No sooner had House Bill 1642 been introduced—after hearings, meetings, petitions from the State Board of Education, a majority vote of the House of Representatives, study committees, 6 amendments in the Senate Finance Committee, millions spent starting a few independent charter schools—when Senator Burling motioned to Table the bill. He was supported by new Democratic senators Reynolds (Plymouth, Bristol, Lyme area), Sgambati (Laconia, Tilton area) and DeVries (Manchester). After 1000s of hours of work and study, Tabling the bill would have been the end of HB 1642 (and several wonderful schools) this session. Just like that.

When the vote to Table HB 1642 failed, Senators then voted on the last-minute Senate Finance Committee amendment to replace $2700 per student with $1 per student. Senator Hassan introduced the amendment saying “The Senate Finance Committee knew that amending the bill to $1.00 per student was not a funding solution, but we did so to give more time to find a viable funding solution for these schools.”

The amendment passed on a 15/9 roll call vote. Then, House Bill 1642, as amended, passed on a 13/11 on a roll call vote.

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Post Script: One Person Comments on Senate Votes

John Davis is a logger and long-time resident of Surry, New Hampshire—a town of 700 near Keene. He doesn’t have children in any school, but when the multi-town School District closed Surry’s 3-room elementary school with almost with no notice and against the protests of Surry residents, John decided to learn about charter schools. He then called on all the people of Surry for support and they developed and opened the Surry Village Charter School. John is a founding member of their Board of Trustees.

With a true New Hampshire accent, here are John Davis’ comments after watching the Senate review and vote bills all day:

“There’s no doubt why they’re in the financial mess they’re in—there’s no respect. There’s no respect for all the hard work that other people have done. Look at what's going on with this bill HB 1642. There have been study committees, hearings, and the House Education Committee voted for this bill, the House Finance Committee voted for this bill, the full House of Representatives voted for this bill, the Senate Education Committee voted for this bill 6:0, the State Board of Education has voted twice on the need for these schools and asked for support of this bill, and then for all the hard work and time spent, it hits a few powerful Senators on the Senate Finance Committee and …blip—it’s just dismissed.

“And look how far we’ve come in the last two and a half years. When I first got involved “charter school” was like a dirty word. And now we have schools and support all over the state. The schools are serving children who need them. We’ve spent 5 million dollars getting them started and the kids are learning.

We’ve spent 5 million dollars getting them started and the kids are learning. These are good schools serving the people.

“These Senators make it look like they have worked so hard and they had to cut 1.5 million dollars and they are saving the people 1.5 million dollars. In reality, it’s probably going to cost them way more than 1.5 million in the short term if these schools close and even way more than that in the long term. Think how much it’s going to cost to disband these schools! And who’s going to do it?

“Who is going to pick up all the long-term costs of the schools? These were all started with federal grant money—what about all the expenditures and equipment, the costs of re-integrating all of the students and the special education students who are doing better in these schools with less services.”

“This isn’t about money. There are people who just want to close these schools.”