NH's Paid Family and Medical Leave Program Aims To Increase Participation During Second Year

Dek: The voluntary system strives to reach a broader demographic

By Kelly Burch, Correspondent

A year into New Hampshire's unique voluntary Paid Family Leave and Medical Leave Program, questions remain about its ability to reach a significant number of workers, especially many of the people who need it most.

"Everyone is asking: Is this a viable delivery method,” said Kristen Smith, visiting associate professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College, whose research focuses on work and family policy.

Most states with paid family and medical leave, Smith explained, have a universal program where employers are required to participate. After Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed that type of leave program in 2019, lawmakers switched tack, passing the nation’s first voluntary paid family leave program, a system for which there is no prior data, according to Smith.

Participants in the state’s family and medical leave program are comprised of three groups: those who purchase insurance as individuals; those whose employers voluntarily enroll them in the program and state employees.

Last year, of the approximate 17,644 statewide participants, 8,800 were state workers, 9,000 were enrolled by 210 employers and just 644 were individuals.

“We’re hoping… that we’ll see those numbers go up,” said Rich Lavers, deputy commissioner with the state’s Department of Employment Security, which helps operate the system. 

The state is currently enrolling individuals who don’t have paid family leave through their employer during its annual open enrollment period which runs until Jan. 29. Workers can purchase their own plan through a private insurance company with premiums capped at $5 per week. 

The program is available to any workers who receive a W2 tax form, but it’s not available to most gig workers, Lavers said. That’s because reimbursement is based on hourly wages. Gig workers, who make up about 36 percent of workers nationally, aren’t paid hourly, so they don’t fit into the current framework of the program. To change that, the legislature would need to alter the laws governing the program, according to Lavers. 

The state Executive Council approved a four-year contract with an advertising firm in 2022 that allocates $1.9 million to publicize the program through social media, radio, television and other avenues, he said.

Smith said the state’s efforts seem to be paying off with increased public awareness of the program. Still, she added, with just under 3 percent of the state’s workforce covered by the program, “it’s going to fall short” of mandatory programs in terms of participation. 

In addition, the risk pool for the program may be skewed. For insurance to be profitable and affordable, the risk pool needs to be spread out, Smith explained. In addition to people who use their leave time, the pool needs those who are less likely to file claims.

“If you have a voluntary program, the argument is that only people who need leave will opt-in, and your risk pool will be unbalanced,” Smith said.

Early data show that may be the case in New Hampshire, especially among individuals who purchase plans themselves, rather than having plans provided by their employers. 

Last year, 80 percent of people who purchased individual plans were female and 60 percent were under the age of 45, Lavers said. 

This, along with the fact that 86 percent of claims among individuals were to care for a new child, indicates that individual leave policies are disproportionately purchased by workers expecting babies. 

“It’s dominated by young women,” Lavers said.

 “If we want to improve access and level this playing field, we need a program that’s comprehensive and inclusive,” Smith said. 

In addition to being voluntary, other aspects of New Hampshire’s program increase the challenge of reaching that goal.

For example, participants receive 60 percent of their wages for up to six weeks of annual absences from work to care for a family member or themselves.

Research shows that fathers are more likely to take leave when they’re reimbursed a higher percentage of their wages, Smith said. The 60 percent reimbursement rate under the New Hampshire program may make it difficult for fathers to take time off work, she said. 

The low reimbursement rate also impacts low-income people, who may not be able to survive on 60 percent of their typical wages, Smith added. 

Research from California, the first state to adopt a paid family leave program in 2004, shows that even when low-income workers have access to paid leave, they’re less likely to take it. In 2020, people making $80,000-$100,000 were four times more likely to take paid family leave than those making less than $20,000, according to the California Budget and Policy Center. 

Smith also worries about the current female-dominated distribution of individuals purchasing PFML policies. 

“If we have a program that has a concentrated number of women… that may reinforce gender stereotypes that women are the ones who take leave,” she said. That could reinforce the “mommy track”—the idea, supported by research, that employers are less likely to promote and retain women of childbearing age, worrying that they’ll spend more time off work as they raise families. 

