Strafford County Republican Committee

House Bill 927 passed yesterday, which defines an “adequate eduction” and would include kindergarten. This is the first step in a process to have the State fund the bulk of education, rather than towns. Members of the N.H. Advantage Coalition, the N.H. Liberty Alliance, and the N.H. Parents for Educational Freedom rallied in protest of the bill.

From the Union Leader: “The conservative New Hampshire Advantage Coalition rallied before the session opened to urge lawmakers to reject the definition bill. They argued the bill will lead to an income tax and will rob school districts of local control.”

– Jim Forsythe, PhD

Strafford resident James Forsythe, PhD, tells of his testimony before the house finance committee.

The house finance committee met yesterday to hear testimony on CACR18, a Constitutional amendment that would say that the state must define and fund 50% of an “adequate education”.  The cost for an adequate education has yet to be defined.  I was there in person, and one house representative actually said that if the taxpayers knew the cost, they would never vote for this amendment, so they should wait until after this passes to discuss the cost. There were also several representatives that are openly pushing for a statewide income tax, and for the State to pay for 100% of the cost of an “adequate education”.  This would totally remove the local control over budgeting that we currently have.

Both Republicans and Democrats seemed to agree that we should target state aid to needy communities, but this amendment, and others proposed would force a huge increase in what the state spends on all students.   This makes it far easier for the education lobby to spend taxpayer’s money, since they can lobby in one spot in Concord, rather than have to go through the town. In other words, Representatives in Concord would be deciding how much we spend in Strafford, and tax us as they see fit.  The argument was that our state spends less per pupil than any other state.  But what they fail to mention, is that our overall spending, once you include local spending, is 16th in the nation (with $9,555 per pupil, cording to the NEA Table 5), and our performance on standardized tests is 3rd in the nation.  Local control WORKS.  The bottom performing states such as California and Hawaii have centralized control and spending that is being proposed in this amendment.

WMUR-TV covered the event, with some excellent perspective from a home-schooling mom.  A Czechoslovakian lady gave an excellent testimony, showing how State control of education leads us towards a more Communist system.  Tammy Simmons of The New Hampshire Advantage Coalition got to wrap up the day’s testimony discussing the potential tax impact of a Constitutional Amendment.

I testified to the fact that increased spending on education has not shown to improve the quality of education, and what is needed is more choice.  This was essentially testimony based on my previous Union Leader and Foster’s article of April 10, 2007.

I’d prefer to see any money spent by the state on an “adequate education” be given directly to parents to be spent as they see fit on public school, private school, or home-school.  I think a proposal along these lines could help reveal the Democratic agenda to get more money into the hands of the NEA and school administrators than to actually help families get a better education for their children.

Today, in an historic vote, the Democrat controlled House, aided by twenty-seven Republicans in name, passed HB 437, a Civil Unions bill despite overwhelming public protest.  This follows closely in the wake of the defeat of CACR I a resolution that would have put the question before the people as to whether or not they wanted to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

They did not want the people decide whether to put a definition of marriage into our constitution because they knew that they would indeed vote for traditional marriage. They really don’t care what the people want and are only interested in promoting their own agenda and the Democrat platform.  This is just one more instance in a growing list of liberal policies where the wishes of the voters are cast aside in favor of these politicians who know better than the citizens what our public policy should be and they will continue to reshape our culture and our way of life until Republicans are again in control and represent the true wishes of the people.

These are the Republicans who, much to our dismay, voted with the Democrats for civil unions.

Allen, Janet
Bergin, Peter
Brown, Julie
Case, Frank
Dokmo, Cynthia
Drisko, Richard
Elliott, Robert
Gargasz, Carolyn
Gould, Kenneth
Hager, Elizabeth
Holden, Randolph
Kidder, David
Lockwood, Priscilla
MacKay, James
Martin, James
Messier, Irene
Millham, Alida
O’Connell, Timothy
Peterson, Andy
Pilliod, James
Reagan, John
Robertson, Carl
Russell, David
Sorg, Gregory
Stiles, Nancy
Vaillancourt, Steve
Wells, Roger

Phyllis Woods, Chairman
Strafford County Republican Committee