Posted on 03/17/2026 7:13:11 PM PDT by DoodleBob
A controversial bill to significantly reduce state regulation of home schooling narrowly cleared the House of Representatives Wednesday.
House Education Policy and Administration Committee Chairman Kristin Noble, R-Bedford, said the bill resulted from weeks of work behind the scenes with home-schooling parents and advocates from across the state.
“This does advance core principles of parental rights, educational freedom, and limited government intervention in family decisions,” Noble said.
State Rep. Muriel Hall, D-Bow, a retired educator, said the legislation would undo 30 years of collaboration to ensure students in home education have the same opportunities to thrive as those in public schools.
“The current requirements and protections for privacy are reasonable and appropriate,” Hall said.
Rep. Megan Murray, D-Amherst, further argued these changes could put the state in conflict with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which could threaten federal grants supporting these students.
“Such a change would disenfranchise students needing those services while putting millions of dollars, compliance, and access to services at risk as a result,” Murray warned. “The tax burden at the local level would undoubtedly rise as a result of a loss of vital funding.”
The final vote to pass the bill (HB 1268) was 174-166 with 13 House Republicans opposing it, …
All House Democrats opposed it.
The legislation would remove the requirement that parents have to notify school districts when they’ve decided to home-school their children.
The notification would have to occur only if a parent wanted their child to receive services at the public school, such as attending a specific class.
It would change from required to voluntary that there be an annual evaluation of a home-schooled student’s progress.
…
The bill heads to the state Senate.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
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This could get the communists into a tizzy...
we need govt to tell us what we need to know....about the covid vaccine...about dyes in food....about trans surgeries....about welfare fraud...
Rat Senate? If so it dies there. Rat Governor if so it dies there.
Nope. The entire state government is red, governor, house, senate, and executive council.
People consider NH a blue state because federal reps were cheated into office by not a significant number of votes.
It's not. It's republican, Live Free of Die, run.
When we homeschooled over 20 years ago in New Hampshire, I was glad to inform the district we were going to homeschool and why.
The incompetence of some of the elementary teachers was disgusting.
We were glad to have our kids tested by a certified teacher every year to ensure they were getting the education they needed. The always tested least least a grade level over where they were "supposed" to be.
The curriculum I wrote up the first year was just a list of subjects and books we would use to cover them. After that, the last official project for the kids was to write up their own curriculum for the next year and submit it. Most of the books were from the mid 1800s.
I became very good friends (and still am) with the assistant superintendent, who became a proponent of homeschooling.
One day he was telling me how frustrated he was with the teachers and administrators who were fighting him over some tests. He just wanted to "test the test" with a number of tests. They were afraid of how poorly the students might do.
I told him we paid to have our kids tested, so why not use them, and we would make it a school project for them to critique the tests for him. Saved us some money, they were the most tested students around, and he got his info on the tests.
Those two sequential statements appear to be completely contradictory. None of the dozens and dozens of homeschool parents I know would ever want to be forced to have a public school teacher test and approve how they were educating their own children. As a former New Hampshire resident, I am shocked by how liberal the state has now become. It might as well merge with Massachusetts.
Give homeschool parents a discount on the taxes they pay for public education
I should have been more specific.
A private school teacher.
But public would have been fine, just to rub it in their nose that a homeschooled student was ahead of their victims.
When the Fabian strategy of dismembering the education system was instituted in the early 1970s, and the “busing decision” was ordered by the same type of black robes now pestering all Trump’s actions, we immediately took our 4-,8-, and 10-year-old kids out of their schools...
Those schools, and the ones they were to need all the way through K12, were within walking distance of our home...
That is why we had moved into that neighborhood three years earlier...
We thought we were set for life...
However, the busing would have taken them 14 miles away into
a ghetto...
We enrolled them in private church schools ...
To this day, all of our grandchildren have never set foot into a government indoctrination asylum... Two became successful engineers, and one is now a doctor...
Most of the great-grandchildren are being homeschooled...
Hey Muriel, Guess what, we don’t want to collaborate with the establishment. We homeschool for a reason. That reason is to keep your grubby paws off our children.
I had that exact conversation about 25 years ago with a Michigan state legislator who was a co-sponsor of a bill to regulate home education. My family and I were in his office and I explained the facts of life to him. I told him that as far as I was concerned, the government should not know I exist when it comes to how I choose to raise my children.
“But, but what about kids who are neglected?” he asked.
I told him that you will always have outliers. The overwhelming majority of neglect cases are already known actors and are in the system.
And parents of neglected kids want the taxpayer paid babysitting services, not having them home all day every day.
The bill went nowhere.
Hooray for New Hampshire!
We moved to Maryland about 15 years ago. (Can’t wait to retire and get out of this #@*&hole)
Maryland requires home educators to either become a member of an umbrella school who oversees them or to have the school district oversee them.
We found an umbrella that is very hands off and only required one short meeting a year, often led by someone with far less experience homeschooling than my wife had.
The sickening thing we found was that the people of Maryland are so inoculated against actual liberty that they yeaned for the guidance of “professional educators.” We also see it in the church. The state has overwhelming authority here and people have lost the will to be free.
They’ve traded liberty for security.
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