Another challenge facing the New Hampshire program is that it doesn’t guarantee job security. If a person takes leave, but is not protected under federal Family and Medical Leave (FMLA) laws, they still risk being fired. That’s why it’s critical, Lavers said, that employees discuss their leave plans with their employer. 

"We stress with individuals, that they need to have a good line of communication with their employers,” he said. “The New Hampshire program doesn’t do anything to change job projection requirements.”

For the most part, he said, companies have been receptive to working with employers who want to take leave, and the employees who have opted into the program are glad to have it when they become injured, need to care for their aging parents, or take time off to bond with a new baby. 

“These life events that are the qualifying events for this program, they happen to all of us,” he said. 

The individual program is important for increasing access to paid family leave for workers whose employers don’t provide it. Nationally, about 25 percent of workers have access to paid family leave, but the rates are 12 percent or less among part-time workers and people working in lower-paying industries including hospitality, food service, and warehouse work, according to the Center for American Progress. 

Often, “the folks who need it the most are the ones who don’t have it,” said Smith.

To boost enrollment, California adopted a tiered reimbursement system that gives higher reimbursements to low-income workers. Such a system and increasing the amount of time that a worker can take would likely increase participation in New Hampshire, Smith said. 

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org. 

NH Educators give low marks to proposed educational standards changes

Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut during 2019 interview with The Conway Daily Sun. (Jamie Gemetti/The Conway Daily Sun)

The administrative rules, known as the 306s, are undergoing a once-a-decade update.

By Kelly Burch

In the wake of a report highly critical of proposed statewide educational reforms in the works for two years, local educators sat down for the first time this week with members of the task force overseeing the revisions.

When pressed for details on the Nov. 7 meeting and what it could mean moving forward, attendees willing to even acknowledge it occurred would only describe the session as productive.

Megan Tuttle, NEA New Hampshire president said she left the meeting feeling hopeful that educators’ voices are now being heard in the revision process. “(This) meeting was the time we were invited to be part of it,” she said. “If this had been done two years ago, I think we’d be in a very different spot today.”

The gathering came just days after the release of a 20-page report detailing criticisms from 176 state educators of proposed changes to the state’s minimum school standards, better known as the 306s.

The report was compiled by Christine Downing who this fall conducted seven workshops with state educators to review and critique the proposed changes. Downing is the director of curriculum and instruction in SAUs 32 (Plainfield), 75 (Grantham), and 100 (Cornish).

The report highlighted concerns the proposed changes, which proponents say advance competency-based learning, would actually undermine that approach while weakening local control of educational priorities. The revisions also don’t consider evidence-based research about best practices in education, the report contends.

In its conclusion, the report questioned “the motives and intent” of the New Hampshire Department of Education, Commissioner Frank Elderblut and the state Board of Education by “putting forth rules that include documented instances of contradictions, vagueness, and blurring of local and state control.”

Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut during 2019 interview with The Conway Daily Sun. (Jamie Gemetti/The Conway Daily Sun)

“Ultimately, it will be public school students who will pay the price for such callous actions should the Commissioner and State Board of Education choose to proceed forward with rulemaking,” the report said.

The 306s are part of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules and are currently undergoing a once-a-decade revision process. The Department of Education provided a sole-source contract in 2020 to the National Center for Competency-Based Learning, a nonprofit led by Fred Bramante, former chairman of the New Hampshire State Board of Education from 2003-2005 and longtime education policy maker in the Granite State.

Educators and others have criticized the revision process as happening outside the public purview and with little input from people who work in schools. The 13-member task force, appointed by Bramante, does not include any classroom teachers — a fact that drove Downing to ensure that educator input was heard, even when it was not solicited by the task force.

“That’s why I did what I did. I firmly believe the practitioner….voice was missing,” she said. “…I wanted to get the report out there and get it noticed, to get the voice of the educators on record.”

