Editor’s note: Tracking EFAs is a new occasional Monitor series that will examine New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account program from multiple perspectives over the coming months.
The vast majority of money from New Hampshire’s four-year-old school voucher program goes to a relatively small set of Christian-affiliated schools, a Monitor analysis found.
Nearly 90% of tuition dollars from the Education Freedom Account program — which lower-income families can allocate to any approved private school or homeschooling expense — was spent on religious education.
And a quarter of all tuition dollars was paid to just five schools, the analysis found.
As lawmakers seek to significantly expand access to the voucher program in the upcoming legislative session, the analysis — which combines spending data from the organization that administers the EFA program with enrollment and classification data from the Department of Education — provides a clearer picture of the primary recipients of millions of dollars of state money.
The program, which currently has 5,321 students and costs the state $27.7 million, has drawn criticism from Democrats who complain it sends government money to religious institutions.
“Up until 2021, we had a real distinct differentiation between church and state and now we have just blurred the lines,” Democratic Sen. Debra Altschiller said in an interview, referring to the year the program started.
Proponents of the program, however, cite recent Supreme Court precedents and argue that the First Amendment’s right to the free exercise of religion requires that all schools – religious or secular – have access to school voucher money.
“It shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s a religious school or a non-religious school,” Republican Sen. Ruth Ward said.
Of the 25 schools that received at least $100,000 during the 2022-23 school year, the most recent for which a funding breakdown was made available, all but one self-classified as either a Christian or parochial school, according to a Department of Education list.
During that school year, the 60 religiously-affiliated schools that received any funding through the program took in $5.65 million, or 86% of dollars allocated to tuition, while the 55 secular private schools received $914,000, or 14%. In total, $6.5 million went to tuition at private schools.
The funds the religiously-affiliated schools receive significantly outpace their enrollment: In 2022-23, 49% of the 17,554 private school students in New Hampshire were enrolled at religious schools, the analysis found.
The EFA program was hailed as a way to give parents – especially those with lower incomes – more control over their children’s education. Families who make up to 350% of the federal poverty income level – $109,200 for a family of four – can receive money to apply to their child’s private school or homeschooling expenses, which amounted to an average of $5,255 per student in 2023-24.
This money comes from the Education Trust Fund, which is funded via business profits tax, the meals and rooms tax, the state lottery, and several other sources.
Of the $10.4 million spent by families in 2022-23, the $3.9 million that was not spent on tuition went to a range of other expenses, including instructional materials and costs for summer, online, higher education, and special education programs.
The number of students who take advantage of EFAs is small – just 3% of students in the state are recipients this year – but the percentage has consistently grown each year and an ongoing legislative effort to remove the income cap entirely would cause the program to expand far more were it to succeed.
The Monitor’s analysis found that the share of the money received by religiously-affiliated schools has coincided with an enrollment spike for the highest-grossing schools.
In the five years since the program launched, the top 10 schools have cumulatively grown by 32%, according to Department of Education data, while total private school enrollment in the state has grown by 17% during that same period.
Laconia Christian Academy and Dublin Christian Academy – two of the top 10 schools – have grown by 76% and 74%, respectively.
The analysis found that EFA funding was highly concentrated among a few schools.
In 2022-23, among New Hampshire’s 131 approved private schools, 25% of the EFA funding went to just five of them: Laconia Christian Academy, Concord Christian Academy, Portsmouth Christian Academy, Mount Royal Academy, and Trinity Christian School in Concord.
Aside from Portsmouth Christian Academy, the third-largest private school in the state that year, none were among the top-10 largest schools in the state. Laconia Christian, which has the smallest enrollment of the five with 179 students making it the 34th largest private school.
All but one of the religiously-affiliated recipients of EFA funding was a Christian or parochial school. The lone exception was an all-girls Jewish high school in Boston called Bais Yaakov of Boston.
That school was among the 29 outside of New Hampshire that received funds. A total of $310,000 flowed to schools in other states, most of which were in Vermont, Maine, or Massachusetts, though one of which was a military prep school in Virginia.
Not all students who attend a religiously-affiliated school practice that school’s faith and the reasons families pick a particular school are multi-faceted, said Kate Baker Demers, the executive director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which administers the program.
“Families are choosing schools mostly based on geography, right?” she said. “What’s near you that’s a viable option?”
Derek Tremblay, the principal of the rural Mount Royal Academy, which received the fourth-most EFA money in 2022-23, said there are aspects of the curriculum besides religion that appeal to many families.
“They might not be seeking explicitly the religious element but I think they’re seeking the more traditional experience that resonates with them,” said Tremblay.
Slightly more than one-third of families who send their kids to Mount Royal are not Catholic, according to Tremblay.
“From what I have heard, some of the so-called religious schools are providing a standout, fantastic education for the kids,” said Sen. Ward, the chair of the Education Freedom Savings Account Oversight Committee. “They are not being indoctrinated in whatever faith that school has.”
Sen. Altschiller, who serves alongside Ward on the oversight committee, views the proliferation of state funding for religious education differently.
“My personal belief is that there is a separation of church and state, and I do not believe my tax dollars should be supporting religious endeavors,” Altschiller said.
Does your family use EFAs? We want to hear from you. Email reporter Jeremy Margolis at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.