What the science says about food waste

By Michael McCord, Granite State News Collaborative

Just as New Hampshire has yet to run a comprehensive food waste characterization study, the same could be said nationally. A landmark 2023 EPA study laid out over three decades of research about the impact of food waste and its connection to methane emissions. The study is unique in part because, as the EPA acknowledges in its summary, “there is no other peer-reviewed national reference point for the amount of methane emissions attributable to food waste” in American municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills.

Some of the findings include:

• In 2020, food waste was responsible for approximately 55 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions in MSW landfills across the country.

• An estimated 58 percent of the fugitive methane emissions (i.e., those released to the atmosphere) from MSW landfills are from landfilled food waste.

• An estimated 61 percent of methane generated by landfilled food waste is not captured by landfill gas collection systems and is released to the atmosphere. Because food waste decays relatively quickly, its emissions often occur before landfill gas collection systems are installed or expanded.

• While total methane emissions from MSW landfills are decreasing due to improvements in landfill gas collection systems, methane emissions from landfilled food waste are increasing.

• For every 1,000 tons (907 metric tons) of food waste landfilled, an estimated 34 metric tons of fugitive methane emissions (838 mmt CO2e) are released.

• Reducing landfilled food waste by 50 percent in 2015 could have decreased cumulative fugitive landfill methane emissions by approximately 77 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents (mmt CO2e) by 2020, compared to business as usual. 

(Carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, or CO2e, measures how much total greenhouse gas has been released into the atmosphere, which includes carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide. Methane, according to the EPA, is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere)

In layperson’s terms, as food waste in an anaerobic (covered, minimal air circulation) landfill slowly decomposes, it creates methane-producing bacteria that is either captured through landfill collection systems or naturally released into the atmosphere as a gas. The best illustration is the often-told story of the lettuce head taking 25 years to decompose while it produces methane all that time. By comparison, food waste in a compost bin can take as little as three weeks to fully decompose. 

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

Solving New Hampshire’s food waste problem one step at a time

By Michael McCord, Granite State News Collaborative

Joan Cudworth had a burst of show-and-tell inspiration in the summer of 2018.

Cudworth, who was then solid waste supervisor for the town of Hollis, came to the select board meeting with a partial solution to tackle the rising costs of trash disposal. She wanted town leaders to fast-track a pilot program to cut down on the amount of food waste being sent to landfills.

“We were looking to reduce trash and taxes,” Cudworth said. “I knew it was a small step. but it was important to get buy-in from the select board.” Cudworth composed at her home and learned how little trash remained after the composting and recycling. She came to the meeting with a transparent, medium-sized bowl containing a week’s worth of food scraps from her house – lettuce, strawberry tops, radish tops, fruit scrapes, rice, egg shells, cucumber and potato peels. The show and tell worked.

Packalina, Hollis transfer station composting mascot

“I remember people were fascinated by the possibilities,” Cudworth said. The select board immediately approved money for two Department of Public Works employees to attend the Maine Compost School. By 2019, the pilot program was up and running and collecting around 50 pounds of food waste a week (local schools were already running their own compost programs) at the transfer station. Residents who stopped by were greeted by a composting mascot named “Packalina.”

Cudworth, who became the public works director in 2020, says the total of food waste collected now tops 200 pounds weekly. That may not seem like a lot but, like compound interest, it adds up – to 10,400 pounds annually, which means that the town of about 8,000 residents has diverted more than five tons of food waste from landfills while decreasing climate-harming methane production from food waste fermenting in landfills.

“We are still experimenting and still learning. We don’t know how many are coming to the transfer station or how many residents know about the program,” Cudworth.

Food waste a state priority

Paige Wilson, waste reduction and diversion planner at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services

Paige Wilson, waste reduction and diversion planner at the N.H. Department of Environmental Services, has been busier than normal since the state passed its first food waste ban last summer. The law will go into effect on Feb. 1, 2025. It is focused on entities that generate as much as one ton of food waste a week. That food waste will be prohibited from being sent to landfills. Over the past decade, lawmakers in the nearby states of Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut have enacted varying levels of food waste disposal bans.  

“Food waste is something we all have in common, and composting is a low-hanging-fruit solution,” Wilson said.

It’s also a solution that needs a major expansion of infrastructure. Wilson is the education outreach and planning person, and her job is to assist commercial and municipal organizations, so she sees firsthand that food waste diversion in New Hampshire needs a major expansion of public and private infrastructure for a more sustainable path.

“There are a lot of factors that go into a sustainable (food waste diversion) program: budgeting, staffing, feasible space” for larger-scale composting, she said. 

Another issue will be addressed in the coming year. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that state residents put more than 180,000 tons of food waste into landfills — about 24 percent of all waste. But no on-ground studies have been done to better approximate the actual amount. Wilson said more comprehensive studies have been funded and will be launched – by literally sorting through trash.

“We’ve never had a state (food waste) characterization study on the amount of food. We will do one now by literally hand-sorting through 250 pounds of waste to get data,” Wilson said. Because the state has made food waste a priority, a diverse constituency of summer camps, municipalities, hospitals, schools, hospitals, nursing homes and any organizations that generates food waste has heard the call and reached out to find out what they can do.

“What you are seeing is a huge resurgence of interest in solid waste and recycling,” said Rep. Karen Ebel, D-New London, the prime sponsor of the bipartisan food waste ban legislation and chair of the state’s Solid Waste Working Group. “I feel like we are making progress.”

In particular, she said, it was a positive step that 50 percent ($500,000) of the state’s Solid Waste Municipal Fund appropriated by the legislature to food diversion efforts will include staffing and grants. 

The cost of infrastructure

It’s not easy to come up with a solid estimate on the cost of building out a food waste recovery infrastructure.

According to Paige Wilson, “New Hampshire will need infrastructure investments all along the food recovery chain, but the costs vary so much depending on where you’re at in the chain. The price tag for buying a refrigerator at a food bank looks different than the costs of purchasing equipment at a composting facility. I’d say it’s going to take millions of dollars to build the needed infrastructure across New Hampshire, in order to reach our disposal reduction goals set in statute (25 percent reduction in landfill solid waste by 2030 and 45 percent reduction by 2050).”

Reagan Bissonnette, executive director of the Northeast Resource Recovery Association, agreed that it will cost millions, but patience, innovation and more legal requirements will be needed.

Reagan Bissonnette, Executive Director of the Northeast Resource Recovery Association

“Infrastructure money is not enough. Other states have found that without a landfill ban on some food waste in place, it’s difficult to have enough food waste supply to make an investment in infrastructure financially viable in the long term,” she said. “An example is the Waste Management Core facility in Massachusetts. Even with a statewide food waste ban in place, it took longer than they expected to get enough supply from businesses and others to get the facility operating at capacity.”

Vermont, said Wilson, is “a New England state to learn from because they’re in a territory right now that is unknown to the rest of us. A statewide food waste disposal ban that applies to everyone comes with a lot of learning curves, new systems, and innovation.”

Over the years, said Bissonnette, Vermont has implemented tiered food waste disposal bans over time. They started with banning disposal of food waste from large generators of waste (like hospitals and universities), then slowly lowered the generation amount until all food waste, even from residential homes, cannot be landfilled.” 

Making composting work

At its Kingman Farm research facility, the University of New Hampshire in Durham has one of the largest compost-creating operations in the state, and it has been operating since the mid-1990s. Colleen Stewart at the New Hampshire Food Alliance (which is part of the UNH Sustainability Institute), said UNH had one of the first campus compost programs in the country. In 2023, UNH dining halls sent 386,260 pounds of food pulp to Kingman Farm composting rows, which creates nutrient-rich soil. That soil is used by students to create crops for some of the produce served at UNH dining halls.

In a June 2023 UNH Today article detailing the composting program, Anton Bekkerman, director of the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at Kingman Farm, said “the program here at UNH really highlights that even without large investments into infrastructure and labor that a composting program can be implemented by the Granite State’s smallest towns and village to ultimately reduce waste and provide a nutrient-rich additive to gardens and farms.”

The topic of food waste diversion was front and center during two days of workshops in April hosted by the Northeast Resource Recovery Association. Reagan Bissonnette, NRRA’s executive director, said her Epsom-based organization has been targeting food waste diversion for the past five years, in addition to more than four decades of recycling educational efforts. She said about 50 people from municipalities and businesses from across the state attended the four workshops, which were co-hosted by the N.H. Department of Environmental Services and the Maine Compost School.

Bissonnette said among the many points covered at the workshops – which were free, courtesy of a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant – participants learned a few surprising truths about food waste:

• Most wasted food is generated by households (almost 43 percent), not manufacturers or retailers.

• In 2022, roughly 38 percent of the U.S. food supply went unsold or uneaten.

• Preventing wasted food has a bigger positive environmental impact than composting wasted food.

Composting 101: Participants at recent NRRA food waste diversion workshop

“One town concluded that they need to send a mailer to their entire town to effectively get out the word about their existing composting program,” she said.

The topic of food waste diversion will  be the focus of a keynote panel at the NRRA annual conference in Concord in June. Later this year, she said, NRRA will conduct its first bus tour focused on waste diversion programs at various landfills and transfer stations.

Citizen involvement

Not unlike Joan Cudworth in Hollis, Paul Karpawich was inspired to do something positive to tackle the climate change crisis as a lone citizen. 

“I feel that people can be overwhelmed about climate change,” said Karpawich, who had migrated north from Massachusetts and was living in southern New Hampshire town of Brookline when he began looking at the bigger picture of long-term sustainability. The veteran of the high-tech industry said he “kind of gravitated” to food waste diversion in part because “food waste is so prevalent in our society,” and it was something everybody could do.

Karpawich had no title and few contacts, but he persevered, and in 2022 created the New Hampshire Food Waste Diversion and Sharing Initiative with the help of small grants from the World Wildlife Fund and U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program is a collaborative effort between individuals, schools and towns to develop best practices that reduce food waste and prevent it from going to landfills.

Evan Ford, UNH Kingman Farm manager with compost pile in 2023 (UNH courtesy photo)

More importantly, he focused on elementary and secondary school students to get them involved early. “By taking small concentrated steps this can be a catalyst for students, schools and towns to create a long-lasting paradigm shift for a transition to a more sustainable future,” he said. He has seen the impact of schools institutionalizing their efforts, with a few school boards allocating budget funds for the pickup of composting loads.

The initial success of the program has led to more grants and increased ability to jump-start food waste diversion programs at schools. The initiative has spread from the elementary school in Hollis, the first participant, to schools in Northwood, Bethlehem, Hopkinton (where Karpawich now lives) and others. He said the educational aspects of the program (math, science and environmental awareness) have been matched by a remarkable level of dedication by students who get involved.

“When kids do this, they are very present, not looking at their phones. I have seen at the elementary and high school levels that they become very passionate and take ownership of the programs at their schools,” he said.

Find out more: NRRA offers a Waste Reduction and Diversion Toolkit, a list and links to almost 20 municipalities offering food diversion and composting programs, and a list of farms and pick up services serving New Hampshire.

The EPA is awarding between $10 million and $20 million in Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change grants for multi-faceted projects addressing a range of pollution, climate change, and other priority issues, including food waste diversion. This application period goes through November.

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

For the first time, education commissioner speaks publicly about minimum standards revision, but he faces skepticism

At meeting, Manchester school board members voice frustrations to Edelblut

By Kelly Burch-Granite State News Collaborative

MANCHESTER—After an hour-long public conversation with the commissioner of the N.H.  Department of Education, school board members in Manchester – the state’s largest school district–  remained frustrated by a lack of clear answers and unconvinced that proposed revisions to the state’s minimum standards for public schools, known as the 306s, will improve education in the Granite state. 

Despite that, the state Board of Education plans to finalize the revisions as soon as next month. 

“It’s problematic that [the commissioner] often said that the revisions raised the bar on education, and yet the feedback from hundreds of constituents all agree that in fact it lowers the bar,” said Sean Parr, a member of the Manchester Board of School Committee. “That’s a real problem, when there’s this big disconnect between that claim and what is actually in the revisions.”

The 306s are undergoing a once-in-a-decade update, a process that educators say has lacked transparency and resulted in a document that could weaken public education in the state. The Manchester school board echoed those points in a March letter announcing its opposition to the current draft of the revisions. The board invited Edelblut to Monday’s meeting to respond. 

“It’s important to acknowledge we’re not the only ones who are concerned about these rule changes,” Parr said at the Monday meeting. "Hundreds and hundreds of citizens have expressed the same concerns.”

After more than an hour of questions, James O’Connell, vice chair of the school committee, said he remains “distrustful of the process,” and asked the commissioner to express his commitment to the state’s public education system. 

“In the end, we want a great public education system, and Mr. Edelblut… you’re not always viewed as the greatest champion of public education,” O’Connell said.