Downing has no official role when it comes to the revision of the 306s, and yet she has become one of the loudest voices advocating for educators’ concerns to be heard. Last November she was one of about 50 educators invited to give feedback on the task force’s proposed revisions at an event that Bramante’s group held in Laconia. She left with “grave concerns,” about the revisions, feeling that teachers needed more time to review the changes and provide professional input.

Downing took it upon herself to organize seven informational sessions for educators, mostly in September of this year, allowing them to review the 306 revisions and provide feedback. At those sessions, educators worked in small groups to provide 57 written responses to the proposed rule changes.

In October, Downing compiled the report summarizing those responses, which she emailed to members of the House and Senate Education Committees, as well as stakeholders including Bramante. As of Nov. 7, she had not heard back from any of those legislators, which she said is “disappointing.”

Downing’s analysis found that only 5% of educators felt that the revisions represented an improvement to the 306s, while 70% felt the rules “needed further changes.”

Downing identified three key areas of concern from educators. First, about the language used in the report, including the removal of the word “local” in many sections referencing school boards, which educators felt opened the door to chipping away at local control of education. One piece of educator feedback cited in the report reads, “It seems like (the rules) are moving from one haphazard body of language to another.”

Bramante acknowledges this worry, particularly about the word “local,” but said it has “questionable merit.” He said that the definitions section of the 306s clarifies that “school board” means “local school board,” but added that his task force may reinstate the word “local” throughout the document to address this concern.

The second major theme identified in the report is “missed opportunities to advance competency-based education (CBE) throughout public schools in New Hampshire.”

Downing emphasized that New Hampshire has been a leader in competency-based education. She worries that the 306 task force members are “so removed from the reality of what happens in our public schools that they’re actually going to do detriment to our system, (rather) than supporting our system.”

Finally, educators expressed concern about the lack of evidence-based research in “critical areas,” ranging from class size to equity policies.

Asked if he had seen Downing’s report, Bramante replied, “I think so.” He said he respects Downing’s input since she also supports competency-based education, but expressed concerns that other educators “want to go back to the old model.”

Downing vehemently denies that.

“No one wants to go back to the ’70s, ’80s, or ‘90s,” she said. “People are willing to move forward.”

Downing also expressed hope – something she says she has to cling to as a product of New Hampshire public schools and a lifelong educator.

“If I lose hope, I’ve lost the battle, and frankly it feels like a battle right now,” she said.

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.

Educators: Distrust and lack of transparency cloud discussions about benefits of competency-based learning

Courtesy, Office Of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen Department of Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, second from Left, visited Turn Cycle Solutions in Nashua on Monday, Jan. 8.

By Kelly Burch

New Hampshire is nearing the end of a more than three-year effort to revamp the state’s core educational standards. When approved early next year, these new rules will steer the course of public education for at least the next decade. In this continuing series of stories, the Granite State New Collaborative will explore what those changes are, how they came about and what they mean for the future of public education in the Granite State.

There’s no tongue in Fred Bramante’s cheek when he calls himself the father of the competency-based learning movement.

“I want to destabilize the 20th-century system,” he said. “I want to disrupt it. That has been my goal since 2003 when we first stumbled upon this thing [CBE].”

For the president of the Durham-based National Center for Competency-Based Learning (NCCBL), which received a $50,000 contract in 2020 to revise the current minimum requirements for public school approval, it’s pedal to the medal as he continues a decades-long push for competency-based learning, more commonly known as competency-based education (CBE). 

“I’m a ’60s kind of guy who was taught to question authority, and I like asking questions,” he said.

Bramante’s preoccupation with education reform dates even further back than his 2004 embrace of CBE. He twice ran for governor focusing on systemic educational change: first in 1996 as an independent, finishing third in a four-person race, and in 2000 as a Republican. On dropping out shortly before the 2000 GOP primary, Bramate told the Portsmouth Herald he had “no burning desire to be governor,” but that his passion was to transform education.

