O P I N I O N
THE SOAPBOX
Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.
New Hampshire taxpayers have every right to be angry. While we are told the state “cannot afford” to meet its constitutional obligation to public education, tens of millions of dollars are quietly being drained from the Education Trust Fund to subsidize private, religious, and homeschooling families who were never in our public schools to begin with. And now, under a new Department of Education leadership team, we are finally seeing data that confirms what many suspected: the Education Freedom Account (EFA) program has grown into a budget-busting entitlement with shockingly little oversight and even less public benefit.
For four years, former Commissioner Frank Edelblut kept the details of this program shrouded from public scrutiny. What we now know is alarming. Only 343 students—just 3.26% of this year’s 10,510 EFA enrollees—actually left a public school to join the program. Yet the program will cost taxpayers $51.6 million this year and nearly $62 million next year, blowing past its budget by $26.7 million. The rest of the $51.6 million—up to $49.9 million—is subsidizing families who were already paying for private or religious education on their own.
That is not “school choice.” That is a brand-new state expense created without a single new revenue source to pay for it—money siphoned straight from the fund designed after the Claremont decisions to support public schools.
Even worse, the money is not sent to parents at all. It first goes to the Children’s Scholarship Fund NH, a private intermediary that takes its cut and then funnels the money to ClassWallet—a company whose early investors include Sinovation Ventures, a China-based venture capital firm flagged by the U.S. Department of Defense for participating in China’s state-directed technology acquisition strategy. States such as Arizona and Missouri have raised red flags about data security and foreign influence. New Hampshire has not.
The irony is that Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s own Executive Order 2025-04 appears to prohibit doing business with companies that have such foreign entanglements. Yet through a contractor-of-a-contractor arrangement, taxpayer dollars and sensitive student spending data flow straight into the system anyway. How many parents—EFA or not—want their children’s educational information routed through a company touched by a foreign adversary’s investment arm?
Oversight is equally troubling. A sample compliance audit of the program found a 25% error rate in approved applications—yet only the specific erroneous applications were reimbursed, not the proportional share of program costs. Meanwhile, the program’s dropout rate hovers near 20%, with thousands of students leaving annually—an outcome that would spark outrage if it happened in a public school.
Most damning of all is the simple fiscal truth: EFA spending overwhelmingly benefits families who were never part of the public school system. If a high-income household receives roughly $5,000 per child—a modest discount off their private school tuition—it effectively functions as a taxpayer-funded subsidy for families who can already afford elite alternatives. For some, it’s not a lifeline; it’s an Aspen lift ticket.
So when lawmakers insist the state “cannot afford” to increase public school funding, what they really mean is: We prefer to underfund public schools while subsidizing private choices for families who never used them.
That is not fiscal conservatism. That is not constitutional governance. And it is certainly not responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.
New Hampshire taxpayers should demand better. The Education Freedom Account program—sold as a tool for low-income families seeking better options—has morphed into exactly what critics warned it would become: a reverse-Robin-Hood scheme draining public resources to benefit the least vulnerable.
Accountability is not partisan. Transparency is not partisan. Protecting public education—our most basic civic promise—is not partisan.
It is simply what taxpayers deserve.
Representative David Preece represents Hillsborough County, District 17, in Manchester.
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