In reply, Edelblut demurred. 

“I am a champion of children,” he said. 

Downplaying concerns

Throughout the session, Edelblut seemed to downplay concerns, saying, “This  is just one of those processes that can be noisy.” 

He said that some worries expressed in public comments were “not germane” to the discussion of the revisions. He also dismissed concerns outlined by Reaching Higher NH, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to education in the Granite State, as “generalities” that weren’t “actionable.” 

Most concerning to Parr, he said, was that “there was no guarantee from [Edelblut] that the public would see the final draft before it was submitted” for formal approval and implementation. 

The state board released a draft document on Feb. 18, and has since held public comment sessions, but has not made a revised document public. Despite that, lawyers with the Office of Legislative Services are already reviewing a draft of the document to ensure it complies with the law. 

“Process-wise, what actually might be revised at this point, because we’re all concerned about a lot of the changes there,” Parr said at the meeting. 

The commissioner deflected.

“The bottom line is we did not get answers to our questions,” Parr said after the meeting. 

In a follow-up email, a spokesperson for the Department of Education declined to say when the public can expect to see a final draft or public feedback that was collected, but added that the Board of Education “will adopt a final proposal maybe in June or July.”

At a Monday meeting, members of the Manchester Board of School Committee peppered N.H. Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut with questions and concerns about his department’s proposed changes to the state’s minimum standards for public schools, known as the 306s. It was the first time Edelblut has spoken publicly about the ongoing revision process. (Andrew Sylvia/Manchester Ink Link)

Class size requirements, equity and funding

One of the prominent concerns during Monday’s meeting was over the removal of specific class size limits. Edelblut argued that the new wording specifies that class size limits should be set locally, based on students’ needs and other factors. 

“We’re trying to say, ‘Let’s make thoughtful decisions about this,’” Edelblut said. 

Committee members pushed back, saying that with no maximum class sizes outlined at the state level, local factions on school boards could choose to increase class sizes drastically. 

“I am concerned that there could be another instance of a small ideological faction coming into authority in one district and significantly underfunding or changing policies and standards …” said Board of School Committee member Chris Potter. “In cases like that, do you think that these are truly adequate for our students?”

Potter added that he was particularly thinking about the town Croydon, which slashed its school budget by half in 2022, a move that was later reversed after community members advocated for a revote. 

Committee member Liz O’Neil asked how the state could evaluate class sizes “with fidelity” when no maximum size is included in the standards. Edelblut replied that districts would need to prove to the board of education that their class size decisions have “a logic model behind it.”

Edelblut also addressed concerns over equity and the adjustment of some language in the document. Around equity, he said that the draft of the 306s aims to close achievement gaps without wading “into the identity politics” by listing marginalized populations. 

“If I’ve got LQBTQ+ students who are struggling, I need to help them, but if I have LGBTQ+ students who are not struggling, that are succeeding, then I don’t need to group them together … ” he said. “The grouping needs to be focused around the students who are behind, not the students based on their other identity that they may have.”

Yet, to address concerns, the board is considering changing the definition of equity to include “individuals or groupings of individuals based on their identified needs,” Edelblut said. 

Finally, Edelblut clarified the decision to switch the term “certified educator” to “licensed educator” in the document, which he said was done to keep the language in line with state statutes. 

“People saw the word certified crossed out and maybe missed the fact that we had inserted licensure and maybe thought we had eliminated it, which is not the case,” he said. 

Committee members expressed concerns about language being shifted from “shall” to “may” –  changes that “open the door to suggest ‘may not,’” said committee member Julie Turner. If subjects including arts, physical education, social studies and electives are optional, the state may not be required to fund them as part of an adequate education, the subject of ongoing lawsuits in the state, committee members said. 

Edelblut replied that the formula for calculating an adequate education is outlined in statute, not in the minimum standards, but that answer did not satisfy the committee. 

“The funding concerns were not assuaged,” Parr said. 

In order for the 306 revisions to formally be adopted, they must be approved by the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR) after a final draft is submitted by the Board of Education. The JLCAR committee “has limited influence,” Parr said, but can reject rules for four precise reasons, including if the rules are not in the public’s best interest. 

“I think it’s really important, because what’s been established by the comments … is that the revisions are not in the public’s best interest,” he added. 

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

Lawyers and lawmakers assert the Department of Education is on the verge of violating the law

By Rhianwen Watkins. Granite State News Collaborative

New Hampshire’s state funding of public schools is the lowest in the nation, despite the state Constitution requiring the state government to finance an adequate education for every child.

The arguments over state school funding have raged in the courts since 1989, with no resolution. Local property taxes, which can vary largely from one community to the next, are still paying around 70 percent of the costs of running public schools.

Now, the N.H. Department of Education is updating its minimum standards for public schools, a process that occurs once every decade, and lawyers and educators assert that the department’s revised minimum standards will reduce funding even further.

The revisions, they say, water down the requirements for an adequate education and shift even more responsibility onto local taxpayers to fund public schools.

And, the critics assert, the state is ignoring rulings by the state Supreme Court that date back more than 30 years — rulings that ordered the state government to obey the state Constitution.

Especially concerned is Andru Volinsky, one of the lead lawyers for the Claremont case, in which the Supreme Court ruled school funding in New Hampshire was unconstitutionally low, and ordered the state to adequately pay for its public schools.

“This agency, the New Hampshire Department of Education, is going well beyond its authority in trying to adopt regulations that conflict with the controlling statutes,” Volinsky said. 

David Trumble, a retired lawyer who ran for state Legislature in 2022, told the State Board of Education April 3 that, because of the Supreme Court rulings, its revisions of the minimum school standards would be considered “invalid.”

Understanding state law

Trumble says the Department of Education is on the verge of violating a state law, RSA 193-E.

The N.H. Department of Education website  states that the department must “operate according to the duties and limitations outlined in New Hampshire statutes.” 193-E is one of the statutes listed.

This statute defines how a school must demonstrate that it’s providing an adequate education through both “input” and “output” accountability. 

“Inputs” are the elements that go into providing a well-rounded education, such as qualified teachers, good facilities, classroom supplies and resources, maximum class sizes, specific program elements required for each subject taught, and per-pupil operating costs.

 “Outputs” are the ways in which student achievement is determined, such as assessments and testing.

Until the Legislature amended the law in 2018, the statute required only one or the other-either input or output– when proving accountability. However, now the statute requires both.

“It is only through a combination of both input and output accountability that we can ensure that we are living up to the constitutional duty to provide an adequate education,” Trumble told the state board. “The proposed regulations eliminate and unravel these input-based accountability measures.”

In particular, Trumble pointed to changes that would remove maximum classroom sizes of the revised minimum standards, eliminate a requirement for certified teachers for arts, music, health and physical education, and changing the word “shall” to “may” when referring to elements of certain programs, making those elements optional rather than mandatory, and therefore removing state responsibility to fund those elements.

Trumble argued that removal of those “inputs” violates the 2018 update of RSA 193-E.

“Taken together, this set of regulations is a major change in educational policy,” Trumble said. “It replaces a statutorily required system of both inputs and performance accountability with a vague performance standard. It replaces our understanding of what a school is — classrooms with teachers ... mandatory curriculum — with vague performance standards and no clear replacement model of what a school would look like.”

Trumble added that the N.H. Supreme Court ruled in 1981 that government agencies, such as the Department of Education, can “fill in details” of statutes, but that they cannot change statutes. Anything an agency puts forward that tries to modify the law would be considered “invalid.”

Volinsky voiced similar statements, specifically in the change from “shall” to “may.”

 “It's pretty clear that in using terminology that's not defined and switching from the mandatory to the discretionary, (the department) is working to undermine the principles that come from the (Claremont) case,” Volinsky said. “And that's not the role of an agency. Agencies are designed to pass implementing regulations that follow the statutes, not that conflict with the statutes.”

Some members of the House Education Committee also spoke out against the proposed revisions of minimum standards.

“I can tell you that the Democratic caucus of the House Education Committee is extremely concerned,” said Rep. Hope Damon, D-Croydon.

“I am blown away by the degree of changes being proposed here. … This isn’t just administrative cleanup, or housekeeping to clarify rules. This is an absolute turn (in policy),” Rep. David Luneau, D-Hopkinton, said at the most recent House Education subcommittee meeting.

“One of the things that strikes me about all this is, where are the lawyers from the Attorney General's Office?” said Volinsky. 

“They should be, for everyone's benefit, advising the department and the state board that the things they're proposing violate the constitutional requirements set out in the 2002 Claremont decision, and are leading the state into another court battle.”

When asked about the legal requirements for the education minimum standards and specifically whether they are in compliance with RSA 193-E, Deputy Attorney General, James T. Boffetti declined comment. 

How did we get here?

In 1989, the public high school in Claremont, N.H., lost its accreditation because it did not have enough money to keep up with required safety regulations, let alone provide an adequate education. 

Funding from the state government was a fraction of the cost of educating students, and the city’s taxpayers did not have the means to make up the difference.

As a result, Claremont and four other low-funded N.H. public school districts sued New Hampshire’s state government, in a case known as Claremont School District v. Governor of New Hampshire. 

In 1993, the N.H. Supreme Court ruled that the state Constitution guarantees students a right to an adequate public education. In 1997, the court found that New Hampshire’s school funding system was so unfair — with tremendous disparities from one town to the next — that  it was unconstitutional. 

Overall, state funding was the lowest in the nation, providing just over 8 percent of total public education costs — so low that, if New Hampshire tripled its state funding for schools, it would still be the lowest. The court ordered the Legislature and governor to define what constituted an adequate education, and to pay for that adequate education with taxes that were equal across the state.

That has never happened. 

So, in 2006, the Supreme Court again found the school funding system unconstitutional. In response, then-Gov. John Lynch tried unsuccessfully to amend the state Constitution, to eliminate the requirement that the state government fund an adequate education for every child.

Decades later, state funding for schools remains highly variable from one community to the next. And, though the state funds now cover around 30 percent of public school costs, it remains the lowest in the nation for state education funding.

With the state’s education minimum standards up for their decennial revision, the topic of school funding has taken a front seat.

Commissioner’s response to criticism over funding

When asked about criticisms over funding, state Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said that he thinks there is lots of “misinformation” about the document and the revision process, and encouraged people to read the document for themselves before jumping to conclusions.

“We've received a lot of feedback from individuals who have not read the proposal. They only listen to what someone said about the proposal, which is not true,” Edelblut said. “We want their actual comments, not just them repeating misinformation talking points to us, because it's more difficult for us to respond to that, because it's not accurate.”

Reaching Higher, an education advocacy nonprofit, along with teachers union members, superintendents, and others in the community, including Volinsky and Trumble, have all attested that they’ve read the document and are speaking out against the proposed changes. 

Christine Downing, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the Cornish, Grantham and Plainfield school districts, also held a series of educator review sessions at which teachers across the state extensively read the proposed changes together and highlighted areas of specific concern.

When asked, Edelblut did not comment on allegations of alleged intent to remove funding, instead commenting on how he felt the process has been very “transparent” having had over 13 listening sessions and working with educators.

Educators including Downing, Megan Tuttle, director of NEA-NH, and members of Reaching Higher, have countered this saying they had to push to have their voices heard.

 “We were not involved as an organization until the end of last fall,” said Megan Tuttle, referring to the over three-years long 306 drafting process. “We fought to get our way to the table.”

 A follow-up email was sent to the commissioner, asking for him to comment again on allegations of removing funding as well as violating RSA 193-E, however he was unavailable to comment. 

Chairman Drew Cline was also contacted but unavailable. 

What’s next?

For the revised minimum standards to pass, they must be endorsed by the Education Oversight Committee and the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules. 

Legislators and community members are now waiting to see whether the Department of Education will change the proposed revisions based on feedback, or if the State Board of Education will decide to put the existing draft through to the committees for final approval in June.

Volinsky emphasized that people who oppose the changes should reach out to representatives on both committees, as well as the governor, to oppose their adoption.

A final draft is expected in May.

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

N.H. Educators voice overwhelming concerns over State Board of Education’s proposals on minimum standards for public schools

By Rhianwen Watkins, Granite State News Collaborative

Teachers, school superintendents and members of the public are criticizing the State Board of Education’s proposal for updating minimum standards for public schools, saying it would weaken education and reduce state funding, forcing taxpayers to finance further school costs. 

Since the board’s proposal was released Feb. 15, educators have been analyzing it during review sessions led by Christine Downing, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the Cornish, Grantham and Plainfield school districts. Many of their concerns were raised at the state board’s listening sessions on April 3 and 11.

At the meeting April 3, only two people spoke in support of the board’s update, one being Fred Bramante, a consultant hired by the N.H. Department of Education to draft updated standards for the state board to consider. 

Bramante worked with several New Hampshire educators to produce his draft, but the board’s Feb. 15 version made significant changes that altered its wording and removed certain sections. 

