After universal education freedom accounts, Republicans push additional school choice legislation

Last June, New Hampshire school choice advocates notched a long-sought victory: Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a bill to remove income limits on education freedom accounts.

The EFA program itself was a touchstone school choice accomplishment when it launched in 2021. For five years, New Hampshire families have had the ability to leave or never attend their district public school and apply state funds to private schools and home-school expenses. 

But as the 2026 legislative session approaches its final weeks, Republicans have made clear the fight to expand parental choice is far from over. The party has introduced two new fronts, in home education and in open enrollment. 

On Thursday, the Senate passed a slew of legislation meant to continue that effort, from a bill dropping reporting requirements for home-school parents to a bill empowering parents to send students facing hardships to different school districts.

Republicans say the bills are a logical extension of a fundamental belief that parents should direct their own child’s education, and that barriers to that direction should come down. Democrats say the current laws already provide parents with choice, and warn the new laws threaten public school funding and local community control. 

Here is a guide to some of the school choice legislation moving through the State House in the final few weeks.

The Home Education Freedom Act

Senate Republicans passed a sweeping bill Thursday that would give more rights to parents who choose to home school children — and curtail some state investigative power.

The latest version of House Bill 1268 would make it optional for a parent to notify the state or a local school of their intent to home school their child, which is currently required. It would also repeal the current requirement for annual evaluations of home school students and the requirement that a parent keep records and copies of the instructional materials.  

The bill would require that any information that is shared with the state Department of Education about a home-schooled child not be shared with any other state agency.

The bill would also make changes to child welfare laws to prevent investigations by the Division for Children, Youth, and Families on the basis of home schooling alone. It would prohibit DCYF from using participation in home education as a negative factor in assessing the adequacy of a child’s education, or in determining evidence of neglect. 

And HB 1268 would repeal the Home Education Advisory Council and eliminate the State Board of Education’s rulemaking authority over home-school programs. 

Easier district-to-district transfers

Senate Republicans have made multiple attempts this year toward another mechanism of school choice: public school open enrollment. Those efforts, which would allow families to send their children to any public school district in the state, have faced major obstacles in the House, where a faction of Republicans have joined with Democrats to oppose them.

But while the odds of a broader open enrollment bill appear long, Senate Democrats accused Republicans last week of making an attempt at “de facto open enrollment.” 

On Thursday, the Senate passed House Bill 1573, which would allow parents of a child suffering a “manifest educational hardship” to bring their case before the State Board of Education. If the board found the hardship justified, it would be mandated to allow the child to attend another public school, the bill states.

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Parents are currently allowed to request transfers of public schools due to manifest educational hardship. Those requests can be approved by their local school board, but parents can appeal a negative decision to the state board, whose members are approved by the governor. To prove manifest educational hardship, parents must show with “clear and convincing evidence” that a “compelling amount” of a student’s needs can’t be met by their school, that continued attendance would impair their educational progress, and that another school district or private school would meet those needs, according to Department of Education regulations.

But currently, the potential receiving school district can deny accepting the student due to a lack of capacity, or the student’s disciplinary history or chronic absenteeism. HB 1573 would remove those refusal rights. 

To Republican supporters, the bill is meant to address situations where a parent is blocked from helping their child overcome their hardship. 

Democrats argued the bill would trample the rights of schools to refuse out-of-district students, much like open enrollment. “This takes away community local control, and when a school is unable to accommodate another student or the particular student in question, for whatever reason, they no longer have any say, the school board cannot object,” said Sen. Debra Altschiller, a Stratham Democrat.

Sen. Daryl Abbas, a Salem Republican, rejected that framing, saying that it was targeted to specific scenarios with documented hardship. “This is nothing like open enrollment at all,” he said. 

This month, one bill is still standing that would usher in a broader open enrollment plan: House Bill 751, which is awaiting a “committee of conference” negotiation between the House and Senate.

But there doesn’t appear to be sufficient unity from House Republicans. Last month, the House defeated Senate Bill 101, a bill that would have attempted to achieve open enrollment by using state funds to pay districts receiving more students and without requiring resident districts to pay tuition to receiving districts. That bill, presented as a compromise, failed to win over a faction of 22 House Republicans. 

Empowering residents against school districts

While many Republican bills are meant to give parents more choice over their child’s education, some are designed to empower parents to force changes in their own districts.

House Bill 1374 would make it easier for residents to vote to discontinue an elementary school or high school. The bill would allow 20 or more voters to submit a petition, which would require the school board to hold a special meeting to discontinue a school. If a majority of voters at that meeting elected to do so, the school would be disbanded. 

The bill would also allow individual school districts to unilaterally withdraw from a cooperative school district, without the need for the approval of other districts, if three-fifths of voters present in the leaving district choose to do so.

And lawmakers are continuing a push to require easier processes to challenge books and educational materials in schools, despite Ayotte’s veto of a similar bill that would have clarified how materials deemed obscene are challenged. In her veto message, Ayotte wrote that current law already allows parents to opt their children out of specific content and that she was concerned about litigation against school districts. 

But a new bill, Senate Bill 434, has passed the Senate and will receive a vote in the House Thursday. 

Democrats have decried the parental rights bills, arguing they empower some parents at the expense of others. During a debate on the Senate floor Thursday, Altschiller argued that by overriding local school boards, the bills represent the Legislature’s attempts to “continue to chip away at communities’ authority and power.”

“This is antithetical to the New Hampshire way,” she said. “This is top-down governance. It will act to the detriment of countless communities, to the benefit of a select few parental preferences.”

Sen. Victoria Sullivan, a Manchester Republican, said the bills had a simple intention. “These are parents that are just doing what is right for their children to help guide their education,” she said.