Today the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee made the fiscally responsible decision to leave the DeVos charter expansion grant on the table. With all of the uncertainty around what local school and the state budget will be going forward due to the pandemic, it would be irresponsible to commit to a doubling of NH charter schools, all of which would be an unknown cost to tax payers for years to come.
Commissioner Edelblut and Governor Sununu should be concentrating on shoring up the needed funds our existing public neighborhood and charter schools need in order to safely return in the fall and that local communities receive the added funds they were promised in this biennium’s state budget. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Commissioner Edelblut and Governor Sununu have focused more of their energy on diverting federal public education funds received under the CARES act to private schools rather than to the schools they were meant for in the law; the same ones who stepped up during the first wave of the pandemic to teach remotely, and the same ones they are now asking to come back in the fall.