More than 15 educators and residents criticized the department’s document during the hearings April 3 and 11.

School Board concerns

Micaela Demeter, a Dover School Board member, said April 3 that the proposed changes would “walk back the state’s responsibility to define an adequate education, which then absolves the state of its future responsibility to pay for that adequate education.” 

“If this responsibility is largely left to local school boards, an adequate education may look different in each district, thereby exacerbating the deep inequities we know exist in our state at this time,” she said. 

This “absolution of responsibility” puts more burden on property taxpayers who are already funding more than 70 percent of local school costs, she said. 

Among objections from the Dover School Board, Demeter said, is shifting language from “teaching students” to “facilitating learning,” which she said is vague and could remove the expectation that qualified teachers must be the ones orchestrating classroom content. 

Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, in an opinion column published April 15 in the N.H. Union Leader, wrote, “These types of changes are important since they shift the focus to the ultimate objective — learning. This does not take away from the important work of teaching and instruction, but rather acknowledges that those are not the only way that our students are learning the essential knowledge and skills needed for success.”

Educators argue that the wording change would water down what it means to provide an adequate education.

Class size debate

Demeter said the Dover board also opposes eliminating caps on class sizes — a concern that educators across the state have echoed.

In Section 306.14 of the document, the words “class size,” along with a list of maximum class sizes for each grade level, have been struck from the standards. Instead, the document states local school boards shall establish “student-educator ratios” that are appropriate for each “learning opportunity and learning level.”

Edelblut responded to that criticism in an interview after the hearings.

“If you're teaching reading to a cohort of second-graders that are struggling readers, you're going to have a different class size than you are if you're teaching reading to fifth-graders who are proficient in reading,” Edelblut said.

“If you think about it, when you are embarking on an endeavor to teach students, the first question that you ask is not, ‘How many kids should I put in the class?’ The first question you ask is, ‘What am I teaching?’” he said. “The last question you should be asking yourself is, what is the cohort of students that I'm going to be working with?”

Educators across New Hampshire have raised concerns that removing the specific limits on class sizes, and asking local school boards to determine “teacher-student ratios,” could result in less state funding. In reality, they say, that means districts in relatively wealthy school districts could afford to keep class sizes low, while others that can’t afford an adequate number of teachers would be left with much bigger class sizes, and a less desirable learning environment.

“If it means that we have to go back to class sizes, that may be the case,” said Edelblut. “The board will make the ultimate determination.”

“Shall” to “May”

Greg Leonard, social studies teacher at ConVal Regional High School in Peterborough, said April 3 he worries the revised standards could cause “irreparable harm” to New Hampshire’s children, and said the state board hasn’t produced evidence that its proposals are built on solid research.

“Where is that research-based evidence that eliminating class size requirements improves student learning?” Leonard said. “Where is the research-based evidence that removing educator certification requirements improves student learning?” 

Brian Balke, superintendent of School Administrative Unit 19 in Goffstown, raised multiple concerns, including a wording change from “provides” to “may include” in reference to a list of components in the of Holocaust and genocide curriculum. 

“I don’t understand why that is,” said Balke, who chairs the N.H. Commission on Holocaust and Genocide Education.

The wording change from “shall” to “may” runs throughout the document, which worries educators, who say that, in legislative language, “shall” implies the program element is a requirement and “may” makes it an option.

Effects of past budget cuts

Chris Prost, a Croydon Planning Board member, testified April 11 to discuss the effects of their town’s past budget cuts. 

“I think for a lot of people the impact of these changes is very undefined, but our town got a glimpse into what they may mean for smaller communities,” he said.

In March 2022, Croydon’s state education funding dropped by more than 50 percent, a huge budget cut that resulted in elementary school curriculums and teachers being replaced by Prenda Pod Learning, which Prost as “online learning overseen by unlicensed guides under the direction of a licensed teacher who was maybe not going to be on-site.” 

That pod learning model was recommended by the N.H. Department of Education, despite it not having been used as the default education model in any town before, Prost said.

In an interview after the listening session, Prost said that, as a father of children soon to be heading into the public school system, he worries what the future of their education may look like.

Robert Malay, the school superintendent of Keene-based School Administrative Unit 29, told the state board April 3 that revising the education minimum standards is “perhaps the most important thing that you will do during your time on the board.”

School districts around the state are waiting to see if the State Board of Education will amend the proposal for state minimum standards, or forward it as is to the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules for final approval.

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

N.H. legislators continue to ignore three-year-old school-funding recommendations

A legislative commission’s report endorsed changes to the current system, but related bill remains sidelined

By Kelly Burch-Granite State News Collaborative

As decades of litigation centered on funding an adequate education for Granite State children linger on, New Hampshire lawmakers still have not addressed a potential solution outlined by a bipartisan commission they established over three years ago.

The New Hampshire Commission to Study Public School Funding, awarded half a million dollars to study the issue when it was created by the Legislature in 2019, spent a year exploring the state’s school-funding formula. Its recommendations appear in a report written by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy that was released in December 2020.

Since then, none of the recommendations outlined in the 2020 report from the Carsey School has been adopted, frustrating commission members who say the study provides a framework for increasing students' achievement, easing the burden on New Hampshire’s taxpayers and providing a more equitable framework for school funding. The report and accompanying legislation have gained attention amid ongoing discussions about adequate education funding, prompted by the state’s revision of the minimum standards for public school approval, known as the 306s.

“It is the most comprehensive, most integrated, most complete plan for public education funding reform … that the Legislature has seen for a long, long time,” said Bill Ardinger, a lawyer and Gov. Chris Sununu’s appointee to the commission.

“The commission report comes to a fundamental recommendation that the most important thing for public education policy in New Hampshire is for the state to measure and make sure that every child in every community has a chance for a good, quality public education,” Ardinger said.

The New Hampshire Commission to Study Public School Funding report ‘is the most comprehensive, most integrated, most complete plan for public education funding reform … that the Legislature has seen for a long, long time,” says Bill Ardinger, Gov. Chris Sununu’s appointee to the commission. Legislation that emerged from the report remains sidelined, despite ongoing court cases related to the issue. (Courtesy photo)

Redefining an adequate education

The biggest shift in the commission’s report is a definition of adequacy as the amount of funding needed to give each student in New Hampshire “the opportunity to achieve the average statewide outcomes.”

Right now, students in districts with higher poverty rates have lower academic success than the statewide average. 

“Students educated in poorest communities [have] the poorest educational outcomes,” said Bruce Mallory, senior fellow at the Carsey School and project manager for the Commission to Study Public School Funding. 

That’s a product of the current funding system, said Rep. David Luneau (D-Hopkinton), who chaired the commission and recently introduced legislation based on its findings. “How we define adequacy is contributing to the disparities in student outcomes across the state.”

About 60% of public school funding in New Hampshire comes from local property taxes. New Hampshire ranks last in the nation for the percentage of educational funding provided by the state, according to the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute.

Commission members found this system to be “upside down,” Mallory said. The poorest districts are paying the highest rate on property taxes to fund local schools, yet still aren’t able to fully fund education because the property values in those areas are so low compared to towns with median or high property wealth, he said. 

This disparity has garnered national attention. In 2022, the New Jersey-based Educational Law Center ranked New Hampshire the second most “regressive” state in the nation when it comes to distributing school funding. 

Bruce Mallory, senior fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy, was project manager for the Commission to Study Public School Funding. (UNH photo)

The wrong question?

Debates about the state’s role in paying for public school education center on two decisions in the 1990s by the state Supreme Court in a case brought by five school districts, led by Claremont, which determined the state has a constitutional obligation to fund an “adequate education” for all students. 

Last November, a judge hearing a different lawsuit brought by the ConVal school district ruled the amount of an adequate education must be at least $7,356.01 per pupil. That’s a substantial increase over the state’s current base funding of $4,100 per pupil. 

Yet commission members feel that ruling does little to address funding inequities in New Hampshire. 

“It’s not one-size-fits-all,” Luneau said. “We’re going to have to get out of that mentality to properly funding our schools.”

Ardinger agreed.

“I’m not sure in the ConVal case they asked the right question, or answered the right question,” he said. The state’s role, he argues, “should be to provide disproportionate support to those communities of greatest need.” 

Wealthy communities like Bedford don’t need the same support from the state as high-poverty districts like Franklin or Claremont, Ardinger emphasized, and treating all communities as equal just reinforces student achievement gaps across the state. 

“The state’s role must take into account the obvious differences among local communities in terms of providing aid and support to the communities with the greatest challenges,” Ardinger said. 

There is an example for this approach to funding.

“New Hampshire is not going to be the guinea pig on this,” Luneau said. “All we have to do is look one state to the south."

Facing similar litigation around school funding, Massachusetts adopted the Foundation Budget school funding formula. Under this formula, state aid is awarded based on need. For example, Lawrence, one of the poorest districts in the state, receives more than 90% of its educational budget from the state, while Westwood, a more affluent district, receives less than 20% from state funding. 

The system is not perfect. Low-income districts like Lawrence still spend much less per pupil than more affluent districts, according to the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. For example, in 2018, per-pupil spending in Lawrence was about half what it was in Cambridge, an affluent community. 

To address that, Massachusetts lawmakers approved $1.5 billion in additional education spending in 2021, with the express goal of closing student achievement gaps between poor and wealthy districts. The 34 neediest districts in the state will each receive an average of $25 million in additional funding by 2028. 

To Ardinger, the Massachusetts example underscores the need for an equitable — rather than equal — approach to adequate funding. He believes the idea that the state must provide a set amount of funding to each pupil is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to provide an adequate education. 

“To me, nothing could be worse than a rule that says the state … must provide the same amount of money per pupil in every community,” he said. “Something is terribly broken with that rule.”

Legislation based on the Commission’s report 

Although funding challenges in Massachusetts and New Hampshire have common roots, Ardinger says the Massachusetts courts explicitly called on the state to address inequities, whereas the New Hampshire courts “didn’t go that far.”

Without a clear judicial imperative, “the Legislature ended up slipping around and sliding around. It didn’t have that strong kick in the pants from the court,” he added. 

However, legislation based on the commission’s report has been introduced in the House of Representatives twice, most recently earlier this year as House Bill 1586. Representative Luneau introduced that bill, called the Foundation Opportunity Plan, and although it failed to advance, he plans to introduce it again next year.

The legislation defines adequacy in terms of student outcomes and distributes funds to ensure each district can provide equal opportunities for its students to achieve average outcomes. That means lower-income districts get more state funding. 

“That really unlocks the opportunity to have good outcomes for kids in Newport and Claremont and Pittsfield, [just] the same as in Hanover or Hopkinton,” Luneau said. “It’s breaking out of that uniform funding model and getting to a need-based funding model.”

Adopting the model faces barriers, including the stagnation of the current school funding system, reluctance from affluent communities, and the associated cost, said Dick Ames (D-Jaffrey), one of the bill’s sponsors. 

“One of the hurdles is the recognition that an adequate education is expensive,” he said. “We have to figure out how to fund it, and that is the larger challenge. I’m hopeful that we can find a way, but I’m not sure.”

More affluent communities — which generally enjoy lower property taxes — would likely see an increase in property taxes under the legislation. This includes the district that Luneau represents, but he believes that ultimately providing an adequate education to all New Hampshire students is critical for all constituents in the state. 

“At the end of the day, these are the people who drive our economy,” he said. “We need to make sure we’re doing something that’s equitable and fair for students in all these towns.”

The commission’s work was nonpartisan, Luneau said, but the recent bill was sponsored by four Democrats. Luneau hopes to work on the legislation with Republican colleagues over the summer and fall before reintroducing it next year. 

“That work will be bipartisan in nature, wiggling around some things to make sure we have strong bipartisan support,” he said. “We want something that cities and towns and school boards and families can count on for the next 20 years.”

There’s “a tremendous amount of wisdom” in the commission’s report and resulting legislation, Mallory said, adding, “I would hope all of the effort is not for naught.”

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

New Hampshire lags behind other states in dealing with greenhouse gases from vehicles

By Kylie Valluzzi, Granite State News Collaborative

Emissions from motor vehicles are the single largest source of greenhouse emissions in New Hampshire, according to the 2024 Priority Climate Action Plan. 

Yet New Hampshire, unlike every other New England state, has not adopted California’s low-emissions vehicle standards. Legislators rejected establishing those standards in 2023, and they show little interest in adopting them now.

Carbon dioxide makes up the majority of New Hampshire's greenhouse emissions, a primary cause of global warming. CO2 accounted for 92% of those emissions in 2019, a total of 15.8 million metric tons — and 46.5% of that came from cars and trucks. Vehicle emissions are also the biggest contributor to ground-level ozone, another greenhouse gas, which is created by a chemical reaction of nitrous oxide, volatile organic compounds and ultraviolet light, according to a report from the N.H. Department of Environmental Services. More than 63 percent of nitrous oxides and nearly one-third of volatile organic compounds are produced by vehicle emissions.

