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Documents Reveal that NH Public Schools Used Taxpayer Funds to Bring in Group that Targets LGBQT Programming Towards Children
- Chris Thompson
- Aug 18
- 6 min read
Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a 3–4 part series examining New Hampshire’s public schools and their connections with LGBTQ+ youth programs. Future installments will explore the involvement of Dartmouth-Hitchcock, various charities (including the NH Charitable Foundation), and the University of New Hampshire in these initiatives.
NH Outright’s LGBTQ+ Youth Programs Starting in Kindergarten
New Hampshire Outright (formerly Seacoast Outright) is a non-profit organization founded in 1993 that serves, supports, and advocates for LGBTQ+ youth across the state. It has grown from a Seacoast-area into a statewide movement. Notably, NH Outright runs support groups for children as young as five years old. Its “Little Outrighters” program is specifically designed for LGBTQ+ kids in grades K–5, led by facilitators and offering activities for elementary-age.
In addition to youth groups, NH Outright’s Educational Outreach Team provides trainings and workshops to schools and community under the name "LGBTQIA+ Cultural Proficiency". According to NH Outright, the sessions introduce “foundational LGBTQ+ terms and concepts (gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, etc.)”. The trainings also share strategies for supporting LGBTQ+ individuals – for example, how to use pronouns and affirming language, what to do if a student comes out to you, and visible signs of including placing rainbow flags in classrooms.
Taxpayer-Funded Trainings in NH Schools
Public records confirm that taxpayer dollars have been used to bring NH Outright’s LGBQT+ training into multiple New Hampshire school districts. Documents show fees paid out to the organization for staff workshops. Below are three known examples of school payments to NH/Seacoast Outright:
Moultonborough School District (SAU 45): Paid $300 for a two-hour “LGBTQ+ Educational Outreach: Practical Allyship 101” training session on August 31, 2023. The invoice, addressed to the district (Attention: then-Assistant Superintendent Dolores Fox), details a presentation by “Seacoast Outright’s Cultural Proficiency Team” with the goal of increasing staff understanding of LGBTQ+ concepts and allyship practices.
Raymond School District (SAU 33): Paid $300 for a similar LGBTQ+ training held March 12, 2024. Correspondence indicates this expense was charged to a federal grant – specifically, Raymond applied funds from a Project AWARE mental health grant to cover the Outright training. Raymond’s purchase order and invoice confirm the session (2 hours in length) and fee, which was processed through the district’s federal programs accounting office.
Souhegan Cooperative School District (SAU 39): Hosted three Outright training sessions on October 6, 2023 (morning and afternoon), for a total fee of $900. Internal purchase orders show the cost was split between district budget sources (indicating use of grant funding to subsidize a portion). The trainings were tailored for school personnel across the SAU and titled “LGBTQ+ Educational Outreach: Educator’s Edition,” covering terminology, pronouns, bias, and inclusion strategies.
These dollar amounts underscore that public funds — local and federal — have been used to bring NH Outright’s programming into public school settings. Each of these transactions was initiated by school administrators without any known formal vote by local school boards or broad notification to parents, according to the documents reviewed.
Inside Outright’s School Training: Gender, Privilege, and Pronouns
NH Outright’s slide deck, used in “Practical Allyship 101 — Educators Edition,” is explicitly oriented to elementary settings and mirrors the group’s youth programming for “Little Outrighters (K–5).” The materials ask staff to build “shared language” for young students around identity and classroom norms.
A central visual in the deck is the cartoon-style Gender Elephant. The graphic is presented as a kid-friendly way to break identity into four parts—sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, and attraction/orientation—so adults can discuss each piece separately. The use of a cartoon elephant underscores that the training is meant to translate these topics for early grades, with simplified labels and shapes that resemble the visual tools commonly used in elementary classrooms.
The deck includes a slide titled “Identity Development in Young Children.” It tells staff that by ages 3–4 children start connecting gender to specific attributes and expectations for how each gender “behaves and looks.” It advises adults to model acceptance and to show “people of all genders” in different roles so children “expand their understanding of how people can be in the world.” The slide also points educators to the BBC’s “girl toys vs. boy toys” experiment, reinforcing the message that toy and clothing preferences should not be treated as gendered.
A companion slide, “How could they know? Common mistakes,” cautions teachers against saying children are “too young to understand gender or attraction.” It includes a “context tip” that the topic “is not about S-E-X,” and instructs that “clothing and toys do not have gender.” The guidance frames early-childhood classrooms as places where young students are “safe to be themselves,” and it places responsibility on staff to use affirming language with children in the primary grades.
Throughout, the materials emphasize terminology for adults to apply with young children—distinguishing “sex assigned at birth” from “gender identity,” introducing a spectrum of gender expression, and separating romantic from sexual orientation. Slides list multiple identities beyond the male–female binary and direct educators to use students’ chosen names and pronouns, positioning this vocabulary as part of everyday classroom practice.
The training also sets “group norms” for participants, including the directive, “What is said here stays here; what is learned here leaves here.” The session notes that it will use “queer” as an umbrella term. Taken together with the cartoon Gender Elephant as the recurring explainer, the deck frames identity concepts in a format tailored for adults who work with elementary-age children.
School Officials’ Close Collaboration with Outright
It’s not just through formal trainings that NH Outright has influenced public schools; some school officials have actively sought the group’s guidance in handling student issues. For instance, in June 2025, Dolores Fox, the Superintendent of SAU #23, directly emailed a NH Outright representative for advice on a sensitive matter.
“Looking for technical assistance,” Fox wrote, explaining that her district was having “trouble around name usage” in their system – referring to a student who appeared to have changed their name (and possibly gender identity) possibily without their family’s knowledge. In reaching out to Outright, the superintendent was essentially asking an outside advocacy group how to navigate a student’s secret name change within the school. This example illustrates the degree of trust some school leaders place in NH Outright when addressing LGBTQ+ student situations.
Another example of the group’s integration into the education network involves the North Country Education Services (NCES), a state-supported regional education consortium. NCES's board members include multiple SAU Superintendents and NCES included a multiple promotional blurbs about NH Outright’s trainings in many of its 2025 newsletters to school districts. An NCES board member (Dolores Fox, again) even stated in an email that “NCES had used the services of Seacoast Outright.”
When pressed for clarification, NCES’s director Chuck Patterson confirmed that while they shared information about NH Outright’s available trainings with their school community, no NCES funds were spent on those trainings and the topic never came up in NCES board meetings saying "NCES has not allocated any funds toward NH Outright trainings, nor has the organization been discussed in board meetings. The information in our newsletter was shared to inform our community about the availability of the trainings, so families who wished to participate could choose to do so."
Mr. Patterson did not directly address the question of "Does NCES believe it is appropriate to promote an organization that engages with children as young as 5 years old on matters of gender ideology?". One NCES board member, Leah Hulz of the Monroe School District , did respond when asked about NH Outright and NCES saying "I have not heard of this organization.".
HB2 compliance question raised in emails
Among the related documents is an internal email thread referencing HB2—New Hampshire’s budget trailer bill that includes restrictions on certain kinds of school-based instruction. In that exchange, staff explicitly asked whether moving forward with NH Outright’s materials and training would be “OK” under HB2, and sought guidance before proceeding. The fact that administrators raised the HB2 question at all indicates the training’s content triggered a compliance review, with personnel pausing to confirm whether the material aligned with state law before engaging with it in the school setting. It appears Raymond continued with the traingins despite the concerns.
