Who turns down federal money? Legislators in New Hampshire halt a $46 million charter school grant from DeVos’s Education Department
Members of the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee voted 7 to 3 on Friday to table the grant from the federal Charter School Program (CSP), with the majority Democrats saying they were concerned about the effect that the expansion of charter schools could have on traditional public schools at a time of decreasing enrollment.
Democrats won control of the state legislature last year, though the governor, Chris Sununu, and the state education commissioner, Frank Edelblut, are both Republican. Edelblut is a businessman and one-term state representative who home-schooled his seven children. Both men supported the grant.
Charter schools are financed by the public but privately operated, sometimes by for-profit companies. Charters enroll about 6 percent of America’s schoolchildren; in New Hampshire, there are 29 charter schools that enroll about 3,800 of about 176,000 students.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a big backer of charter schools, and she has said her chief priority is to expand them and other alternatives to traditional public schools, which she once called “a dead end.”
Recently in her home state of Michigan, the Democratic-dominated Board of Education voted to stop a $47 million CSP grant. It did so, according to board President Casandra Ulbrich, because the board had not given the state Education Department consent to seek the grant. And, as in New Hampshire, CONTINUE READING: Who turns down federal money? Legislators in New Hampshire halt a $46 million charter school grant from DeVos’s Education Department. - The Washington Post