If heat-trapping emissions like those continue at the current rate, New Hampshire’s climate is likely to be more like South Carolina’s by 2050, according to The Nature Conservancy. 

Nationally in 2019, transportation accounted for 33% of greenhouse gas emissions, and so could be one of the biggest parts of the solution to the climate crisis. But while other states have acted with urgency, New Hampshire has lagged, even though 45.9% of N.H. greenhouse gases were caused by transportation.

What are California’s low-emissions vehicle standards?

California has unique authority to set its own emission standards because it adopted vehicle regulations that preceded the federal Clean Air Act of 1970, prompted by air-quality problems related largely to motor vehicles. Although states other than California are not permitted to develop their own emissions standards, Section 177 of the federal Clean Air Act authorizes other states to adopt California’s standards that  are tougher than federal requirements. 

So far, 12 states have adopted California’s standards – every New England state except New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.

Has NH considered adopting CALEV?

When it comes to CALEV legislation in the Northeast, “we’re the donut hole,” said state Rep. Rebecca McWilliams, D-Concord. She was the primary sponsor of House Bill 92, which last year came within 25 votes of being passed by the N.H. House of Representatives.

The bill would have set “innovative vehicle emissions standards” under Section 177 of the Clean Air Act. 

According to the introduction to HB92, vehicles sold in New Hampshire already comply with the California emissions standards because federal and California standards have been harmonized through 2025. However, consumers cannot benefit from the eight-year, 80,000-mile extended warranty provisions of the California standards because New Hampshire has not formally adopted the standards. The extended warranty would cover emissions-related component repairs — such as  catalytic converters, transmission control modules, powertrain control modules and/or engine control units — for vehicles up to eight years old or up to 80,000 miles, whichever came first. 

And, the introduction states, New Hampshire car dealers cannot obtain some types of vehicles because manufacturers allocate them only to CALEV states, thus limiting consumer choice of these vehicles. Further, the bill states, adopting California’s standards would allow New Hampshire to benefit from reduced emissions after 2025, when the federal and California emissions standards will no longer be in alignment. 

The bill, introduced in December 2022, came within 25 votes of passing in the House but met strong Republican opposition and ultimately failed, 194-171, in March 2023. Republicans made up 187 of the nays; the others were six Democrats and one independent.

House Republicans contacted for this report did not comment on their decision to turn down the bill. But in a statement issued following the March 9, 2023 vote,  Rep. Doug Thomas, R-Rockingham, called the bill “extremist legislation.” 

“We should let the free market dictate which cars consumers purchase,” he said.

During that March 9 House session, Thomas said, “We don’t need this amendment. For one thing, it’s not ready, it’s redundant; we have a lot of studies out there already to provide the same information. Please, we don’t need this amendment.”

Rep. McWilliams said members of the N.H. Automobile Dealers Association overwhelmingly want to join CALEV standards because now it’s difficult for them to get electric vehicles and hybrids to sell — those cars are going to surrounding states that have already adopted CALEV standards. Manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors are moving in the direction of EVs, and dealers want to stay abreast of market changes, she said.

However, Dan Bennett, president of the N.H. Automobile Dealers Association, wouldn’t go so far as to endorse HB92. Rather, he said, “NHADA believes that incentivizing behavior, especially given the natural market demand for hybrid and fully-electric vehicles, would be more impactful on lowering emissions without creating new government mandates.”

Beyond the ranks of car dealers, some companies already offer rebates that help make electric vehicles more affordable. The New Hampshire Electric Co-Op, for example, offers an incentive to ratepayers for installing up to two Level 2 or larger charging stations at their homes – they usually cost between $400 and $700. While the incentive is up to $300 per charging station  and $600 per customer, the installation costs can be considerably higher, depending on the age of the home, available amps and location of the charger in relation to the circuit box. 

In addition, EV buyers may qualify for a federal tax break of up to $7,500 if they buy a new, qualified plug-in EV or fuel cell electric vehicle. 

What’s going on in other states?

Nearby states that have adopted California’s regulations report economic benefits from adopting the CALEV standards.

For instance, Vermont adopted CALEV standards in 1996. According to Drive Electric Vermont, a statewide public-private partnership of policymakers, industry leaders and citizens working to accelerate transportation electrification, $1.1 billion was spent in Vermont on taxable gasoline and diesel sales in 2010. Had that travel had been  powered by electricity, the cost would have been $275 million, saving over $800 million in one year, according to the organization’s website.

“Those funds and a large portion of the electricity cost would have remained in Vermont and with consumers,” the website reads. 

Going electric also keeps money in consumers’ pockets, studies say. On average, rural Vermont drivers saved $519 in 2018 by switching from gasoline to electricity, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. And according to the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, the average total cost of ownership over 10 years for an electric all-wheel-drive SUV crossover is $3,300 cheaper than the gasoline version of the same vehicle.

As of January 2024, there were 12,754 EVs in the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles registration database, up 44% from 2023. In 2019, there were 2,985 EVs registered in the database. 

Future of transportation emissions in New Hampshire

In another effort to encourage Granite Staters to buy electric, Rep. McWilliams introduced HB1472 in February of this year, a “cash on the hood” program that would give point-of-sale rebates to EV buyers. The bill, which would dedicate $3 million from proceeds from the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency Fund, has been postponed indefinitely.

“It’s about making the marketplace a little bit more financially viable for people who would consider switching,” she said of her proposals. “We get to decide as legislators what (the market) direction is and we get to create incentives and occasionally roadblocks, in this case mostly incentives, to direct the market.”

As for HB92, Rep. McWilliams says she will likely propose a similar bill in the future. In the meantime, she urges N.H. residents to call their representatives, call their senators, and have a conversation about where the market’s going. 

“Talk about it,” she said, “because I think a lot of times these things get swept under the rug and there are a lot of platitudes that you hear during election years — a ‘let the market decide’ attitude.”

Climate Action Plan, revisited

Last August, the N.H. Department of Environmental Services received a $3 million grant from the EPA to update the state’s 2009 Climate Action Plan. The agency plans to use the existing plan “as a framework to start and will focus on actionable measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with an eye toward desired grant opportunities,” according to the agency’s website.

On March 1, the state identified priority projects within the Climate Action Plan. Consistent with 2009 findings, the transportation sector is still the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, and those emissions have remained relatively constant for the past two decades. 

In its effort to reduce those emissions, New Hampshire is prioritizing the deployment of electric charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, providing incentives for consumers to buy electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and supporting expansion of public transportation options. 

Unlike the 2009 Climate Action Plan, the new plan does not mention adopting CALEV standards. 

“I don’t believe we have 10 years to wait for this transition to happen,” McWilliams said. “I think that we’re in a climate emergency now, and so these decisions that we make as policymakers need to be bold and they need to actually have impacts on our local air emissions and market direction.”

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

Educators concerned about state approach to updating minimum school standards

Educators worried about edge toward privatization, less state funding, and greater discrepancy between districts 

By Rhianwen Watkins, Granite State News Collaborative

Educators are worried that the state’s proposal to update education minimum standards could have significant negative repercussions for New Hampshire's public schools. 

Educators fear that the changes, unveiled by the New Hampshire Department of Education could lead to murkier standards, a push toward privatization, and steer less money to school districts already in budget distress.

On Feb. 15, the NH Department of Education issued its proposal for updating minimum standards, which educators say vastly differs from a consultant’s recommendation filed Jan. 22. The standards will be in place for the next decade.

Educators are worried.

“All I know is that, if what is proposed becomes rule, it will cause much discrepancy among public schools in the state of New Hampshire,” said Christine Downing, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the Cornish, Grantham and Plainfield school districts.

New Hampshire’s state government is obligated to fund an adequate education, but the proposal to update minimum standards is “going to widen that gap. It’s going to continue to set the haves and the have-nots apart. I don't think that's what we want in New Hampshire,” Downing said.

• Dueling drafts on updating school minimum standards

  In November 2020, the New Hampshire Department of Education signed a $50,000 contract with the National Center for Competency-Based Learning (NCCBL), a nonprofit based in Durham, to facilitate a revision of the state's education minimum standards.

  The standards, often referred to as the 306s, are updated every 10 years and are intended to hold all public schools in New Hampshire accountable to the same rules.

  Fred Bramante, director of NCCBL as well as a two-time candidate for governor and former chair of the State Board of Education, made public a draft prepared by his original 13-member team in March 2023. But teachers unions and educators around the state took issue with the draft, saying teachers had been allowed little input on how schools would operate for the next decade.

  Christine Downing, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the Cornish, Grantham and Plainfield school districts, organized a series of review sessions for the draft standards, gathering input from multiple teachers and union chapters across the state. 

  In November 2023, Bramante agreed to meet with Downing to help reconstruct the document, along with Megan Tuttle and Irv Richardson of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, and Mark McLean of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association. The new team consisted of Bramante, four of the original task force members, and the four educators. 

  However, Downing decided to leave the team as of Feb. 8, after learning that the NCCBL had received a $25,000 extension of his original $50,000 contract, while she was doing her portion of the work without pay. 

  Downing said that on Jan. 22 she submitted the new draft on behalf of the team  to the Department of Education. However, less than a month later, on Feb. 15, the Department of Education introduced its own version of the document for updating the minimum standards — a version that educators found differs significantly from the task force draft.n text goes here

April 3 is the tentative date for a State Board of Education public hearing on the proposed education minimum standards, otherwise referred to as the 306s, according to a department spokesperson. 

Attending will be Fred Bramante, director of the National Center for Competency Based Learning in Durham, the nonprofit contracted to update the 306s, along with Downing and teachers from across the state who are encouraging parents, local officials and the public to join in.

The state board will also meet on March 11 and 14, with comment periods available to the public.

The Funding Fight

The minimum standards are only one front in educators’ decades-long battle for adequate school standards, funding, and equity among school districts. 

Earlier examples include the 1997 state Supreme Court ruling in the Claremont case, finding that school-tax burdens varied so dramatically from district to district that the discrepancies violated the state Constitution, and the similar 2019 ConVal case, which found the state had “failed to meet its constitutional obligation of funding an adequate education.” 

In November 2023, Rockingham Superior Court Judge David Ruoff ruled that the state’s base adequacy rate — the minimum amount the state is required to provide for each student — should be raised to $7,356 per year, because the current amount of $4,100 does not meet constitutional requirements for an adequately funded education. However, even that number is far below what schools actually spend — just over $20,300 per student, according to the N.H. Department of Education. The difference is made up by local property taxes.

And now, the argument has moved into the minimum standards that schools are required to meet. 

Wording and definitions

Teachers’ main concerns with the proposal to update state standards include changes in definitions.

In the task force draft, “we'd taken very thoughtful deliberation on definitions,” Downing said. “And the first thing I noticed is a lot of those definitions were reduced down to these ‘lay' terms that lost all their significant meaning.”

For instance, the word “instruction” was replaced with “learning opportunities.”

“Switching from 'schools must offer instruction' just to 'schools must offer opportunities' — that opens the door to potentially interpreting those in a very different way,” said Christina Pretorius, director of Reaching Higher NH, a nonprofit that advocates equity in the school system through public education policy and community engagement.

A similar use of the word “opportunity” changes the requirements for differentiated learning — that is, tailoring instruction to meet students' individual needs. The original phrasing — “Provision of differentiated instruction for students based on learning styles, needs, and interests” — was changed to “opportunities for students to receive timely, personalized, and differentiated support based on their individual learning needs,” Pretorius pointed out on page 25 of the document (click here, or see link below).

A “provision” for differentiated learning is very different from an “opportunity” for differentiated learning, Pretorius said, and she questions what that could mean in terms of meeting students' needs in the classroom.

Another key change in multiple areas of the document: Replacing “shall” with “may.”

One instance, on page 46 of the document, deals with requirements for arts education. The original wording stated that “the local school board shall require that an arts education program for grades 1-12 provides …” followed by a list of necessary components for an arts curriculum. The updated version now says that an arts program “may include” those components, which Downing said makes those components optional.

She emphasized that the change to “may include” means relinquishing state responsibility to fund arts programs as part of adequate education funding. 

Downing said many of the changes in definitions make them less specific and more “gray” for educators. She thinks the changes could be an attempt to make the document more understandable for parents and other members of the public, and “I get that certain people want to make this a public document that the public can understand,” she said. 

“But the first priority of this document is to define, to the very people who have to implement it, what constitutes an adequate education. This document needs to be written so that it's clear to educators and school leaders what it means.”

Downing favors explaining to the public what these terms and phrases mean, so people can understand the “edu-speak,” rather than watering down the wording. 

Pretorius also suspects the wording differences are an attempt to broaden the privatization of public schools. In her view, cloudy wording not only makes school standards less clear, but also could remove some responsibility for the state to fund public schools.

