NH House Tables Public School Open Enrollment Bill in 2026

New Hampshire’s House voted 168-184 Thursday to reject Senate Bill 101, a charter-school-style open enrollment measure that would have let children attend public schools outside their home districts, then tabled the legislation for the rest of the 2026 session.

Twenty-one Republicans crossed the aisle to join 163 Democrats against the bill. That bipartisan opposition ended what supporters described as the closest the state had ever come to passing open enrollment legislation.

The defeat exposed persistent disagreements over how New Hampshire funds its public schools, and whether a market-style enrollment system would help families or hollow out already strained districts. Republicans who backed the bill argued it would strengthen parental rights and push districts to compete for students. Democrats said it would drain resources from communities that can’t afford to lose them.

SB 101 tried to answer the central financial objection that killed earlier versions. Gone were the mandatory tuition payments, under which a “sending” district had to reimburse any district that accepted one of its students, sometimes at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per child. That funding structure had drawn fierce resistance from local school boards across the state.

The new model worked differently. Rather than requiring districts to pay each other, SB 101 directed the state to pay receiving districts at least $9,000 per student, roughly double the standard state aid amount. That arrangement mirrored how New Hampshire funds charter schools, and it would have drawn on the state’s Education Trust Fund, which the New Hampshire Bulletin reported generates roughly a billion dollars a year.

Not enough.

Democrats argued the bill would still benefit wealthier families disproportionately, because transportation remained the responsibility of individual families. Without busing provided by a district, a parent in rural Grafton County, for instance, would need a car, a schedule, and time off work just to exercise the choice the bill was designed to create. That’s not a minor barrier in a region where many households depend on a single income.

Democrats also pointed to votes at town meetings this spring, where residents in multiple districts passed local measures to block students from leaving for open enrollment schools. Those votes, supporters said, showed that the public hadn’t asked for this change.

The bill did include some protections for receiving districts. A school could refuse additional students if accepting them would require hiring more staff. Districts could also cap how many outside students they took in. Proponents said those provisions addressed fears that popular districts would be overwhelmed while less-desired ones emptied out.

But critics said the bill’s structural design still created winners and losers in ways that would compound existing inequities. A district that lost students wouldn’t see its fixed costs, debt payments, or building expenses fall in proportion. It would simply have less revenue to cover the same overhead.

For Upper Valley school communities, those concerns aren’t abstract. Districts in Grafton County already operate with limited administrative capacity and tight margins. Several rely on state aid to cover a significant share of their budgets. A funding model that redirected state dollars away from those districts, even indirectly, would hit hard.

The New Hampshire Department of Education tracks per-pupil expenditures by district, and the gaps across Grafton County are significant. Some smaller towns spend well above state averages because fixed costs don’t scale down with enrollment. Open enrollment critics argued that SB 101, even in its revised form, did nothing to address that structural imbalance.

Open enrollment has now failed repeatedly in the New Hampshire legislature, and supporters face a harder path in future sessions. The tabling vote after Thursday’s failed passage effectively closes the door on SB 101 for 2026. Republicans who backed the bill will need to either rebuild the coalition or redesign the proposal from scratch before the next session, and the spring’s local ballot results suggest the political environment hasn’t shifted in their favor.