Expanded right-to-try law would encourage more innovative, life-saving treatments

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Nine years ago, New Hampshire adopted a right-to-try law. It allows terminally ill patients to access medications that have cleared Phase 1 clinical trials but are not commercially available. 

Since that law passed, huge gains have been made in the treatment of rare illnesses. New Hampshire’s law has fallen out of date. A bill working its way through the Legislature this year could not only update the law but leap the state ahead of others, making it an incubator of innovative medical treatments. 

Right-to-try laws swept the country a decade ago as states realized the need to let terminally ill citizens bypass the federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) slow regulatory process. While trying to protect the broader public, the federal bureaucracy prevents terminally ill patients from accessing promising drugs. 

Right-to-try laws give terminally ill patients immediate access to promising treatments when they don’t have time to wait for a new drug to complete years’ worth of trials.

Today, medical treatments are advancing much faster than the federal bureaucracy can process them. The cutting edge of drug development can even involve tailoring treatments to an individuals’ specific genetic makeup. Such narrowly tailored medications might never go through the FDA’s years-long approval process for mass-market drugs. Because New Hampshire’s right-to-try law applies only to treatments that have completed part of the federal regulatory process, it doesn’t allow access to the newest, most cutting edge treatments. 

Rep. Lisa Mazur has introduced a solution. House Bill 701 allows terminally ill patients to give informed consent to try experimental treatments that haven’t gone through FDA trials. 

If a terminally ill patient has a condition for which there are “no comparable or satisfactory United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved treatment options available,” the patient could give consent to try an experimental treatment. If that consent is given, the provider could not be sued for harm that might occur to the patient, as long as the provider engaged in no willful misconduct.

Medical innovation is evolving rapidly, and the FDA’s approval process has not caught up. Expanding New Hampshire’s right-to-try law would do more than provide hope to terminally ill patients. It could make New Hampshire a destination for further medical innovation. 

When New Hampshire adopted its right-to-try law in 2016, it was the 30th state to do so. Only eight states have adopted laws like HB 701 that allow terminally ill patients and providers the legal space to try potentially life-saving treatments that are in the early stages of development.

Updating the state’s right-to-try law not only could save lives in New Hampshire, but it would encourage further medical innovation that could save the lives of untold others in the future. From both humanitarian and economic development perspectives, expanding the law could prove highly beneficial for the state.

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EFA expansion compromise achieves universal enrollment with a brake on growth

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Though expanding Education Freedom Accounts to all New Hampshire students is a top Republican Party priority for this legislative session, differences between three competing plans produced an impasse. For weeks, doubts grew about Republicans’ ability to expand the program even though they controlled the governor’s office and both legislative chambers.

On Wednesday, the House Finance Committee voted out a compromise intended to bring all sides together. 

The committee amendment to Senate Bill 295 would:

  • Remove the program’s income cap (350% of the federal poverty level). The program would be open to all New Hampshire residents eligible to attend a K-12 school.
  • Guarantee access to the program for current EFA students and their siblings, children with disabilities, and students with a family income of 350% of the federal poverty level or less. 
  • Cap EFA enrollment at 10,000 students for the 2025-26 school year, excluding the priority categories listed above. For subsequent school years, the cap would be increased by 25% if enrollment during the prior school year exceeded 90% of that year’s cap. 
  • Remove the enrollment cap if applications to the program have not caused the cap to be triggered for two consecutive years.

The amendment achieves universal program eligibility by lifting the income cap, but restrains the program’s growth by establishing a cap that can be raised only once a year, and only if the prior year’s enrollment got within 10 percentage points of that year’s cap. 

Practically, the cap is high enough that it’s unlikely to be hit in the first year or two of the program, if ever. Yet it still would prohibit the program from being flooded in a single year with a massive wave of enrollments. 

One issue with the amendment’s language, as drafted, is that the cap is triggered by measuring enrollment, but lifted by measuring “applications.” This wont matter if the cap is never triggered. But clarity on this language, either from legislators before passage or the Education Department after passage, would be useful. 

This compromise would give all sides a significant win while being easier to implement and manage than the version of SB 295 approved by the Senate. If passed, it would achieve the elusive twin goals of universal EFA eligibility with a restraint on program spending.