She emphasized that removal of the word “local” from many definitions could have significant repercussions for local control over community schools. Currently, she said, local school districts can decide on specific course offerings and graduation requirements, as long as they align with state minimum standards.

For instance, “right now, districts create their own local graduation and district competencies,” she said. Those could include specific course offerings, internship requirements, or community service, she said. 

“There's a lot of concern in districts around what that means for local control,” she said. “What does that mean for my school district? What does that mean for our own ability to make decisions that work the best for our communities?”

What will high school look like?

Another change in the state's document, on pages 31-32, “removes structure around what consistent high school programming looks like,” Downing said. The proposed standards struck out a section outlining that 43 courses should be the minimum number a high school offers in its course of study.

“Nobody [the department] contacted knew why the 43 exists,” she said. “I spoke to the commissioner after the meeting and I told him, you should have contacted me; I could have told you why the 43 courses existed.”

If you add up all the classes needed for a well-rounded education in a number of areas — including math, science, social studies, arts and English — “you come pretty close to having 43 courses on your program of studies as a high school,” she said. Removing that specific number, she said, was “concerning.”

Pretorius also expressed concern about removal of some cross-references, such as one on page 46 of the document involving arts education in elementary and middle school. 

“By removing that cross-reference, does it mean that the arts education that a school has to provide for elementary grades one through eight doesn't have to align to those requirements later in the rules?” she asked. “And what does that mean for the state to have to pay for?

“By watering it down, does that open the opportunity where now organizations can come in and they can sell arts education courses and school districts are required to accept them?” she asked. “When it comes to privatizing, I think there's a big question of, what are the implications for programs like Learn Everywhere? You know, does this set up a market for organizations to come in and sell courses? And sell ‘learning opportunities’?”

Megan Tuttle, head of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association — the teachers union — said another example involves other learning opportunities students can use, such as Advanced Placement courses and dual enrollment in college courses. The issue, for her, is the mention of specific online programs such as the Virtual Learning Academy and Learn Everywhere on page 6 of the document.

“We always say, when coming up with bills and laws, that you shouldn't be listing a specific program because these are minimum standards that are going to be in effect for 10 years,” Tuttle said. “We have no idea if those programs are going to still be around. They might be, but they might not be.”

Removal of important sections 

Downing said other sections were not just changed, but completely “wiped out.”

“I remember that we had received some feedback from the original team that worked with Fred (Bramante) about how to really define what a competency-based assessment was,” she said. “It looked like all of that had gone out. So we're saying we're advancing competency-based education through these rules (but) I felt what I looked at took us back years.”

Educators also worry requirements on class sizes were eliminated on page 17 of the document. The current standards list specific teacher-student ratios to abide by; the new document leaves that as a local decision.

Downing emphasized that, though districts do want local control, they still want to know what the baseline standards are — while not dictating how districts have to meet those baselines. 

“But when you put baselines like this in place, that are so wide open, you’re talking about inequities across districts,” she said.

Downing worries that varying teacher-student ratios across districts could mean discrepancies in funding and student achievement, as well as teacher burnout.

“We know that class sizes are so closely tied to student outcomes,” Pretorius said. “Kids do better with smaller classes, when they have more intimate, personal interactions with their teachers.”

Those were only a few of the many sections stricken from the department's latest draft.

Bramante and state officials defend their efforts

Despite educators’ concerns, Bramante and state leaders emphasize that their only goal is to improve public schools.

“I would assume that every board before me and this board has the intent to create a stronger, more robust school system,” said Ryan Terrell, a State Board of Education member from Nashua. “This whole process is something that's meant to go back and forth between the board and the public at large. And that's what's happened to that document leading up to this. And it'll continue happening with the public within the sessions that we have.”

Downing and Tuttle  took the opposite stance, expressing that they felt the process was not open enough with the public or educators. Additionally, the drafting process took place out of public view for the first two years. Bramante previously states that there was no requirement for public input at that point in the process. 

Terrell added that the department has a longstanding relationship with Bramante because of his experiences when he chaired the State Board of Education.

Bramante said he is not upset that the draft from the state education department does not fully follow his team’s recommendations. He thinks the department's document is about 75% in line with the report his group submitted Jan. 22.

“In large part, it's going down the same path that we're recommending,” Bramante said.

He acknowledged concerns about eliminating requirements on class sizes and high school graduation, but emphasized that the state board is “under no obligation to accept anything we recommend.”

“They could throw the whole thing in the trash. They clearly haven't done that,” Bramante said. “They've clearly said yes to the majority of what we submitted. And so now we've got 25 percent more. It's an important 25 percent, so I'm not making light of it. But, it's the state board's document and they have the right to do whatever they want with it.”

Terrell said that he has not had a chance to analyze either the contractors’ or department’s documents enough to make comments on how he thinks the two compare, or to respond to specific educator concerns. 

Attempts were made to contact other board members, but all either declined to comment or were unable to be reached.

Commissioner Frank Edelblut’s administrator, in an email, said the commissioner was unable to take a phone interview to respond to specific educator concerns, but provided the commissioner’s following statement:

“Many educators and education leaders from across the state have committed thousands of hours in constructive dialogue to move the ED 306 rules and strong educational standards in New Hampshire forward. We are excited to enhance learning and enter the formal rulemaking process so that we can continue to have meaningful and constructive conversations about how to best serve the children of New Hampshire,”

He continued, “Our expectation is that many stakeholders from groups across the state will participate in our public hearing and public comment periods so that many voices, not just one vocal group, are added to the already robust discussions and input that have been occurring throughout the past three years to strengthen minimum standards.”

Terrell encourages people to attend the next board of education meeting where the 306s are expected to be discussed, tentatively scheduled for April 3, and to take time to review the document beforehand.

“Sometimes, we have folks that are actually really passionate about education and they have good intentions,” he said. “But, sometimes they actually are just misinformed about where we are in the process, or what the process has been for a certain amount of time or what precedent is being set.

“In my experience, everybody on our board is going in and trying to do the best for kids that attend public schools in the Granite State,” Terrell said. “And we'll have disagreements about how we get there. But that's been my experience so far. Everybody just wants to make it better for the public school district.”

Educators prepare for next public hearing

Downing, Pretorius, Tuttle and other educators differ with many of the recommendations from Bramante and the state education agency. They think the department’s document is vastly different from what the Bramante group proposed and would have severe repercussions if adopted as is.

Downing was planning to hold her own educator review sessions, separate from the Bramante team, on March 6 and 7 at multiple schools around the state over the two days. More than 200 people signed up to attend. In addition, she plans a Zoom session on Saturday, March 23, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., which is open to the public. She plans to invite registrations for the online session within the next week.

Bramante said he also plans to meet with his team in March as well, in preparation for the State Board of Education meeting tentatively set for April 3. Those team meetings will not be open to the public, but the BOE meeting is.

For her part, Downing urges, “Listen to your educators. Their job is getting tougher and tougher by the day. And they deserve a voice in this process.”

Citations

Where to find specific concerns in Department of Education’s draft of updated minimum standards: 

• Wording of “provision” changed to “opportunity” for differentiated learning, page 25

• Concerns about arts education programs and wording of “shall require” changed to “may include” followed by list of components, page 46

• Removal of 43 course requirements, bottom of page 31 to 32

• Concern about listing specific programs like VLACS and Learn Everywhere, page 6

• Removal of class size requirements, page 17

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

Company whose proposed asphalt plant was rejected by Nashua fights on in court

By Kathryn Marchocki, Granite State News Collaborative

March 12, 2024

A Nashua company whose proposal to build an asphalt plant in one of the city’s oldest industrial districts was rejected last year by the Planning Board is persisting in its battle in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

In an appeal filed last year in Hillsborough County Superior Court, 145 Temple Street LLC-Greenridge LLC — an entity formed by Newport Construction Co. — seeks to reverse the Planning Board’s denial of its site plan application. The court’s new Land Use Review Board scheduled a July 15 hearing on the merits of case.

Last June 15, the Planning Board voted to block Newport Construction from building an asphalt plant at 145-147 Temple St. in one of the Gate City’s oldest industrial districts – a site where the company has been operating a highway road construction company for nine years. The proposed plant’s location is a key to both the company’s appeal and the city’s defense of the Planning Board’s decision.

Meanwhile, the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ Air Resources Division is continuing to review the company’s air permit application to determine if the proposed asphalt plant would meet all applicable state and federal air pollution standards, division administrator Catherine Beahm said at a Feb. 12 public information session in Nashua. If DES finds the plant can be built and operate in compliance with these requirements, it will issue a draft permit, which will be followed by a 30-day public comment period and public hearing. 

The two proceedings -– while taking place simultaneously -– are separate. The result of one will not impact the other, though the plant’s owner would need to prevail in both venues to move forward with the project.

“These are two separate requirements. The city’s decision to deny the application before the Planning Board does not impact the state’s review of the application for the air permit. In addition, the state’s decision on the air permit application does not change the Planning Board’s decision,” Beahm said, according to a recording of the information session.

The Planning Board’s vote last June 15 to block the proposed plant followed considerable opposition from residents, who claimed it would emit harmful emissions, odors and increase noise and heavy truck traffic in their neighborhoods. It would “devastate the neighborhood, and plunge property values for miles surrounding the plant, and permanently undermine the goal of the Master Plan to revitalize the area,” the city wrote in its response to the appeal.

The DES Air Resources Division currently is conducting a “technical review” of the permit application, which includes reviewing emission calculations, said Padmaja Baru, the division’s new construction and planning manager. She could not estimate how long the review would take.

If the proposed plant is approved, it would become the 27th hot mix asphalt manufacturing plant permitted to operate in New Hampshire and the eighth to be based in a city, according to DES air permitting data. City-based asphalt plants currently are located in: Keene, Lebanon, where there are two, Concord, Franklin, Portsmouth and Rochester, according to DES.

Newport Construction Corp. is continuing its effort in Hillsborough County Superior Court to build an asphalt plant at 145-147 Temple St. in Nashua. (Nashua Ink Link file photo)

Hot mix asphalt

Noting considerable public interest in the proposed plant, DES officials said they held the information session to explain how it evaluates an air permit application and identify criteria outside their regulatory authority, such as traffic, noise, truck exhaust and odors. 

Those attending the Feb. 12 session expressed concerns about possible adverse health effects from the air pollutant emissions from the plant, questioned how carefully emissions would be monitored, and the prospect of large trucks idling on the property and traveling on city streets. 

“This proposed plant is not in my area. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t concern all of us in the city,” said state Rep. Susan Elberger, who represents Ward 1.

Baru said state law requires DES to review all air permit applications. Given public interest in the proposed plant, DES asked for and was granted an extension to review the application, which was filed Jan. 30, 2023, Baru said. 

Hot mix asphalt is used as paving material for road. The paving material is a mix of approximately 95 percent gravel, sand and stone that is bound together by asphalt cement. Asphalt cement is a product of crude oil. It is heated and combined with the gravel, sand and stone mixture at a hot mix asphalt facility. The hot mix asphalt is loaded into trucks and taken to a construction site.

Asphalt plants must meet all state and federal health-based standards to contain toxic air pollutants “at the property boundary of the facility and beyond,” and conditions to do so would be written into any draft permit, Baru said.

“People living near a hot mix asphalt plant might smell odors from the plant. However, the risk for adverse, or bad, health effects is very low,” according to the DES fact sheet.

Additionally, Baru said DES maintains about 13 air quality monitoring stations throughout New Hampshire, including one in Nashua. Of the other 12 monitoring stations, the two closest are in Londonderry and atop Pack Monadnock, southeast of Keene. The stations monitor particulate matter, ozone levels, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide. 

If DES grants the proposed plant a draft permit, it would be followed by a 30-day public comment period and a public hearing, Baru said. A final decision would later be issued which either side could appeal to the state Air Resources Council. 

The proposed asphalt plant would sit on a site at 145-147 Temple St. in Nashua, which Newport Construction argues has long been a mixed-use industrial/residential district.

Dueling arguments

The four-acre145-147 Temple St. site where the proposed asphalt plant would be located is located near the center of one of Nashua’s “oldest and largest General Industrial zoning districts” where “asphalt manufacturing is a use expressly permitted by right,” attorneys for longtime Nashua resident Richard A. DeFelice said in his July 17, 2023 appeal of the Planning Board’s decision. DeFelice is president of 145 Temple Street LLC and Newport Construction Corp., a highway road construction company that has been operating at 145 Temple St. since 2013. He did not respond to several requests for comment.

The appeal petition called the Planning Board’s ruling unconstitutional, unreasonable, unsupported by the evidence and the result of multiple errors of law and fact.

