittingly or not, those who push for universal open enrollment will, if successful, make public education ever more expensive, and thus erode public support for it.
I believe that we are rushing this. I believe that we should be studying this and the impacts and creating stronger guidelines around this. In addition Charter Schools are already open enrollment and this bill leaves charters out of the funding conversation and creates more funding disparity within Public Schools.
I state my opinion for this bill for the sake of residents in NH.
I am writing in support of HB 1280. Open enrollment represents a significant structural shift in how public education operates in New Hampshire. It directly affects district funding, special education obligations, transportation logistics, staffing, and local budgeting. These are system-wide changes that warrant careful design. The existing statute, RSA 194-D, was substantially expanded under HB 751-FN without a fully developed funding framework, phased rollout, or implementation study. HB 1280 does not repeal open enrollment. It establishes a commission to examine how such a system can function sustainably and equitably before further implementation proceeds. The bill allows policymakers and practitioners to evaluate funding mechanisms, special education coordination, transportation impacts, and how to prevent inter-district billing disputes. Given the complexity and fiscal implications involved, a temporary suspension during this review is prudent governance. Major structural reforms deserve deliberate, data-driven design. HB 1280 provides the opportunity to ensure open enrollment is implemented responsibly and durably. I respectfully urge the Committee to recommend HB 1280 as Ought to Pass. Thank you for your consideration.
We have had open enrollment here in NH since 2015. What more do we need to study? Get on with it.
The proposed open enrollment legislation leaves many unanswered questions and its implementation could be detrimental to our public schools. A commission to study open enrollment makes sense. Please vote OTP.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.
Position recorded without written comment.