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Celebrate education freedom for all in Salem May 29

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Join the Josiah Bartlett Center, Americans for Prosperity–New Hampshire and EdChoice on Thursday, May 29th at 6:00 p.m. at the Artisan Hotel in Tuscan Village (Salem, NH) for a conversation about the importance of expanding educational freedom to every student in the state regardless of income, zip code or background.

You’ll hear directly from policy leaders, education advocates and local leaders about how EFAs are already changing lives—and how making them available to every Granite State student would improve educational opportunities for all.

This event is free to attend, and food and a drink ticket will be provided for all guests.

Event Details:

When: Thursday, May 29th at 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Where: Artisan Hotel at Tuscan Village 9 Via Toscana, Salem, NH 03079

RSVP by clicking here or the image above.

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Outdated auto inspection laws appear more related to culture than cold

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Every time legislators propose ending New Hampshire’s annual auto inspection mandate, opponents allege that inspections are common in Northern states because cold weather hazards (road salt, frost heaves) make them necessary.

In fact, most cold-weather states, like most states overall, don’t require annual auto inspections. Mapping the states that require annual inspections reveals that culture likely plays a bigger role than weather. 

Of the 11 states (by our count) that require annual auto safety inspections (not emissions inspections), nine are clustered on the Eastern seaboard, running from North Carolina to Maine. Only Hawaii and Louisiana are outside of this stretch of original American colonies.

Of the 10 coldest U.S. states, only three require any auto safety inspections: Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Not a single Canadian border state from Ohio to Washington requires auto safety inspections. No state West of Pennsylvania and north of Missouri does. 

There’s simply no truth to the claim that cold weather states adopt auto safety inspections while warm-weather states don’t. 

Auto inspection mandates are clustered not in cold-weather states, but among the tradition-bound states along the East Coast. From Maine to North Carolina, only Connecticut has no inspection mandate for passenger vehicles. West Virginia and New Jersey have biennial inspections rather than annual. 

The inspection mandates end, not surprisingly, in South Carolina, rather than Virginia. North Carolina and Virginia are closer to Maryland than the Deep South when it comes to the level of state regulations. 

Auto inspection mandates pop up again in Louisiana and Hawaii (annual), then Missouri, Colorado and California (biennial). 

The map suggests that culture and traditions play a more important role than weather in determining which states adopt auto safety inspection mandates. 

New Hampshire’s inspection law dates from 1931. Despite our reputation as a libertarian stronghold in the Northeast, New Hampshire’s political culture is one in which existing laws are changed, if at all, slowly and deliberately, not suddenly. 

Our political culture also is one that values re-assessing outdated laws and finding ways to maximize economic freedom. Thanks to a nearly century-old law, New Hampshire finds itself in the company of states like New York and Massachusetts. 

New Hampshire’s auto inspection mandate is stricter than California’s and New Jersey’s. It is on par with New York’s, Vermont’s and Massachusetts’. Famously left-wing and highly regulatory states including Illinois, Washington, Oregon and Connecticut are among the 33 states that don’t require auto safety inspections at all. 

When the state’s auto inspection mandate was adopted, automobiles were unreliable and had short life expectancies (about 7 years). Today, the average automobile is more than 12 years old and can be expected to reach 200,000 miles. 

The decline in both accidents and fatalities since the 1970s, along with the massive gains in auto safety and reliability, undermine the case for maintaining a 1930s law that only a handful of states still have—and that is not associated with improvements in highway safety, as we pointed out here. 

At some point, New Hampshire will end this mandate that has outlived its usefulness and that imposes heavy costs on motorists without any corresponding gains in safety. The question is whether the end will come before or after the law hits its 100th anniversary. 

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Teacher pay in New Hampshire is a casualty of high school staffing levels

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It’s Teacher Appreciation Week and Granite Staters are again being subjected to the claim that teachers here earn less than they should because legislators are stingy. Given current market conditions, average teacher pay in New Hampshire is lower than it should be to recruit the best candidates. But the state’s contribution isn’t the reason. 

The National Education Association puts New Hampshire’s average teacher salary at $67,170, $4,860 below the national average (not accounting for cost of living or benefits).

If we look at the two decades before the pandemic, total spending on district public schools in New Hampshire increased by 40% from 2001-2019, adjusted for inflation. Removing expenses such as capital and debt service, current spending per pupil rose by 74%, again adjusting for inflation. 

That’s the kind of increase that should lead to large leaps in teacher pay. But it didn’t. Average teacher pay in New Hampshire from 2001-2019 rose by only 12%.

