Five years after New Hampshire launched one of the most expansive school choice programs in the country, the lawmakers who built it are beginning to ask a quieter question: is anyone watching closely enough how the money gets spent? According to reporting from the New Hampshire Bulletin, a bipartisan group of legislators is now pushing for clearer definitions of what counts as a legitimate education expense and for regular audits to confirm that the families drawing public dollars are actually eligible for them.
The shift matters because it comes from inside the coalition that created and expanded the Education Freedom Account program, not from its longtime critics. For Granite State families, taxpayers, and the private schools and tutors who rely on these funds, the debate over oversight could shape how roughly $40 million or more in annual public spending is tracked, justified, and protected from the kind of scandal that has damaged voucher programs in other states.
How the program grew this large, this fast
Created in 2021, the Education Freedom Account program lets a New Hampshire family redirect the per-pupil state adequacy funding that would have gone to their local public school and spend it instead on private school tuition or homeschooling costs such as books, tutoring, and approved programs. For its first several years the program carried income limits. Last June, Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a bill that removed those limits while imposing a cap of 10,000 students, a change that took effect for the 2025-26 school year.
The effect on enrollment was immediate. Participation jumped from 5,765 students in 2024-25 to 10,510 students in the most recent school year, nearly doubling in a single cycle. The program distributed roughly $4,911 per student in 2025-26, according to the state Department of Education. Next year the official cap rises to 12,500 students, and because certain students qualify for exceptions to that cap, total enrollment could climb even higher.
Spending has scaled with the rolls. In the 2024-25 school year, families using the program spent about $20.2 million and submitted more than 65,000 separate transactions to do it. State officials expect that figure to roughly double once the 2025-26 numbers are fully counted. That trajectory, supporters and skeptics agree, makes the question of oversight more urgent than it was when a few thousand families participated.
Republicans have consistently defended the accounts as a way to give children an exit from a public school that is not serving them well, and as a reflection of the principle that parents, not bureaucracies, should direct a child’s education. Democrats have countered that the money would be better spent shoring up the public schools most students still attend, and they point to a striking data point: in 2025-26, only 343 of the 10,510 participating students had attended a public school the year before, suggesting the program largely subsidizes families who were already private or homeschooling, though some students transferred in during earlier years.
A rebuke from an unlikely place
The latest momentum for oversight did not begin in a committee room in Concord. It began in March at a town meeting in New Hampton, a community that backed Donald Trump for president and Kelly Ayotte for governor in 2024. Voters there passed a warrant article asking lawmakers to limit the program to families “with demonstrated financial need” and to require “fiscal and educational performance reports.”
The resolution did not mince words about the 2025 expansion. “These changes added tens of millions of dollars in costs, while the program provides limited public information on how funds are spent or whether educational standards are being met,” it read. New Hampton’s measure is one of roughly two dozen EFA-critical resolutions to pass at town meetings over the past two years, part of an organizing campaign that Democrats launched a year ago. The difference this time was who was listening.
Sen. Tim Lang, a Sanbornton Republican who represents New Hampton and has long supported the accounts, treated the request seriously rather than dismissing it as partisan noise. “Many of us got these letters that our towns voted in their warrant articles about state funding,” Lang said. He met with Department of Education Commissioner Caitlin Davis and raised the oversight concerns directly, then carried them into the legislative process.
In April, Lang wrote to the State Board of Education on behalf of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, asking the board to begin a formal process to add two new rules. One would spell out more clearly what qualifies as a valid EFA expense and which vendors count as eligible education providers. The other would require twice-yearly audits to reconcile EFA participants against public school enrollment records, ensuring that no family draws an account for a student who is in fact enrolled full time in a public school. Lang described the rules as fixes for “two identified gaps in the EFA program.” Notably, the letter won unanimous committee approval, the kind of bipartisan consensus that has been rare around this program. As Rep. Carol McGuire, an Epsom Republican, put it during an Administrative Rules meeting: “That sounds like a reasonable request.”
Where the money actually goes
Part of what is driving the oversight conversation is how much discretion the current system hands to a single nonprofit. Families never touch the roughly $5,000 average grant directly. The money is held by the Children’s Scholarship Fund in per-family accounts, and parents submit expenses through a digital portal for the organization to approve and pay.
