House Veto Day: Wednesday, December 17 – Act Now!
On Wednesday, the House will convene to take up bills that were vetoed by Governor Ayotte, including:
- HB 319 – would make providing transportation for half-day kindergarten optional for school districts
- HB 324 – book ban legislation that would hamper students’ freedom to read while also exposing educators to potential criminal penalties
- HB 356 – making school board elections, partisan elections instead of non-partisan ones
- HB 358 – expanding the religious exemption for childhood immunization requirements
- HB 446 – making the Youth Risk Behavior Survey an opt-in, rather than an opt out survey
- HB 475 – would have artificially reduced default budgets due to mere turnover in filled positions
- HB 667 – requiring all school districts to show a computer generated or ultrasound video that shows gestational development of a fetus in health class
In order to override a gubernatorial veto, the House and Senate must each achieve the high bar of a two-thirds vote of those present to do so. While this is a high bar to reach, we can’t take any vote for granted—especially when attendance plays such a critical role.
As your communities get ready for local school board elections in March, we want to highlight in particular HB 356. This bill would insert partisan politics into local elections by requiring them to be run like state and federal elections where a candidate’s party is listed on the ballot. As the Governor stated in her veto message to the legislature, “Making these local elections into partisan fights will create unnecessary division between Granite Staters.”
Legislative Agenda Emerges as Most Bill Language Now Published
As we near the start of the 2026 legislative session, most legislative service requests (LSRs) have received an official bill number and bill language has been published online. While there could still be some bill changes or late filed confidential bills, here is a summary of the bill categories we’ll be focused on in the New Year:
- Collective bargaining rights
- School Budget Threats
- Further Privatization Attempts
- Culture War Bills
- Member and Students’ Health and Safety
- Open enrollment and school restructuring
- Bills Affecting the educator profession or day-to-day role of educator
- State Aid to Schools – School Funding
- Local ballot measures that negatively impact school budgets
- Efforts to address the Claremont budget crisis
- Certification requirement changes
- Other warrant article processes or local district governance changes such as co-operative school district changes
- Election law and campaign finance bills
- Health care legislation affecting the private insurance market and Medicaid
- Tax legislation impacting the education trust fund
- Administrative rule process legislation
- Administrative changes to the NH Retirement System
You can find all these bills on our legislative tracker for 2026 here. Next week, we’ll have a comprehensive review of all the top bills and how you can get involved to protect public schools!
Get Prepared for Petitioned Warrant Articles with Webinar on 12/16
It’s almost school district meeting season and that means it’s time to start thinking about how you can work to protect public schools in 2026 and beyond. Legislators have been busy making tweaks to state laws and creating new options for anti-public education activists to cut school budgets at the local level. We want to make sure you’re prepared to monitor and fight back against harmful petition warrant articles—at traditional in-person annual meetings and ballot votes in SB 2 communities.
Join NEA-New Hampshire on Tuesday, December 16 at 6 p.m. for a members-only webinar about petition warrant articles. Even if you don’t have a collective bargaining agreement up for a vote in the New Year, this is a critical opportunity for educators to learn about how to look for and combat potential attacks on your local schools that would negatively impact your students, your community, and your profession.
Registration is required for this webinar. If you’re unable to attend in person, a video recording will be sent to registrants following the event. This will be the first of two webinars, with a follow-up in January focused on how to defeat these petition warrant articles.
Questions?
If you have questions on any of these bills or ones not mentioned here, please feel free to contact Brian Hawkins, NEA-NH Director of Government Relations at [email protected].