Where did the rest of that money go?

The largest chunk was spent on hiring staff, particularly non-teaching staff. From 1994-2022, New Hampshire district public schools had the nation’s largest increase in staffing relative to enrollment, as we reported here.

District K-12 public school staffing in New Hampshire increased by 55% from the 1994 to 2022 fiscal years even as student enrollment fell by 11.2%. New Hampshire’s gap between staffing growth and enrollment—66.2 percentage points—was by far the largest margin among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Seven states had larger percentage increases in staffing, but they all had large increases in enrollment as well, which produced smaller gaps between enrollment and staffing than New Hampshire’s.

We just have to look next door to Massachusetts to see how this preference for more staff can affect district budgets.

As of 2019 (before schools received any pandemic funding), New Hampshire public schools had 18.2 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff per 100 students vs. 13.9 per 100 students in Massachusetts public schools.  For a school of 500 students, New Hampshire would have about 21.5 more FTE staff than a school of the same size in the Bay State.

Comparing New Hampshire to the national average as of 2019, a 500-student school in the Granite State would have 26 more FTE staff.

Despite large increases in total K-12 expenditures this century, even before COVID funding, districts have chosen to prioritize hiring, particularly in non-teaching positions, over instructor compensation.

New Hampshire schools are also staff-heavy on the instructional side. New Hampshire public schools employ more teachers per student than those in almost every other state. This also helps to suppress teacher pay. 

The NEA’s own report shows that New Hampshire has the second lowest student-teacher ratio in the nation at 10.5 students per teacher. Vermont is lowest at 10.4. Massachusetts is has 11.8 students per teacher, Maine 11.6, Connecticut 12.1 and Rhode Island 12.7. The national average is 15.1. 

Looking at these numbers, the media missed probably the biggest story in the NEA’s report: New Hampshire employs 44% more teachers per student than the national average.

With 4.6 more teachers per student, New Hampshire public schools spread their labor costs among many more teachers. That benefits teachers unions, which have more dues-paying members per school. But it leaves less money for each teacher.

Though teacher pay in New Hampshire has risen in the last decade, including through the pandemic years, inflation has consumed the value of those raises.

According to the NEA’s report, from 2014-15 school year to 2024-25 school year the number of teachers fell by 4.8% while enrollment fell by 11.4%. In that time, teacher pay rose by 24%. 

Again we see that enrollment declines far outpace staffing reductions. Maintaining high staffing levels can eat into pay rates. We also see that New Hampshire teacher pay raises, on average, have not kept up with inflation, though overall revenue for public schools has surpassed inflation this century. 

All of these data points indicate that school districts have received enough revenue to fund more generous teacher pay increases, but they’ve prioritized higher staffing levels instead.

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FAQs about EFAs: The basics

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In 2021, New Hampshire created Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs), a new way of providing families with access to a publicly funded education.  In addition to assigned public schools, chartered public schools, and tax credit scholarships, EFAs offer students the option of purchasing an education from a variety of state-approved vendors. 

EFAs are exclusively for New Hampshire residents who are eligible to attend a public school. To keep the program manageable, lawmakers initially limited eligibility to families with incomes at or below 300% of the federal poverty level. That was later lifted to 350%. This year, the governor and both chambers of the Legislature have proposed expanding EFA eligibility to include most (governor and Senate) or all (House) K-12 students in the state.

This brief answers a few of the most basic frequently asked questions (FAQs) about EFAs.

  1. Is an EFA a voucher?

    No. A voucher is a payment from the government directly to an education provider. With an EFA, the state approves a list of providers, but does not pay the provider directly. Each student’s state adequate education grant amount is deposited in an account managed by a state-approved vendor, in this case the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH. When a parent chooses a provider from the approved list, the parent submits an invoice to the Children’s Scholarship Fund for payment. The payment can be for tuition or tutoring services, or for individual educational expenses allowable by law under RSA 194-F:2. The payment is made from the Children’s Scholarship Fund to the vendor. Every payment is scrutinized for compliance with state rules.

