CONCORD, NH – Today, the New Hampshire House voted 177-160 to pass HB 1300, their latest attempt to arbitrarily cap local school budgets.
Today’s vote follows previous failed efforts to arbitrarily cap local school budgets, including HB 675 (which the House defeated in January) as well as annual school meeting votes across the state in March of 2025 to cap local school budgets. All of these initiatives fail to account for real costs like rising utility bills, health care costs, and special education services and would hurt public schools’ ability to provide a well-rounded education to all students.
Megan Tuttle, President of NEA-New Hampshire, provided the following statement after the vote:
“For more than a year, Granite Staters have overwhelmingly and repeatedly spoken up and voted against efforts to arbitrarily cap local school budgets. But some out-of-touch lawmakers won’t take no for an answer.
Instead of fixing our state’s broken public education funding system, these politicians are pushing yet another attempt to implement arbitrary school budget caps that will make it very difficult for school districts that are already underfunded to provide a quality education to all their students. HB 1300 fails to take into account real costs like rising utility bills, health care costs, and special education services.
We implore the New Hampshire State Senate and Governor Ayotte to put an end to this misguided legislation that will lock in the existing education funding disparities around our state.”
###
About NEA-New Hampshire
NEA-New Hampshire is the largest union of public employees in the state. Founded in 1854, the New Hampshire State Teachers Association became one of the "founding ten" state education associations that formed the National Education Association in 1857. Known today as NEA-NH, the state’s largest educator union’s mission to advocate for the children of New Hampshire and public-school employees, and to promote lifelong learning, remains true after more than 165 years. Our members are public school employees in all stages of their careers, including classroom teachers and other certified professionals, staff and instructors at public higher education institutions, students preparing for a teaching career, education support personnel and those retired from the profession.