That passion translated into his role as Chairman of the New Hampshire State Board of Education between 2003 and 2005 where he helped spearhead the state’s pivot toward competency-based education, convinced its focus on student-led learning and learning opportunities outside the traditional classroom was the way of the future. Bramante says he’s the longest serving member on the board of education, with stints from 1992-1995, and again from 2003-2013.

Bramante’s educational bloodlines go even deeper. Bramante taught eighth-grade science from 1970-1976 in Stanford, Connecticut, he said. His four children attended public school in New Hampshire in the Salem and Oyster River school districts, although Bramante himself attended a private Catholic School, Central Catholic in Lawrence, Massachusetts. There, he graduated 206th out of the 212 students in his high school class–an example, he says, of what’s wrong with the traditional approach to education. 

“School taught me that I wasn’t very bright and life taught me school was wrong,” Bramante said. “They totally missed me. How many other kids do they miss?”

Atmosphere of distrust

As the high-profile lead pilot for Granite State CBE reforms, Bramante continues to face flack for how the process is being conducted, particularly involving issues of transparency and inclusion. He, however, is undeterred.

“Too many efforts around [educational reform] have crashed and burned,” he said. “This one is not going to.”

Others, including about 30 people who gathered at Concord High School auditorium on September 12, aren’t so sure. The topic at hand was proposed changes to ED306, also known as the 306s, an administrative rules document that lays out the minimum standards for public school approval in the state. Yet much of the discussion focused on the mistrust between educators on one side and the state department of education and the Bramante-lead task force revising the 306s on the other.

“There was a lot of skepticism about the whole process here,” Val Zanchuk, a businessman and member of the 13-member committee, told the crowd, acknowledging a worry that parts of the revision could “create loopholes for people who had an anti-public school bent.” 

That’s at the root of the mistrust and skepticism for many educators: a belief that the Department of Education (DOE), led by Commissioner Frank Edelblut, cannot be trusted to protect the institutions of public education. 

“The real issue at hand is the people in control of this decision-making have been explicit in what their goals are for education,” said Sarah Robinson, a Concord School Board member and education justice campaign director at Granite State Progress, a progressive advocacy organization

Lack of transparency about the 306 revision process and concerns that the voices of educators are not adequately being considered as compounding their wariness over the changes, educators say.

“The trust isn’t there,” said William Furbush, superintendent of Epping School District. Without trust, educators are always concerned about the DOE’s “end goal,” Furbush said. “Are they trying to undermine public education?” 

The breakdown of the relationship between the DOE and educators in the state has led to an impasse, according to Furbush. 

“The trust isn’t there, so it feels like everything is a fight and not a collaboration to find solutions.”

A lack of educator input

The NCCBL formed the 13-person task force that began working on the revisions in January 2021, according to a letter the task force sent to educators in June 2022. Task force members, appointed by Bramante, included business leaders, educational policymakers and consultants, and two principals. However, the group did not include any current teachers. In fact, most educators didn’t know the process had started until the letter went out nearly two years after the contract to revise the 306s was awarded, they say.

“Our state’s educators are our state’s experts in education,” said Nicole Heimarck, executive director of Reaching Higher New Hampshire, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on providing public policy resources around K-12 education in the state. “Their voice has been minimized in this process. Minimized at best.”

Bramante said that the task force “tried recruiting a little bit” to get more teachers, but “ultimately ended up doing a couple of things” to get teachers involved in the process. With that, he pointed to the work of Christine Downing, director of curriculum and instruction in SAUs 32 (Plainfield), 75 (Grantham), and 100 (Cornish).

Downing has held group sessions to review the proposed changes to the 306s with educators in the state. As of September 15, she had met with and received input from more than 160 teachers and administrators, she said. But when she first tried to start these focus groups in December of 2022, she “heard crickets” when she reached out to Bramante. Frustrated, she began collecting feedback from educators and ultimately shared it at a May public listening session held in the Kearsarge School District. Only after that, she said, did Bramante ask to see more of her work. 

“I am not representing the Department of Education, I do not represent Fred [Bramante]’s group. I just said I’m going to do this on my own as service,” Downing said. “I see how it’s been twisted here and there into different things.”

