Home and Senate lawmakers have handed laws requiring a efficiency audit of the schooling freedom account program in 2023 in a uncommon level of bipartisan settlement over a divisive new initiative.
In a unanimous voice vote Could 5, the Senate accepted House Bill 1135, which might require the state’s legislative finances assistant to look at how properly the Division of Training is monitoring who will get entry to this system, what the funds are spent on, and the way public faculties are reimbursed.
Handed within the state finances in 2021 and launched that fall, the schooling freedom account program permits income-eligible dad and mom to take state funds that may ordinarily observe their baby to public college – usually between $4,000 and $7,000 per yr – and use them for personal college or home-schooling bills.
This system, which is offered to households making as much as 300 p.c of the federal poverty stage, or $83,250 for a household of 4 in 2022, is run by a non-public nonprofit group that contracts with the state, the Youngsters’s Scholarship Fund.
HB 1135 would require the legislative finances assistant to evaluation this system’s efficiency in: figuring out whether or not dad or mum expenditures are acceptable; assessing contributors’ preliminary and ongoing eligibility; and discovering and reclaiming improper expenditures or funds.
The audit should study how properly public faculties are reimbursed with this system’s “phase-out grants,” which give restricted aid to high school districts for the primary few years after a scholar leaves and takes an EFA, in line with the invoice.
The invoice additionally requires auditors to evaluation the demographics of the scholars utilizing this system, and evaluate their circumstances the yr earlier than and after this system launched.
Supporters of the EFA program, who embody Gov. Chris Sununu and Division of Training Commissioner Frank Edelblut, have stated it ranges the taking part in discipline for lower-income households who aren’t happy with their public college by offering state cash for various academic strategies.
However Democrats and different opponents have argued that this system improperly diverts that cash away from public faculties, and warn it might result in native college finances crunches and pressure state schooling funding.
HB 1135 comes after different makes an attempt by Democrats to rein in and even repeal the EFA program have been defeated by Republican Home and Senate lawmakers. However the audit invoice has moved forward with bipartisan assist.
Rep. Sallie Fellows, a Holderness Democrat, argued the audit was obligatory as a result of the construction of this system – a nonprofit distributing state funding and figuring out eligible households and bills – is uncommon.
“We want as a lot data as attainable to foretell how a lot cash we must always put into the finances for this program,” she testified at a Senate listening to in April. “This may assist make sure the state funds are being correctly managed.”
The Senate-passed model of the invoice moved the efficient date from June 2023 to October 2023. The tweaked invoice is heading again to the Home this week for a last vote.
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