  2. What is the purpose of EFAs?

    New Hampshire has long recognized that not every child thrives in his or her assigned public school. Legislators have created alternative pathways, including chartered public schools and tax credit scholarships, to give students options. Education Freedom Accounts offer the most comprehensive alternative pathway. They allow students  the freedom to choose from among numerous educational options, including public and private schools, community colleges, tutors and home schooling. The purpose of EFAs is to match students to the education that works best for them by empowering their parents to shop for that education among a list of approved providers. By giving families control over their state education dollars, the EFA program also will introduce competitive effects into public education, which has been shown in numerous studies to improve outcomes for students who remain in district public schools.

  3. Aren’t EFAs for lower-income families?

    EFAs were initially intended to be available to all, but an income cap was added as a compromise both to keep initial state costs down and to provide for a successful rollout of the program. Public education is not a means-tested anti-poverty program. No public school denies access to middle-or high-income families. Nor are state adequate education grants restricted by income. By design, any New Hampshire K-12 student, regardless of income, has access to state education funding by enrolling in a public school. Removing the income cap for EFAs simply aligns this education funding pathway with the eligibility criteria for district and chartered public schools.

  4. Would EFAs defund public schools?

    Opponents of school choice have long predicted that giving parents the option to leave their assigned public school would trigger a mass exodus that would collapse school budgets. That low opinion of district public schools is not shared by most parents. “As yet, the growing trend of giving parents public funds for private education hasn’t decimated school budgets,” Education Week reported last year. “Even in states where private school choice is open to all students, the overwhelming majority of K-12 students still attend public school.” A New Hampshire state representative opposed to EFAs acknowledged in legislative testimony this year that “very, very, very, very few students are actually leaving their public school district to take a voucher.” Data compiled by EdChoice show that at the start of 2025 only 2.2% of students nationwide participated in a school choice program. In Florida, which has the highest school choice participation rate, 82.5% of students have enrolled in a public school of some kind, whether a district, magnet or charter school. In Arizona, 86.3% of students have chosen public schools. Just as public schools aren’t a good fit for every child, neither are EFAs. The EFA program is designed to be an alternative for students who need it, not to replace public schools.

  5. Would EFAs leave public school students behind?

    Over several decades of school choice research, one of the strongest findings is that students who stay in public schools after the creation of a choice program demonstrate better outcomes. Multiple studies have found that district public schools respond positively to competition. (See the 123s of School Choice.) As a result, their students tend to exhibit improvements in test scores and other outcomes, such as college attendance and graduation. Using market competition to improve all educational options, including traditional public schools, is one of the primary purposes of school choice programs like EFAs.

  6. What accountability does the EFA program have?

    EFAs have multiple layers of accountability. First is accountability to parents. District public schools are heavily regulated and are answerable to local school boards and the state. The tradeoff is that parents then have less direct input into the curricula and policies of their child’s assigned public school. EFAs empower parents to tailor their children’s education to each child’s specific needs. If a provider fails to live up to expectations, parents can take their education dollars elsewhere.

    Second, the EFA program is administered by a vendor, currently the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH. That vendor won a competitive bid and the contract was approved by the Executive Council. By law, the vendor is subject to annual financial audits and must report any suspected fraud to the state. EFA funds may be spent only on authorized educational expenses. To ensure compliance with state laws and rules, the vendor is subject to compliance and performance auditing by the State Education Department. Though the vendor is allowed under state law to spend 10% of EFA funds on administration, it spends only 7.95%, which is lower than the state average for public school districts. National school choice organization EdChoice has twice ranked the EFA program as having the most effective implementation of any school choice program in the nation.

    Third, state law strictly limits EFA purchases. Parents may purchase only approved educational products from approved providers. The Children’s Scholarship Fund NH checks all purchases to ensure compliance. If non-compliant purchases are found, reimbursement is pursued.

Download the full policy brief here: EFA FAQs.

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A uniform statewide building code would speed development times and lower costs

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Home building is tough throughout New England, but Massachusetts gives its builders an advantage that builders in New Hampshire don’t enjoy. Massachusetts uses a uniform building code statewide. Builders there know exactly what every town’s code is because they’re all the same.

That’s not so in New Hampshire, where municipalities can tack their own rules onto the state building code. This random patchwork of building codes raises costs and slows projects.  

“It’s just all over the place,” builder Matt Blanc of Charlestown said. “Just getting things standardized would be huge for us.”

The local requirements themselves can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home or apartment building. That can be a particular problem for small contractors. 

“Some communities will require a full-blown commercial fire alarm system in an apartment with two units in it,” Blanc said. “That could be a $10,000-$20,000 cost.”