In denying DeFelice’s site plan application, the Planning Board said the plant was inconsistent with the goals and objectives of the city’s master plan; would generate excessive traffic that would be qualitatively different from vehicles that serve existing industries and businesses; and that it is inconsistent with surrounding residential uses and the “transitioning nature of the neighborhood” towards residential uses.

Attorneys Jennifer L. Parent, John F. Weaver and Thomas W. Hildreth of McLane Middletown law firm in Manchester, who represent DeFelice, maintain the Planning Board ignored the law and advice of the city’s planning staff concerning the limits of site plan review when applied to a permitted use while erroneously elevating the function of the master plan. 

The 43-page appeal petition also claimed the board “impermissibly engaged in ad hoc decision making, simply deciding that it does not like the proposed use despite the facts that it is expressly permitted under the zoning ordinance, fully compliant with the terms of the zoning ordinance, and substantially similar to numerous current and recent industrial uses in the district.” 

The appeal sets the stage for a classic test between a planning board’s ability to place restrictions on allowed uses so they better fit in a neighborhood versus denying a use because the board or community doesn’t like it.

“There is a difference between, ‘We don’t want this in our town. Keep it away, Planning Board.’ And, ‘You need to look closely at these particular issues involving traffic, fumes or things like that’,” says Roy W. Tilsley Jr., an attorney with the Bernstein Shur law firm in Manchester who specializes in land use law but is not involved in the asphalt plant case. 

“These are arguments that go to the limits of what the Planning Board can and can’t do. They are the right type of arguments for an appeal like this,” adds Tilsley, who has been working with land use issues for more than 30 years.

Tilsley, who notes he doesn’t know if the facts of the case are true and cannot predict its outcome, adds: “the appeal document articulates a reasonable basis for appeal … Here they have a leg to stand on.”

The Newport Construction Corp. petition cites more than a dozen current and recent industrial and commercial companies operating within a half-mile of 145-147 Temple St. They include Newport Construction, Ripano Stoneworks, Inner City Materials and Speedy Junk Removal. Additionally, Redimix Concrete operated its concrete batch plant at nearby 16 Commercial St. for more than 50 years, ending in 2018, the appeal says. These companies rely on large commercial dump trucks and other multi-axle vehicles to deliver product to and from their sites just as an asphalt plant would, the appeal claims.

It also claims the Planning Board’s ruling rested in many errors. They include ruling that the proposed plant is inconsistent with the surrounding residential uses, ignoring the district’s decades-long history of functioning as a mixed-use neighborhood with industry, housing and commerce co-existing compatibly. They board also ignored evidence that the plant is a permitted use that is fully compliant with the zoning ordinance, will not produce excessive odors, dust or fumes and will operate in compliance with air permit conditions issued by DES’ Air Resources Division.

And the petition claims the city erroneously applied Transit-Oriented Development overlay district (TOD) requirements to the site plan review. The area does not have a transit station, which is required for the area to be considered a TOD overlay district, the appeal says.

The city denies this – and other claims – in its response to the appeal. It notes there is a “bus stop directly in front of 145 Temple Street,” and that there are “numerous transportation routes, systems, facilities and resources in and around the District.” Nashua City Transit routes show one bus route – the Nightside North route – stops at or near 145 Temple St. 

The city’s claim that 145-147 Temple St. lies within the TOD appears to be a key argument for denying the site plan. The city notes that combining the requirements of the General Industrial zone and TOD overlay district “imposes on the petitioner the obligation to demonstrate that its proposal meets the underlying standards in the Industrial Zone and simultaneously that it meets the criteria applicable to the Transit-Oriented Development Overlay District,” attorney Robert L. Best of Sulloway & Hollis law firm in Concord wrote in the city’s response to the appeal petition. These include compliance with the city’s Master Plan, ensuring the proposed plant is harmonious with existing and future surrounding development and will not harm property values, Best wrote in the city’s 26-page response to the appeal petition.

“While an asphalt manufacturing plant could be a permitted use in the General Industrial Zone, that fact does not end the Planning Board’s authority to apply all of its applicable site plan and zoning standards. The Board ultimately decided that the Petitioner failed to meet the requirements of the General Industrial Zone as modified by the Transit-Oriented Development Overlay District,” Best says.

The appeal also alleges the process was “tainted” by “improper and undue influence” by the office of Mayor Jim Donchess, which publicly opposed it, urged the Planning Board to deny it, spent public funds on opposition research and “applied undue pressure on the professional planning staff.” 

While the city acknowledged the mayor issued a public statement Dec. 1, 2022 opposing the proposed plant, it denied all other allegations. The mayor serves as an ex officio member of the Planning Board and appoints all board members, Best says. “Nothing in that process requires that the Mayor refrain from having opinions about projects proposed before the board,” he writes, adding the mayor recused himself from the proceedings.

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

Mixed-age learning is a tenet of competency-based education. Educators say it’s effective, but difficult to implement.

Parent perceptions, hesitant teachers, and scheduling challenges are all barriers to mixed-age learning, according to educators who have tried it. 

By Kelly Burch, Granite State News Collaborative

[ED NOTE: 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.]

Last year Landon-Layne Laware, a then first-grader at Richards Elementary School in Newport, went to a third-grade classroom for math instruction and a second-grade class for reading. The simple switch not only let Landon-Layne practice more advanced academics, but it cut down on behavioral challenges he was having in school. 

“He went from having a behavioral plan, to getting (positive) notes home every day,” said his mother, Tonya Laware of Newport. 

As the state revamps its minimum standards for public school education, a document known as the 306s, it is continuing a push toward competency-based education, a philosophy that emphasizes individual learning paces and real-world applications of knowledge. 

Mixed-age learning is a critical part of that. In fact, in the most recent revision of the school minimum standards, the words “grade level” have been replaced by “learning level” to reflect the fact that some children, like Landon-Layne, will learn faster — or slower — than their same-aged peers. 

Students learning at their own pace and progressing when they show mastery of a skill are two of the seven tenets of competency based-education put forth by the Aurora Institute, the national leader in this approach to learning. New Hampshire educators who have tried to implement these approaches in their school say they serve students well, but are difficult to implement because of scheduling challenges, entrenched ideas about grade levels that parents and teachers have, and ideas about how schools should be run. 

When it comes to mixed-age learning, the million-dollar question is “how do we get there?” said William Furbush, superintendent of the Epping School District, which has received national attention for its competency-based approach.

The answer? 

“Slowly,” said Furbush, who estimates Epping is a decade away from a truly integrated approach to mixed-age learning. Grade levels are “in everything from the way we structure our schools to expectations of teachers and parents.”

Mixed-age learning in key subjects; socialization with same-age peers

There’s a common misunderstanding that, under competency-based education, young learners could be exposed to much older kids, said Furbush, who studied competency-based education in 15 schools as part of his unfinished dissertation work. 

In reality, children spend the majority of the school day with their same-aged peers. 

“This is very different. It’s not like advancing a child who is 5, and putting them around 7-year-olds all day long,” he said. 

Instead, students learn with kids of different ages for critical subjects — most often math and reading — while returning to their peers for recess, social time, and extracurriculars. 

That’s the approach at Richards Elementary School in Newport, where Landon-Layne goes to school. The school, led by a former principal, implemented what it calls vertical learning teams to address gaps in learning after COVID, said the current principal, Robert Clark. 

Students were still assigned home rooms with their peers, but the school is divided into two learning teams: one for grades 1 through 3, and one for grades 3 through 5. Students in these teams learned math and reading with other kids who are at a similar learning level, regardless of age. 

As students mastered one concept, such as sight words, they could move into another group of students to tackle the next concept, Clark said. 

“It’s a fluid process. We’re continuing to look at the data and their progress, and make adjustments,” he said.

In Newport, where students are more likely than other Granite State students to test below grade level in math and reading, according to state data, the learning teams focused on making sure students didn’t move on without fully understanding a concept.

“The purpose of this is to work to make sure students aren’t moving along without filling those gaps,” Clark said. 

At first, the program was successful, according to Cindy Couitt, a third grade teacher at the school. 

“Kids who hadn’t been making a lot of progress were now moving forward in those skills,” she said. Many students, like Landon-Layne, were having fewer behavioral challenges, and communication within the school continues to be strengthened by teachers working more closely together, Clark said. 

Landon-Layne: Eight-year-old Landon-Layne, a Newport second grader, moves into a third grade classroom for math and reading. (Courtesy: Tonya Laware)

Disagreements over best practices, sustainability

When former principal Patrice Glancey Brown left Richards Elementary, there was little guidance for the vertical learning teams, Couitt said. Although the school, under Clark’s leadership, continued the teams, the approach was diluted, Couitt said. 

“It’s my opinion — and this is just my opinion — that we are no longer doing a true (vertical learning) model,” she said. 

That is a common criticism of competency-based learning, experts say. Because the concept is unfamiliar, the term can be applied to practices that aren’t truly rooted in a competency-based approach. In addition, pilot programs in the state show that efforts to implement competency-based education often falter when school leadership changes.

‘New Hampshire schools experimented with a radical approach to competency-based education. The failure of the pilot mirrors current concerns over revisions in state minimum standards.’

At Richards Elementary, students still receive instruction during vertical learning time, but they also are taught the core curriculum for their grade level, whether or not they’re ready for it, Couitt said. Mixed-age sessions function more as review time, she said. (Clark clarified that students have two math and two reading sessions: one in a mixed-age setting and one with their grade-level peers.)

“It’s not the true model” of vertical learning, Couitt said.

The result, she feels, has been a stagnation of learning. “There’s some progress, at a slower pace.”

Under the prior model, students were graded for the level they were learning at, she added. For example, Landon-Layne would have been evaluated on third-grade math, even though he was in first grade. However, now students are evaluated based on their grade level, giving a less robust picture of where they truly are, Couitt said. 

Furbush, of Epping, said evaluating students at grade level when it doesn’t align with their learning level serves no one. 

“That’s a real detriment to our system .…” he said. “We’re really not having honest conversations about where that child is.”

Scheduling and culture challenges

Sustainability is just one of the challenges around mixed-age learning, said Furbush, who has taken steps to facilitate more of the approach in Epping. 

One of the biggest challenges is logistical: the schedule. For mixed-age learning to work, students in different grades need to have learning periods that start and stop at the same time. Epping recently addressed that by putting the middle and high schools on the same schedule, using 80-minute teaching blocks. 

“Now, that’s changed overnight,” Furbush said, allowing movement of teachers and students between the schools. 

Making the adjustment required persuading stakeholders — including the school board, teachers and parents — that the change was valuable. That community involvement and understanding is critical, Furbush said. 

In Newport, administrators and teachers made an effort to teach parents about the vertical learning teams. At first, many parents weren’t comfortable with them because the approach looked different from the schooling they were familiar with. 

Some teachers have a similar hesitation, Couitt said.

“There was a lot of pushback on (vertical learning) because there are a lot of people who believe the model for teaching should stay and teach the core (curriculum) in your room,” she said.

Mixed-age learning can be more efficient for teachers, Furbush said, but “initially they think it's a lot more work,” which can lead to wariness about the model. 

Another barrier involves parents’ expectations. 

“Parents are all accepting of a child going up,” Furbush said. “The other page we need to think about is where there’s a third-grader who’s at a first-grade math level.”

Education about competency-based education can help with this too, he said. In an ideal world, the different learning levels wouldn’t be numbered, but named for colors or local landmarks, so students and parents didn’t feel shame when a student worked below their age-indicated grade level. 

“Right now, we use language like above or below grade level. That has judgment on it, both good and bad,” Furbush said. 

Adults readily accept that, as students learn to swim or do karate, they move through competencies unrelated to their grades, he said. Eventually, Furbush would like to see that same approach in schools. 

“I would like to see even more collapse of that grade-level model,” he said. “…What we’re really trying to create is that small-group instruction to meet their needs.”

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

New Hampshire schools experimented with a radical approach to competency-based education. The failure of the pilot mirrors current concerns over revisions in state minimum standards.

The ‘No Grades No Grades’ pilot ended grade levels and letter grade scores in select schools, but none of the schools have continued that approach due to a lack of leadership, professional development, and funding. 

By Kelly Burch, Granite State News Collaborative

[ED NOTE: 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.]

From 2016 to 2018, six elementary and middle schools in New Hampshire got rid of grade levels and letter grades used to measure student progress.

Those steps were part of a pilot study designed to bring the schools further into competency-based education, an approach that emphasizes self-driven learning and a real-world application of knowledge. 

"We had an opportunity to think differently,” said Mary Earick, dean of the School of Education at New Mexico Highlands University, who spearheaded the project known as No Grades, No Grades, or NG2. At the time, Earick was a professor at Plymouth State University. 

Principals at the participating schools say they saw widespread positive changes in their students and teachers, with more collaboration, innovation and personalized learning. A research paper on the program, published by Earick, found that two of the participating schools saw referrals for individualized education plans (IEPs) and 504 plans — used to ensure that special education students and students with disabilities have the resources they need — dropped by roughly half.  

