2026 Legislative Session
The 2026 Legislative Session is taking place during a tough time for public education in New Hampshire, with bills that at once impose more requirements on educators and school boards and cut funding, asking schools to do more with less. The school-aged population is declining, the state is directing more of its limited revenues to private schools and education providers, and teachers are increasingly facing the threat of legal action.
The session began with the Reaching Higher team tracking over 300 education related bills. Although that number has come down as varous bill shave been voted Inexpedient to Legislate or sent to Interim Study, we find that it is helpful to organize the proposals into the following categories:
Headlines from the 2026 Legislative Session:
Exploring the Legislative Priorities:
Funding:
Adequate, sustainable, and responsible school funding is critical to student success. Throughout the Legislative Session two primary themes have emerged:
- There is a desire to express disagreement with rulings by the State Supreme Court beginning in 1993 that the State is not fulfilling its reponsibility to adequately fund public education
- The Senate has used an interesting manuever where they passed a bill but then immediately tabled it because it had fiscal impact.
Here are the bills we are tracking:
Vouchers:
In June 2025, NH's voucher program, known as Education Freedom Accounts, expanded significantly. As a result, some lawmakers have attempted to pass legislation to provide more transpanrency, oversight, and accountability. To date, 13 EFA bills have been killed, sent to study, or tabled.
Here are the bills we are tracking:
Local Control:
This category of bills represents a hodgepodge of efforts including efforts to pursue budget/tax caps, partisan school board elections, make it easier for towns to withdraw from coop districts, consolidate SAUs, and make the superintendent role an elected position. Despite each bills' specifics, they all haave the effect of erroding a communities' ability to build public schools that respond to local needs.
Here are the bills we are tracking:
Open Enrollment:
Open Enrollment has far and away been the biggest issue of 2026. As each of the three primary bills addressing Open Enrollment have moved through the process, educators, school board members, and families have weighed in with thoughts, questions and concerns, some times resulting in changes.
Here are the bills we are tracking:
Teaching & Learning:
Bills that affect teaching and learning this session will generally will not make teaching easier or the learning process more effective. With many efforts centering "culture war" issues, they are mostly hostile to educators and aim to increase administrative and legal burdens.