Imagine paying dues to a local recreation center for years. Your money maintains the basketball courts, the fields, and the after-school programs. Then, one day, your child tries to sign up for the youth league and gets turned away because your family does not use the facility full-time. Most people would call that unfair.
For years, a small number of EFA families — fewer than 20 students statewide — encountered a similar problem with their local public schools. This was never a widespread issue. Most school districts have long worked successfully with homeschool, charter school, private school, and EFA families. But for the handful of families affected, the access barriers addressed by HB 1817 were very real.
After all, these students were not outsiders. Families who homeschool, use Education Freedom Accounts, attend charter schools, or send their children to private schools still pay the same local property taxes as their neighbors. Most education funding in New Hampshire comes from local property taxes, and EFA families continue paying them in full. Every dollar of that local property tax revenue remains with their resident public school district, whether their child attends that district or uses an EFA instead.
Continue reading on the NH Journal Website.
