EFA expansion compromise achieves universal enrollment with a brake on growth

Though expanding Education Freedom Accounts to all New Hampshire students is a top Republican Party priority for this legislative session, differences between three competing plans produced an impasse. For weeks, doubts grew about Republicans’ ability to expand the program even though they controlled the governor’s office and both legislative chambers.

On Wednesday, the House Finance Committee voted out a compromise intended to bring all sides together. 

The committee amendment to Senate Bill 295 would:

• Remove the program’s income cap (350% of the federal poverty level). The program would be open to all New Hampshire residents eligible to attend a K-12 school.

• Guarantee access to the program for current EFA students and their siblings, children with disabilities, and students with a family income of 350% of the federal poverty level or less. 

• Cap EFA enrollment at 10,000 students for the 2025-26 school year, excluding the priority categories listed above. For subsequent school years, the cap would be increased by 25% if enrollment during the prior school year exceeded 90% of that year’s cap. 

• Remove the enrollment cap if applications to the program have not caused the cap to be triggered for two consecutive years.

The amendment achieves universal program eligibility by lifting the income cap, but restrains the program’s growth by establishing a cap that can be raised only once a year, and only if the prior year’s enrollment got within 10 percentage points of that year’s cap. 

Practically, the cap is high enough that it’s unlikely to be hit in the first year or two of the program, if ever. Yet it still would prohibit the program from being flooded in a single year with a massive wave of enrollments. 

One issue with the amendment’s language, as drafted, is that the cap is triggered by measuring enrollment, but lifted by measuring “applications.” This wont matter if the cap is never triggered. But clarity on this language, either from legislators before passage or the Education Department after passage, would be useful. 

This compromise would give all sides a significant win while being easier to implement and manage than the version of SB 295 approved by the Senate. If passed, it would achieve the elusive twin goals of universal EFA eligibility with a restraint on program spending.