“The staff really did embrace the whole idea [of] NG2 because we met our kids where they were [and] we took them where they needed to go,” said Ken Darsney, who was principal at Franklin Middle School at the time, and who now works for the Department of Education. 

Despite the program’s promise, none of the schools involved still follow the NG2 model. As administrators moved on and leadership at the state Department of Education changed, the program faltered and ultimately fell apart. 

Educators say considering the benefits and failures of NG2 is critical today as the state rewrites its minimum standards for public school approval in hopes of making sustainable advances in competency-based education in the Granite State. 

“That’s the bane of my existence: sustainability,” Darsney said. 

Mary-Earick-Dean-school-of-Ed-tiled-288x300 (School of Education at New Mexico Highlands University website)

An overview of NG2

NG2 was Earick’s brainchild. From 2013 to 2016, Earick worked for the Department of Education as the New Hampshire Director of Title 1, a federal program that supplies funding to schools with many low-income students.  

At that time, New Hampshire was seen as a leader in competency-based education. Earick, who has a passion for equity, theorized that there was an opportunity to improve equity through a competency-based approach, leveraging existing Title 1 funding. 

When students' learning is no longer separated by grade levels and grade-based evaluation, “it turns into the highest expectations you have ever seen, but naturally evolving,” Earick said. “That’s the equity piece.”

Earick sees equity as pivotal to competency-based education. During current revisions in the state minimum standards for public school education, many references to equity have been removed, educational advocates have pointed out. 

With $120,000 in grant funding from the Department of Education for a two-year pilot, Earick approached schools that were already forward-thinking with their approach to competency-based education. 

"We were very interested in and open to trying different things that might have seemed out of the box,” said Jonathan Vander Els, former principal at Memorial Elementary School in Sanborn Regional School District, one of the pilot schools. “NG2 was that — there was no question.”

Elementary schools in Rochester, Manchester, Pittsfield, and Sanborn Regional School District participated, along with Franklin’s elementary and middle schools.

Earick envisioned a scalable, sustainable system where schools that participated in the pilot would teach others how to adopt the approach. Instead, “it fell apart,” said Danielle Harvey, former principal of Pittsfield Elementary School.

Lack of sustainable, systemic change

Grade levels and academic grades are pillars of our education system, administrators say, so getting rid of them was no small feat. Earick worked closely with the pilot schools, traveling to professional conferences and schools around the country that had successfully implemented a similar approach. 

“[We] were learning from the best in the world,” said Vander Els, who is now the director of collaborative learning for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative, a nonprofit focused on advancing competency-based education.

Despite that, “there are a lot of barriers that get in the way of [this approach] happening in the classroom,” said Vander Els, including state and federal policies around standardized grade-level testing, and funding. 

That echoes concerns about current efforts to revamp the state’s competency-based education system. Parker-Varney School in Manchester was part of the pilot, and is often held up as an example of competency-based education done right by Fred Bramante, president of the National Center for Competency Based Learning, who is leading the revision of the minimum standards. Bramante has pointed to the NG2 program as a successful example of competency-based education. 

And yet, Parker-Varney School is “no longer using that (competency-based education), because they cannot fund it,” according to a comment by Tina Philibotte, chief equity officer in Manchester School District, during a September public listening session about revising the minimum standards. 

Making widespread changes in education requires “constantly provided training and support,” said Darsney. During leadership changes — within an individual school, a district, or at the Department of Education — that support and training can fall away. 

“For this to really move forward, it has to happen at all levels of the system,” said Vander Els. “It has to [happen] at the policy level, [with] the district leaders, the building leaders, right to the teachers. Then we go into the communities.”

And yet, history shows that competency-based education has been unevenly applied throughout the state.

Vander Els, Darsney and Harvey all said that the schools they led did not continue the work inspired by NG2 after their departures, despite their effort to establish systemic changes that would last well beyond their tenure. 

Adopting true competency-based education on a widespread scale in New Hampshire would require top-down support and funding from the state, according to Harvey, who is now principal of Strafford School in Strafford, with classes from preschool through eighth grade. 

“Where is the non-negotiable professional development that’s going to help people change their mindset?” she said. “That’s how you get it to be sustainable as a state. But live free or die, we don’t do much as a state.”

Embracing mixed-age learning 

Earick had hypotheses on what it would take to make NG2 work, but ultimately each district implemented changes in ways that they felt would work best for their communities. 

In Pittsfield, a small rural school district, predicting staffing needs for each grade was difficult, due to fluctuations in the number of students, Harvey said.

Mixed-age classrooms offered a solution. And yet, Harvey didn’t just want to have students from two or three different grades in the same classroom — she wanted to really do away with the idea of grades levels all together. 

“It’s a full mindset shift,” she said. “We really wanted to support the teachers in knowing where each kid was as an individual and how to support them to move forward in their own individual learning progression.”

To do that, Pittsfield Elementary restructured teaching blocks, doing away with lectures and making more time for students to study independently while teachers instructed small groups whose members were at similar learning levels. 

Pittsfield experimented with different groupings for mixed-age classrooms and ultimately settled on a first- and second-grade class, and a third- and fourth-grade class. That gave children more time to learn critical concepts, without being labeled as behind grade level, Harvey said. Students who mastered concepts early could move on academically, while staying in the classroom with their peers, she added. 

Students in these classes remained with the same instructors for two years, an educational concept known as looping. A 2018 study found that looping was associated with a significant increase in test score, especially for minority students. 

“The research on looping is very, very strong,” said Darsney, of Franklin Middle School. Teachers who know a student’s strengths and weaknesses are better able to support that student, he explained. 

Franklin also experimented with different age groupings under NG2. Ultimately, they settled on a cohort of students in fourth through sixth grade, and another of seventh- and eighth-graders. To stay true to the idea of no grade levels, the groups were called academies and named for the two rivers in town. 

With the academies in place, the entire environment of Franklin Middle School was transformed, Darsney said. Looping gave teachers the “ability for people to collaborate, to want to problem-solve and understand kids’ needs,” he said. Teachers had more autonomy over the schedule, and were better able to handle discipline and academic issues without involving the administration. 

“Because of the empowering we did for our staff, we didn’t see things unless they needed additional assistance,” Darn said. 

Open-ended learning assessments, rather than grades

At Memorial Elementary School in the Sanborn Regional School District, Vander Els focused most of his attention during NG2 on thinking about evaluating students’ progress differently. 

“We wanted to increase students’ ability to own their learning and understand where they are,” he said.

Rather than testing, the school used teacher observations and formative assessments, open-ended responses where students show they understand how to apply the concepts they’ve learned. 

“This is the best way that they know where kids are,” Vander Els said.

The school implemented co-created assessments, where students worked alongside teachers to decide how best to demonstrate what they had learned. Projects, presentation and defenses of learning — like those used for doctoral candidates — are all examples of formative assessments. 

“There were folks who didn’t believe that kids could do that,” said Vander Els, and yet, “We saw kids increasing their levels of engagement significantly, so they could really understand and own the learning that they were part of every day.”

Despite the demise of NG2, educators say the pilot will continue to have an impact on students and teachers in the state, albeit on a small scale. Many of the teachers who were at Memorial Elementary School during the pilot still use formative assessments in their classrooms, according to Vander Els, although it’s now paired with more traditional testing. 

“[This] will be part of their classrooms until they stop teaching,” he said. “That’s not going to end. That’s the power of these things.”

In Franklin, mixed-age classrooms have been scaled back, but teams of fifth- and sixth-graders and seventh- and eighth-graders still learn together, according to Jule Finley, curriculum coordinator in the district.

“That’s the moral of any time you try a new education tool: looking at what is working and keeping that piece,” Finley said. “There are definitely beneficial pieces, even if the entire concept of the whole model isn’t going to be adopted.”

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

State launches NH Alerts, a new, ‘more efficient’ emergency notification system

By Avanti Nambiar-Granite State News Collaborative

The state of New Hampshire recently unveiled NH Alerts, a new emergency notification designed to warn people about emergencies — among them, tornadoes, floods, power outages and gas leaks.

Launched on Jan. 1, NH Alerts runs on the Genasys emergency management platform, which replaces the previous CodeRed system. The state Division of Emergency Services and Communications, which oversees NH Alerts, says the Genasys platform allows public safety officials to more quickly deliver emergency and non-emergency notifications through a variety of methods, including phone calls, e-mails and text messages.

Mark Doyle, director of the division, is overseeing the transition. He said Genasys is “much easier to use” than CodeRed, and that its capabilities are “broader.” He also said the new system identifies local emergencies faster and can push out alerts “in a more efficient manner.”

The Emergency Services and Communications Division, which operates under the state Department of Safety, provides public safety messaging across the state through both local platforms and mass alerts, Doyle said. He pointed to the Genasys system’s greater speed in sending out alerts as a major benefit. “If we can save a few seconds, or even a few minutes … to be able to get that message out to the population that could be adversely impacted, and maybe save a few lives doing it … that’s exactly what it is we want to do.” 

Doyle said that the division is developing a campaign designed to teach the public about the capabilities of the Genasys system.

What emergencies trigger alerts?

The NH Alerts system will also be used by individual municipalities for local safety notifications, such as active shooter situations. The system will also broadcast statewide alerts for more wide-ranging incidents, such as tornadoes.

As an example, Doyle pointed to a storm that struck the New Hampshire Seacoast in January. According to the director, “large swaths of coastline” were severely affected by flooding. The NH Alerts system was critical in reaching the affected community, he said. Notifications warned residents of road closures and the hazards of approaching the beach. 

Through geographic information system (GIS) mapping, Doyle said, Genasys can target information to specific locations. Through texts and emails, the “integrated public alert warning system” can reach wireless devices within a local region, he said. Additionally, large-scale major alerts will also be communicated to residents through radio and television broadcasts. 

Many Granite Staters are already registered to be notified through NH Alerts. They are users who were registered in the prior CodeRED system before Sept. 26, 2023, and were automatically entered into the Genaysys system. 

Individuals who have not signed up yet or would like to update their information can go to ReadyNH.gov to enroll in the NH Alerts system. In addition, a Genasys Protect app for both Android and iPhone can be downloaded by users on Google Play and Apple’s App Store. The mobile app offers other features, including a map view and location-based notifications to keep you aware of public safety alerts. 

The new NH Alerts emergency notification system features the Genasys Protect app, which includes features iike map views and location-based notifications to keep users aware of public safety alerts.  (Screenshot)

Who can register?

Property owners, residents, and workers in an NHS alerts notification area can sign up through the online portal. Visitors and family members of residents in the area also have the option to register. In addition to requesting notifications, users can indicate their preferred method of contact.

Users can add their email address and phone number for texts and calls. They can also register more than one email and phone number, such as for home and personal accounts, alternative cell numbers, landlines and office phones. Users can even add their relatives’ information to the tool.

NH Alerts doesn’t require people to provide a home or work address. That being said, recording an address would help users receive location-based weather alerts. The login portal provides the option of entering multiple addresses. 

If a user’s contact info needs to be changed, they can simply log in to update their online data. The login portal can also be used to unsubscribe and delete a user’s information from the system.

The Division of Emergency Services and Communications stressed that contact information will only be used by system and local administrators. Such details are not meant to be sold to outside parties.

Emails from the alerting system will come from “State of New Hampshire” (noreply@genasys.com). The message will be accompanied by the user’s registered name or title. Phone calls should show the Caller ID “603-271-7084,” and text/SMS messages should display the Sender ID 65513. However, officials recommend that users save this information on their phone as a contact. 

What are some issues users may face?

While registering online, people may encounter a pop-up stating that their email or phone number is already registered. This may mean that somebody else has added their contact info into the system. In these situations, a person can return to the login screen and click “Forget your Password?” They can then use their pre-registered email or phone number to receive a temporary code to continue.

If a registered user fails to receive alerts from the system, it could be for any number of reasons. For example, their contact info may be out of date. If emails are missing, it could be that the email provider placed them in a spam or junk folder. If text messages are absent, the user may have forgotten to enable the SMS checkbox. For such reasons, NH Alerts management recommends users register more than one contact method.

For further information, email desc.database@desc.nh.gov. or call 603-271-6911 and press Option 4 and ask to speak to the E911 field representative for your town. 

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visitcollaborativenh.org.

State Board of Education produces an unexpected document to guide updates of minimum standards for public schools

The document introduced this week is significantly different from one created in a three-year study of possible revisions. 

By Kelly Burch, Granite State News Collaborative

After spending $75,000 to have expert consultants draft a revision to the state’s minimum standards for public schools, the Department of Education moved forward this week with its own set of revisions.

That document, introduced Thursday during a meeting of the State Board of Education, looks unfamiliar to contractors who have been working for more than three years on updating the standards, and to education advocates who have been following the process closely. 

