On April 11, at the State Board of Education’s second public hearing on Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut’s revisions of the 306 Rules which govern New Hampshire’s public schools, Board Chairman Drew Cline gave all those present an amazing lesson in shapeshifting, the ability to change form at will.

For those who do not know, when he is not chairing the state’s Board of Education, Cline serves as the executive director of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank which supports Education Freedom Accounts, the name given to New Hampshire’s school voucher program.

Cleverly slipped into law through its inclusion in the state budget by Gov. Chris Sununu in 2021, the EFA program takes public tax dollars and directs them to parents or guardians to be used to home-school their children or to send them to private or religious schools. More than 80% of children who have enrolled in the EFA program were already in private educational settings. Prior to the implementation of the EFA program, their tuition costs were paid for without the use of public tax dollars.

In the words of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation published on June 30, 2021: “This (state budget) imperils the promise of public education for all: The new school voucher program will strip funding from our public schools and leave the most vulnerable children — the ones who rely most on the promise of public education — in schools with fewer resources, increasingly inadequate facilities and diminished opportunity.”

Moreover, there is virtually no oversight of the curriculum used in these private settings, nor has there been there has not been an accurate accounting of exactly how our tax dollars are being used. Taxpayers are simply required to pay the bill which to date amounts to $45 million. These are tax dollars which have been taken away from our community public school which serve about 165,000 students.

The initial April 3rd public hearing on Commissioner Edelblut’s 306 revisions resulted in a flood of negative letters and testimony. News coverage of the revision process, which is legislatively required to take place every ten years, reported that the current process had taken place largely out of public view and that the commissioner’s revisions do not reflect critical contributions provided by educators and other stakeholders originally involved in the revision process or those who participated in a subsequent series of public hearings.

During the New Hampshire State Board of Education’s second public hearing on April 11, Cline, Board of Education members and Edelblut witnessed yet another outpouring of grave concern from members of NH school boards, the curriculum specialist who has reviewed the revisions with hundreds of educators and members of the public, as well as citizens who have recently witnessed unprecedented attacks on their community’s public schools.

The response from Cline? Surprise and amazement at the negativity communicated in the onslaught of letters and testimony regarding the 306 revisions. Do the protestors not understand that the revisions are still a “draft” he asked, with a confused smile.

Hooey! It is Cline who shapeshifted into the role of an aggrieved party. It is Cline who does not to want to face the hard truth: The reason that the 306 revisions draft have brought forth such tremendous negative response is because the draft shows virtually no evidence that the contributions provided by so many educational professionals were ultimately included in the commissioner’s revisions. Instead, the 306 draft:

■Ignores the legislative oversight required by law and makes major policy changes, a responsibility of the Legislature not the Department of Education;

■Tempts local school boards to address taxpayer concerns about the rising costs of their public schools by eliminating class size limits while reducing the number of teachers needed to adequately meet students’ educational needs. Keep in mind that taxpayer concerns are fueled by the state’s refusal to adequately fund our public schools;

■Chips away at local control of our public schools;

■And swings the door wide open to the privatization of public education with virtually no public oversight of curriculum or ultimate cost to taxpayers.

On April 15 Commissioner Edelblut published a “word salad” of an op ed deceitfully claiming that his revisions include a “compilation of input from educators with years of experience” when it is eminently clear that this input was effectively ignored.

If you want to protect your community’s public schools which serve as a foundation of our democracy, then email your comments by Tuesday, April 30, to Angela.Adams@doe.nh.gov and ask that she share them with Edelblut, Cline and the members of the New Hampshire Board of Education.

Janet Ward is vice president of the League of Women Voters NH and co-wrote the organization’s History of Public Schools in the U.S. and New Hampshire, which is available at lwvnh.org. She lives in Hopkinton, N.H.