More frustrating are the surprises and delays. Towns can adopt new codes anytime, and builders don’t necessarily find out about them until construction has begun.

“We get into building stuff and the plans are approved, and then we’re ready for our first inspection and all of a sudden we’ll find out that local jurisdictions have some other requirements that we haven’t done and we didn’t even know about it,” Blanc said. “It causes project delays.”

And every delay adds to the cost of a project.

“When we have guys standing around not producing, it gets very, very expensive in a hurry,” Blanc said.

Even small builders can have projects in multiple towns at once. The variations can be a planning nightmare.  

“When you have it for 10-12 projects going on, it really adds up,” Blanc said.

That’s why New Hampshire builders are keeping a close eye on House Bill 428 and Senate Bill 94, companion bills that would forbid municipal amendments to the state building code. 

SB 94 was retained in the House Executive Departments and Administration Committee this week in the hope that the Senate would agree to pass HB 428. The House amended HB 428 one to allow local variations in administrative procedures, but not the technical substance of the code. 

Building codes are not the same as land use regulations (zoning rules). A building code is a set of minimum standards for building construction. Local governments often adopt amendments that set higher standards than the state code. And those aren’t always for safety reasons. Extreme energy efficiency standards are a trendy local code enhancement which can push already high home prices out of reach even for upper-middle-class families. 

“It tends to be things that some member of code enforcement heard about at some convention and thought it was a great idea and the town implemented it,” Blanc said.

Because the purpose of building codes is to establish minimum safety standards, the case for local boutique additions is not strong. A building code is a highly technical set of regulations of structural and electrical engineering. Allowing local variations does not enhance individual freedom, but limits it. The only enhancements localities can make are additional restrictions on top of basic safety standards.

As Matt Mayberry, executive director of the New Hampshire Home Builders Association, said in a Senate hearing this month, “I put my trust in 424 individuals to make those policy decisions for our state of New Hampshire versus a five-member town council or select board, who may be more socially driven than policy driven.” 

The National Multifamily Housing Council and the National Association of Home Builders estimate that regulations account for 40.6% of the cost of multifamily housing and that changes in building codes in the last decade are the single largest contributor, accounting fro 11.1% of costs.

Switching to a statewide standard building code would lower costs and speed development times for both residential and commercial development. And it would eliminate one of the advantages Massachusetts has over New Hampshire.

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Norm Major’s eternal advice: budget cautiously

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The House, Senate and governor are divided over the very foundation of the state budget. (No, not liquor outlet ghost drops.) Revenue estimates. 

Including adjustments for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2025, the gap between the governor’s and House’s revenue estimates exceeds $800 million (with all revenue adjustments, including the House’s removal of lottery revenue from the Education Trust Fund). Both sides insist their estimates are accurate. 

In the middle of this, former House Ways & Means Chairman Norm Major quietly passed away at age 91, on Tax Day of all days. Had he been back in his old saddle, he would’ve offered wise counsel, although his guidance and example are evident in the House’s lean budget.

Norm Major, the Josiah Bartlett Center’s 2023 Libertas Award winner, was the quiet hero of New Hampshire public policy during his years on and then heading the Ways & Means Committee. Budget after budget, Norm carefully analyzed loads of economic data to figure out how much revenue the state could expect to collect in the future. Woe be to those who tried to cajole him into raising his estimates so they could raise spending.

Norm held the line on state spending like Col. Joshua Chamberlain on Little Round Top. Wave after wave of spending requests would charge up the lightly manned hill, only to be repelled. Legislative leaders, lobbyists, activists, governors… none could break through. 

Norm was a supremely kind man. He didn’t tell people “no” out of meanness. Norm just lived in the real world, and he insisted that the state budget live there too. 

He called unrealistic revenue estimates “wishful thinking.”

In a 2016 Union Leader column, he retold the story of 2007, when legislators made the mistake of overestimating revenues for the express purpose of inflating spending.

“In 2007, we witnessed what happens when legislators disregard data, and choose revenue estimates that fit their spending needs, rather than choose spending limits to fit their expected revenue. 