A revision process unfolding out of view

In the past, revisions to the 306s have been handled by the DOE, educators say. This time, the department contracted with the NCCBL, a nonprofit that Bramante founded in 2013, the same year his tenure on the state board of education ended. The NCCBL has the stated mission “to institutionalize real world, hands-on, learning opportunities for our students by serving as the prime catalyst in harnessing mentors at the local, state, and national levels.”

According to its most recent tax filing for the fiscal year ending Dec. 2022, of the NCCBL’s 10 listed key personnel, only Bramante drew a salary– $37,262. The NCCBL reported a total revenue of $49,000 that year.

The contract between the DOE and NCCBL is a sole source contract, meaning that it did not go through a competitive bidding process, so there was little, if any, public awareness about the proceedings.

“I think it would go a long way if you named the fact that this relationship—with the way the contract came through and with the way it’s been communicated—that that’s been problematic,” Tina Philibotte, the chief equity officer in Manchester School District, told Bramante at a recent Concord public listening session. She noted that most educators didn’t know the task force had been contracted until nearly two years into the process.

“I think that’s part of the reason why that mistrust is coming,” she said. 

Partly in response to criticism, the NCCBL began hosting 11 public listening sessions to inform the public about the proposed revisions to the 306s and receive feedback. Critics pointed out that the listening sessions were not well publicized, highlighting another frustration around the 306 revisions: the process happens largely in private and with little legislative oversight.

This has been compounded by the fact that the current revision process is the fulfillment of a contract between the DOE and the NCCBL, with no requirement for public insight. 

“This is not a legislative process,” Zanchuk, a member of the 306 Taskforce, said at the Sept. 12 listening session. “It was a contract. Our contractual obligation is with the DOE. It’s not a public process. It’s a private process.”

That comment drew ire from the meeting’s attendees, especially when Zanchuck and Bramante mentioned that the proposed revisions suggested by the committee have sometimes been “gutted” by the DOE as iterations of the document are shared between the DOE and the task force.

“It’s not fair to us as community members to know there’s this negotiation going on out of the public view,” said Zandra Rice Hawkins, who was speaking at the session as a mother of school-aged children, but who is also the founding executive director of Granite State Progress. 

The only required public listening session for the 306 revision will happen after Bramante’s task force delivers their final recommendations to the DOE sometime next month and the state Board of Education enters the rule-making phase, a 180-day legislative process, Bramante said.

“All this stuff [including listening sessions] we’ve been doing for the last two and a half years, that was not required,” Bramante said. 

In fact, he noted, the DOE doesn’t need to accept his task force’s recommendations–or the public input they’ve integrated–at all. 

“They can throw the whole thing out,” he said. “I don’t think they will, but I don’t know.” 

The end of a competency-based assessment

Still another flash point between educators and the state was the failed attempt to reform how student achievement is assessed in a competency-based system.

“You can’t measure a competency by asking a series of multiple choice questions,” said Carla Evans, a senior associate at the Center for Assessment, a New Hampshire non-profit that has contracted with the DOE to create assessments that are compatible with CBE..

To address this problem, beginning in 2004, educators, consultants and members of the DOE developed the Performance Assessment of Competency Education, or PACE. The assessment was designed to reduce the amount of standardized testing that students took in order to better align with competency-based learning. 

The program started in four school districts and eventually expanded to 20.

However, in March 2022 the DOE scrapped the program citing concerns over scalability, a move many educators felt was at odds with the department’s stated goal of advancing competency-based education in the state.

Although PACE and state assessment is not tied directly to the 306 revisions, the decision to discontinue a program that many educators had worked hard to implement further damaged the relationship between educators and the state.

Brian Stack, former principal of Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston and a member of the task force drafting the 306 revision, said there’s an “absolute trust issue amongst educators, educator organization and the state right now.”

“I would probably join some of the skeptics in saying I don’t always have the trust either, because there have been an awful lot of changes that have happened in the department over the past several years—lots of different things, not just dropping of PACE…” he said. “I would question why that is as well.”

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.