State law lists 14 categories of qualifying expenses, from tuition to textbooks to uniforms, but it also permits “any other educational expense approved by the scholarship organization.” That catch-all gives the Children’s Scholarship Fund the final say over what qualifies. The fund also vets which vendors may accept the money, judging whether a provider serves one of the state’s defined “core knowledge domains” such as science, mathematics, reading, writing, and the history of the New Hampshire and United States constitutions. Once the fund approves a vendor, neither the Department of Education nor the State Board can override that decision, and a rejected vendor’s appeal is heard by a commission whose members the fund itself selects.
The practical result is a remarkably wide range of approved purchases. Among the 65,523 transactions approved in 2024-25 were private school tuition payments, visits to the New England Aquarium, ski rentals in Campton, and assorted Amazon orders. The fund disclosed in January how much each vendor received, but not what individual purchases were for. For lawmakers asking whether the spending matches the program’s educational purpose, that gap between dollars reported and goods received is exactly the kind of ambiguity tighter rules are meant to close. The same tension over accountability and local control runs through related fights at the State House, including the broader school choice and education reform debate that has positioned New Hampshire at the leading edge of the national movement.
Why change will not come quickly
For all the bipartisan interest, concrete reform is not imminent. On June 11, the State Board of Education voted to reject Lang’s request on procedural grounds. Board Chairman Drew Cline argued that a petition to open the rulemaking process must state the nature of each proposed rule, the reasons for it, and the actual text, and that Lang’s letter had not done so with enough specificity. “I think we ought to just send this back to them and say, can you give us a little more clarity here on what you want?” Cline said.
But the door is not closed. Commissioner Davis signaled that the department expects to revisit the EFA rules regardless, because they have stayed essentially unchanged since 2021 even as lawmakers repeatedly amended the underlying statute. A yearlong audit of the state-run portions of the program by the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Assistant, which may be released in the fall, is anticipated to contain 44 findings, many of them about clarifying the rules. In May, lawmakers from both parties voted to expand that audit to examine EFA students’ New Hampshire residency and educational attainment.
“We are anticipating that some of those findings are going to be largely about clarifying different aspects of the rules,” Davis said, adding that the department expects to open up and review the rules within roughly the next year to align them with current law. That timeline likely pushes any substantial change to the 2027 legislative session at the earliest. Even so, in a policy area defined by years of acrimony, the willingness of supporters to invite scrutiny is itself a shift, one unfolding as Democrats work to retake one or both chambers of the State House in November and as Ayotte navigates her own intraparty clashes over education and enrollment policy heading into her reelection bid. “We are absolutely open to opening it up,” Cline said.
Separately, Republican Rep. Rick Ladd, who chairs the House Education Funding Committee, said last week that he wants to examine tightening the verification process for EFA students who receive additional special education funding, and suggested new legislation may be needed. Taken together, the moves point to a program entering a new phase, one where its champions are starting to argue that durable political support depends on demonstrable accountability. That calculation is sharpened by the broader budget and fee fights playing out as Ayotte and her own party spar over spending priorities in an election year.
What is a New Hampshire Education Freedom Account?
An Education Freedom Account lets an eligible family redirect the per-pupil state adequacy funding that would have gone to their local public school and spend it on private school tuition or approved homeschooling expenses such as books, tutoring, and programs. The funds are held and disbursed by the Children’s Scholarship Fund, and the average grant was about $4,911 per student in 2025-26.
How many students are in the program now?
Enrollment reached 10,510 students in the 2025-26 school year, nearly double the 5,765 enrolled the year before. The increase followed a 2025 law that removed income limits while setting a 10,000-student cap. The cap rises to 12,500 students next year, with some exceptions that could push total enrollment higher.
What oversight changes are lawmakers proposing?
A bipartisan committee asked the State Board of Education to adopt two rules: one defining more clearly what counts as a permissible educational expense and an eligible provider, and one requiring twice-yearly audits to confirm that account holders are not also enrolled full time in public schools. The board rejected the April request on procedural grounds in June but signaled it will revisit the rules within about a year.
How much is the program spending?
Families spent about $20.2 million through the program in 2024-25 across more than 65,000 transactions, and officials expect that figure to roughly double once 2025-26 is fully counted. A nonpartisan audit expected this fall is anticipated to include 44 findings, many focused on clarifying the program’s rules.
When could any changes actually take effect?
Substantial changes are unlikely before the 2027 legislative session. The State Board of Education has said it expects to open and review the EFA rules within roughly the next year, and legislative action would follow the release of the pending audit findings.