“While the Ways and Means Committee worked diligently to develop appropriate estimates, a Democrat leader on the Finance committee asked us to “look to the sky” to identify a way to raise those estimates so they could spend more. The House majority at the time bowed to the partisan political pressure and adopted over-ambitious revenue estimates that led the state down a path of overspending. Then-Gov. Lynch was forced to call the Legislature back to Concord for a special session where millions of dollars in appropriations had to be cut or reallocated. When Republicans regained the majority in 2011, they were left with an $800 million structural deficit, which required a massive budget overhaul.”

Balancing the next state budget was disruptive because lawmakers had to fill holes created by irresponsible budget gimmicks. Our then-President Charlie Arlinghaus summarized in 2010 how the budget written with inflated revenue estimates had to be patched when the fantasy revenue didn’t arrive:

“Although the total budget increased over the last four years by $2 billion, the increase in general and education funds was about $700 million while state tax revenues declined slightly. That revenue decline put a lot of pressure on the state budget. Ordinarily, without the money to pay for it, spending would need to have remained flat as well.

“To keep increasing spending as if they had the money, legislators and the governor were forced to turn to three temporary sources for $597 million of one-time revenue. The largest chunk of temporary scaffolding came from the federal stimulus. Some stimulus money is meant for dedicated projects like paving. However, the current budget for FY10 and FY11 includes $351 million in state bailout funds to be used for whatever we wish. It goes away next year.

“The budget also includes $90 million in one-time state revenues like the sale of state assets. Obviously you can’t sell things twice so that revenue also goes away next year.

“Finally, the most dangerous thing we did was to borrow $156 million to plug what would have been a deficit including borrowing more money to pay the interest on money we borrowed in the past. As an added bonus, under state accounting, if you pay for a program with borrowed money it doesn’t count as spending so you can claim it as a spending cut.”

Norm, who served 26 years in the House, considered it his solemn duty to avoid putting the state in that situation. His loyalty was to the taxpayers, state employees and citizens who relied on him to lay a stable, reliable foundation for the budget so it wouldn’t collapse in two years, causing chaos and disruption. 

The next two months could give budget writers good reason to raise revenue estimates. That would be welcome, in no small part because that would indicate greater economic strength than current events seem to suggest. We’ll see.

The primary cause of large, disruptive budget cuts is the mismatch between revenues and spending, and the primary cause of that mismatch is “wishful thinking” about state revenues. To avoid the next budget ending in more chaos and disruption, budget negotiators should let themselves be guided by a simple acronym: WWND What Would Norm Do?

One thing Norm would do is advise, as always, that caution is prudent because caution today averts catastrophe tomorrow. 

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House Finance budget rolls back post-COVID growth in state spending

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Note: This analysis based on the Legislative Budget Assistant’s Surplus Statement published on April 3. Any adjustments made after that date will not be accounted for in this policy brief. 

A decade’s worth of state revenue growth, primarily from rising business tax collections, has fueled significant state spending increases since 2015, with a particularly large jump coming in the 2024-25 budget. When writing that budget, lawmakers included more than $850 million in new revenues. That pushed state budget growth well above the rate of inflation and necessitated spending reductions in the following budget cycle, should revenues level off.

And revenues have leveled off. Though revenues are only $6.6 million below budget through March of this year, House budget writers expect them to be lower in FY 2027 than in FY 2025. High levels of current economic disruption suggest that such cautious estimates are warranted.

With that in mind, House budget writers have sought to balance the 2026-27 state budget by clawing back state spending increases of the last few years. The budget presented last Thursday by the House Finance Committee does that and more. 

The House Finance Committee budget lowers state General and Education Trust Fund spending to almost the same level as the 2020-21 budget, erasing most of the post-pandemic state spending spree. 

The proposed budget appropriates $5.62 billion in General and Education Trust Fund spending. (That’s the portion of the budget funded by state taxes and some additional state revenues.) It then dedicates $546.85 million from lottery revenues to state adequate education spending. (More about this below.)

The $5.62 billion is not just lower than the current state General and Education Trust Fund budget. It’s also lower than the previous one and nearly as low as the one before that.

The 2020-21 budget spent $5.57 billion from the General and Education Trust Funds, according to state annual financial reports. The House Finance Committee’s $5.62 billion in General and Education Trust Fund appropriations is just 0.9% more than that.

The House Finance Committee adds in $546.85 million in lottery revenue, earmarked for adequate education grants. That lifts the total state spend from $5.62 billion to $6.2 billion. On paper, that is the same as the original appropriation for the 2024-25 budget. But actual spending has been higher. Based on actual expenditures, the House Finance Committee  proposal spends less in General and Education Trust Funds than either the 2022-23 or 2024-25 budgets, effectively wiping out post-Covid state spending increases. 