So far, the department has declined to disclose the consultant’s draft, submitted Jan. 22, despite right-to-know requests. 

Now, a number of groups are scrambling to analyze the new minimum-standards document, which will define public education in New Hampshire for the next decade, before a public hearing scheduled for April 3. 

“We had some significant concerns with the version that was previously on the table and we have even more concerns with this one,” said Christina Pretorius, policy director for Reaching Higher New Hampshire, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on education policy. 

The draft proposal “really appears to dismantle public schools and water down what it means to be a public school,” Pretorius said. 

In 2020, the Department of Education signed a $50,000 contract to “facilitate a revision” of the minimum standards for public school approval, known as the 306s, with the Durham-based National Center for Competency-Based Learning. That contract was recently extended for an additional $25,000, according to Fred Bramante, president of the center, who has been leading the revision efforts. 

At a community session in Hinsdale, Fred Bramante, former chair of the N.H. State Board of Education, elicits questions and feedback about a redevelopment of rules for public education in New Hampshire.

Jamie Browder / The Keene Sentinel

The center convened a 13-member task force to oversee the revisions and, after educator outcry, gathered public input through 13 listening sessions last year. In November, Bramante met with the state’s largest teachers union for the first time, in response to concerns that teachers had not been part of the revision process. Based on that input, the task force drafted a revision to the 306s and submitted it to the Department of Education on Jan. 22, Bramante said. 

“The draft from Jan. 22 had work that was done that was thoughtful and intentional,” said Meghan Tuttle, president of the state’s largest teachers union, which endorsed the January draft. Tuttle declined to comment on the department’s draft because she had not yet been able to analyze how it compares to the revision she was involved with. 

Bramante, who has overseen the multiyear revision process, said there are substantial differences between the two documents. 

“Fortunately, the (Department of Education) put lots of our recommendations in their draft, but they also changed a lot,” Bramante said, adding that his task force is not taking a position on the department’s draft until its members can conduct a more in-depth analysis. 

Last fall, member’s of Bramante’s task force told a reporter that the education department would make changes in the drafts of the 306s that the task force had exchanged with the department, including to language around equity. Ultimately, recommendations from Bramante’s task force are not binding, and the department had the right to alter the document that was introduced into the formal rulemaking process, as it did this week. 

Signs made by students line the hallways of Pittsfield elementary. GEOFF FORESTER—Monitor staff

A question of trust

Throughout the 306 revision process, educators and policy experts repeatedly emphasized a belief that the department, led by Commissioner Frank Edelblut, cannot be trusted to protect the institutions of public education. 

Task force member Val Zanchuk acknowledged at a September listening session that many people worried the 306s, revised under Edelblut, could “create loopholes for people who had an anti-public-school bent.” 

That concern was brought up again this week by Pretorius, of Reaching Higher, who did a preliminary analysis of the department’s draft and outlined six primary concerns. Among them: The document removes references to local control of education and removes class size requirements, potentially leaving the state with no ceiling on class sizes. 

In addition, she has concerns about language in the document, such as replacing the word “instruction” with “learning,” and switching the word “shall” to “may,” which removes certain mandates.

Pretorius worries those changes could be used to alter the calculation of “adequate education funding” — a constitutional requirement for the state to supply to local districts, and a subject of ongoing lawsuits in the state. 

Some changes in the 306s are similar to efforts previously voted down by the Legislature, she added, including a 2022 bill that would have removed art, social studies, and other subjects from the core academic areas studied by New Hampshire students. 

“There have been legislative efforts to do some of this work that haven’t passed, and now we’re seeing shadows of that in this rule proposal,” Pretorius said.

Changes in class size requirements and specific subject requirements, including social studies, were not in the January draft, Bramante said, in part because his task force felt “we were not the right one” to make those specific changes. 

 (Dave Cummings | New Hampshire Bulletin)

Three minutes for the consultant

Prior to yesterday’s meeting, Bramante was hoping to present the content of the task force’s revision to the State Board of Education, he said. He offered, but was told he could speak during public commentary, which is limited to three minutes, rather than having designated time. 

Bramante anticipates that the Jan. 22 document submitted by the task force, which he said was endorsed by the school administrators association in addition to the teachers union, will be made public eventually. 

“If there’s a document that’s endorsed and supported by the leaderships of the groups that are responsible for implementing (these changes) … I think that says something,” Bramante said. “I’m not telling you that ours is better than (the Department of Education’s). … I’m saying we put a group together, a very credible team, and we came to agreement on a lot of very serious issues, and, I think all of us would say, advanced competency-based learning.”

The state board will hold a public hearing on April 3, where members of the public can voice their opinion on the proposed updates for minimum standards for public schools, the only legally required opportunity for public input in this process. 

“That’s a big date,” Pretorius said. 

Follow the Granite State News Collaborative’s series on Competency-Based Education to stay up-to-date on this developing story. 

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.

Newly created initiative seeks to confront New Hampshire’s digital divide

UNH Extension spearheads effort to boost broadband and device access, digital literacy

Charlie French of UNH Cooperative Extension says digital equity is not just limited to connectivity. (UNH photo)

By Jordyn Haime

Researchers at University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension are developing a five-year plan aimed at closing the state’s digital divide by increasing statewide access to internet, digital literacy education, digital devices and training, among other goals. 

The Digital Equity Planning Initiative — in partnership with the National Collaborative for Digital Equity and the Digital Equity Resource Center — kicked off Sept. 1 with the help of a $511,216 allocation from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act granted through the N.H. Department of Business and Economic Affairs.

Through the 2021 law, New Hampshire received billions of dollars in infrastructure funding, including up to $20 million to implement the Cooperative Extension’s plan, which will likely be broken up into increments of $5 million per year beginning in 2024, said Charlie French, who leads the Extension’s unity and economic development department.

A first draft of the plan will be presented at an open statewide summit, to be held Oct. 19 in Concord.

“Our goal is to have a variety of outlets that give local and regional control on how money gets spent and what the priorities are,” said French. “Some of the money will be distributed statewide, possibly for some existing projects, but a lot of it will be based on a competitive application process.”

The Extension’s Digital Equity Planning Initiative is working to engage constituents and stakeholders across New Hampshire through focus groups, forums and a statewide survey to ensure needs across diverse populations are met. 

It hopes to establish nine regional coalitions made up of representatives from covered populations, including aging individuals, immigrants, individuals with disabilities and low-income households.

“Cooperative Extension [is] ready to step in and help ensure that these coalitions have the capacity to play that advisory role. We're going to be doing some leadership development to make sure that the coalitions have a strong membership and a big structure so when the implementation funds come down the pike, they're ready to go,” said French.

Influx of funding

The additional funding toward digital equity comes after an influx of grants and federal allocations aimed at increasing broadband internet throughout the state in the wake of the pandemic, which further exposed the unequal distribution of adequate broadband access around New Hampshire. Forced to work remotely during the early stages of the pandemic, many faced connectivity issues at home and even had to park outside of public buildings or businesses to access the internet. 

According to the New Hampshire Broadband Mapping Initiative, about 4.6 percent of New Hampshire remains unserved or underserved as of December 2022. 

New Hampshire has received an additional $5 million through the federal Infrastructure Act’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to ensure equitable broadband access. In addition, the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) last year received a $50 million competitive federal grant through the American Rescue Plan Act  -- also enacted in 2021 – to expand fiber-optic broadband in 73 towns across the state. Seth Wheeler, a spokesperson for NHEC, said the goal is to get all of those towns connected by 2026.

That funding has provided direct assistance to towns like Sandwich, a community spanning nearly 100 square miles with a population density of only about 17 people per mile. In 2019, a group of frustrated residents gathered to push the NHEC to install fiber broadband infrastructure, raising about $1.5 million on its own. After receiving the federal grant in 2020, NHEC was able to provide the remaining millions necessary to finish the job, said Richard Knox, who sits on the Sandwich Broadband Advisory Committee. He estimates that about 50 to 60 percent of residents have signed up for NHEC’s broadband service.

But some residents have still complained that they don’t have internet access or don’t know how to report an outage in their area. Knox hopes the Digital Equity Planning Initiative will help raise awareness statewide so the responsibility to advocate for digital equity in their communities — as well as education and awareness around it — doesn’t fall on individual towns.

“It's a heavy lift for little towns to do this,” Knox said. “We don't have the resources to hire consultants. The town itself can't do these kinds of surveys. So I think this might make a difference in accelerating the whole process … You can’t tackle [the problem] if you don’t know how big it is.”

‘Lack of awareness’

Digital equity is not limited to connectivity — it also means having the knowledge and financial means to access digital tools. Digital literacy is an issue that has arisen most frequently in focus groups so far, said French. 

“There's a lack of awareness understanding, or even venues for seniors, for instance, to be able to gain those digital literacy skills, and that can be challenging for someone who is not a digital native,” French said.

In addition, many residents may be unaware that the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program provides $30 subsidies to pay for internet service for low- and moderate-income residents. But for certain populations — like immigrants, people with disabilities and English learners — a long federal application is just another barrier.

Affordability and education are factors that Sarah Wheeler, an administrator with New Hampshire’s Bureau of Adult Education, hopes to see addressed by the Digital Equity Planning Initiative. 

Adult education programs have continued to lean into remote or hybrid education, but some temporary solutions established to increase accessibility during the pandemic have ebbed. Wheeler says learning programs across New Hampshire have tried to create more permanent solutions by mapping areas with public internet access and expanding laptop loan programs, but that has been a challenge with limited resources.

“[Adult learners] tend to be employed but with low-skill, low-wage jobs and oftentimes two or three jobs. So being able to afford internet access and a device is challenging,” said Wheeler.

Educators across the state have already begun incorporating digital literacy education into the curricula, but professional digital training for all teachers with up-to-date information on cyber safety and artificial intelligence would create more consistency and sustainability across the sector, Wheeler said. 

Adult learning programs are also facing new challenges as schools phase out computer labs and IT support staff for Chromebooks (competency and GED tests don’t work on Chromebooks). This has limited programs’ ability to expand testing capacity.

The needs of New Hampshire’s adult education programs may exceed the digital equity grant’s capacity — but Wheeler sees the initiative as an opportunity to gather local providers at one table to share resources, raise awareness, and find other sources of collaboration. 

“One of my big concerns with the Digital Equity Act is that they not pump money into things that are not sustainable. Because it is only four years worth of funding,” Wheeler said. “I have some general ideas about what our students need … but this is an opportunity for [local providers] to really expand what they're offering, what they're doing, what they're willing to do.”

Editor’s Note: The Granite State News Collaborative is one of several member organizations sitting on the New Hampshire Digital Equity Planning Initiative’s Asset Advisory Council. These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org. 

If you like what you read here, help us keep it going. Now through 12/31, GSNC is trying to raise $13,000 for local reporting. If we do, we unlock an additional $13,000 in national matching funds. We could use your help. Can we count on you?

• Digital Equity Planning Initiative seeks guidance

  The New Hampshire Digital Equity Planning Initiative is looking for help from Granite Staters to ensure that the Digital Equity Plan it is creating reflects the state’s diverse connectivity needs and desires. A survey it is conducting can be printed and shared with those who lack internet access. Paper copies can be scanned and emailed to derc@metro.org or postmarked and mailed to:

  University of New Hampshire Extension

  c/o Michael Polizzotti

  59 College Rd.

  Taylor Hall

  Durham, NH 03824

  The Digital Planning Initiative is also presenting two information sessions that are open to all:

  • NH Forum on Civic Engagement and Digital Equity | Thursday, October 6, 4-6 p.m. (remote)

  • Forum to Review and Strengthen NH’s Plan for Digital Equity: Crafting Our Vision for NH’s Digital Future | Thursday, October 19, 9-11 a.m. (in person)

Distrust and lack of transparency cloud discussions about the benefits of competency-based learning, educators say.

 (Dave Cummings | New Hampshire Bulletin)

Dek: Teachers, administrators and advocates worry that the revision of the 306 rules is being used to destabilize public education.

By Kelly Burch

Granite State News Collaborative

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 60’s 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.”

• Key principles of competency-based education

  The Aurora Institute, a Virginia-based nonprofit recognized as a leader in CBE, defines the approach by these seven principles:

  • Students are empowered daily to make important decisions about their learning experiences, how they will create and apply knowledge, and how they will demonstrate their learning.

  • Assessment is a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for students that yields timely, relevant, and actionable evidence.

  • Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.

  • Students progress based on evidence of mastery, not seat time.

  • Students learn actively using different pathways and varied pacing.

  • Strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of schools and education systems.

  • Rigorous, common expectations for learning (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable.

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. 

If you like what you read here, help us keep it going. Now through 12/31, GSNC is trying to raise $13,000 for local reporting. If we do, we unlock an additional $13,000 in national matching funds. We could use your help. Can we count on you?