Download this policy brief here: House Budget Brief April 2025.

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It’s hard to restrain education spending when increases are ‘cuts’

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K-12 public school spending rises every year, whether enrollment increases or decreases. In this century, K-12 district public school enrollment in New Hampshire has fallen by more than 50,000 students, but spending is up by more than $1 billion, adjusted for inflation. 

How does this happen? The short answer is that local voters prefer to spend more on public schools, regardless of enrollment trends, tax rates or anything else. Contributing to these decisions, however, is an often overlooked annual ritual. 

Any and every measure of spending restraint, even those that increase school budgets but at a slower rate than proposed by a district administration, is portrayed as a “cut” that will devastate public education. It’s a rite of spring, and the media too often participate.

The current debate over Manchester’s school budget proposal offers a perfect example. 

The city school district has proposed a 2025-26 budget of $246 million, endorsed by the school board. Mayor Jay Ruais has proposed a budget of $236.5 million. 

School board members have attacked the mayor, saying his budget results in a “$9.5 million cut.” 

“If you actually cut the school district budget by $9.5 million, it’s going to be really painful,” one school board member said.

A resident who showed up at at a recent Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting said the mayor’s proposal contained “cuts will have a yearslong negative impact on the quality of education and supports our students will receive.”

The Union Leader story that includes these quotes contains the word “cut” 10 times. The story itself describes the mayor’s proposal as a “reduction” in proposed spending. 

Nowhere does the story explain that the mayor’s proposal represents a $2 million increase in school district spending. 

Manchester’s enrollment is 11,851, according to its state district profile. The district projects an additional 14 students next year along with an additional $11.7 million in state adequate education aid.

It’s reasonable to ask why a total budget increase of $2 million to cover an increase of 14 students ($143,000 per student) would devastate the school system. But that conversation can’t happen amid all of the name calling and attacks. 

The school board vice chairman said the mayor’s budget could lead to class sizes of 30-35 students. But the district’s average class size is 20 now. How would a $2 million increase in spending cause a 50% increase in class sizes?

This question, among many others, goes unasked.  

The Boston Globe’s story leads with this sentence: “Some school officials are warning Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais’ proposed $9.5 million in cuts to the city’s school budget could lead to layoffs, the reduction of services, or even school closures.”

It’s a $2 million budget increase, not a $9.5 million cut. But that’s how the reporting goes.

To its credit, the Globe acknowledges three paragraphs later that Ruais’ budget increases city school spending. It even reports the growth of the city school budget since 2023, something most stories on school spending never do. But the inaccuracy of the lead sentence, which matches the narrative of the school board members, creates confusion and misunderstanding. 

Even when news stories correctly report that a budget increases spending, they can still confuse readers. A WMUR story this week reported that Nashua’s proposed school district budget represents a 3.5% spending increase. But in reporting on the claims that it would cause large reductions in teaching positions, the story adopted the rhetoric of opponents, using the phrase “the proposed budget cut.”

Over in the Jaffrey-Ringe Cooperative School District, voters last month approved a genuine cut to the school district budget, voting for a $3 million reduction from the current year’s spending. 

The school board chairman there followed the customary script of insulting and demeaning the voters, just as Manchester’s school board members insulted and attacked the mayor. It’s standard practice, and it’s effective.

Any level of spending that does not match or exceed a school district’s proposal is met with attacks, invective and predictions of devastating educational outcomes. All proposals that total less than the district’s proposal are labeled “cuts,” even if they increase spending over the current budget. 

The messaging is so good that it usually tricks the press into portraying spending increases as budget cuts. Amid all of the shouting, not even the media, which ought to be scrutinizing elected officials’ claims, questions the budget math or the use of the term “cut” to describe spending increases, even ones that will lead to tax increases. How would a spending cut cause a tax increase? No one ever asks.

Districts might have perfectly good reasons for increasing spending. Those reasons should be given to voters and elected officials as part of a discussion that balances the interests of students and taxpayers. Those kinds of conversations are where savings, efficiencies and improvements can be found. Getting more for less should be a permanent objective, not an annual fight. But it’s hard to get there when even spending increases are called “cuts” and the press just goes along with the narrative instead of asking hard questions about spending.

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