With Income Cap Gone, New Hampshire Families Rush to Apply for School Vouchers

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Well before Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a bill last month to make New Hampshire education freedom accounts available to all income levels, school choice supporters were preparing to get the word out.

On June 10, Ayotte signed Senate bill 295, and a multi-prong awareness campaign kicked into gear.

The conservative advocacy group Americans For Prosperity NH dispatched social media ads informing New Hampshire residents that the previous income cap on the voucher-like program had been eliminated.

Supportive state senators like Victoria Sullivan, the Manchester Republican who authored the bill, began directing interested constituents to the sign-up portal for the program, which allows New Hampshire residents to receive state funds toward public and private school expenses.

And the Children’s Scholarship Fund, the nonprofit organization that administers the education freedom accounts, blasted emails to every parent, school and provider currently participating in the program to tell them about the change.

The awareness campaigns worked. Within a week of Ayotte signing the bill, the Children’s Scholarship Fund had seen 2,000 additional people apply, according to the Concord Monitor.

“I got inundated with emails,” Sullivan said in an interview with the Bulletin. “It just became impossible to actually respond to everybody individually. So I used X and my Facebook page to give people the information as to where they could go to fill out the application.”

And as of July 2, about 9,000 families have either completed or started an application for an education freedom account, Kate Baker Demers, the executive director of the fund, said last week. Not all of those families will finish and turn in those applications, Baker Demers said. But the numbers suggest the program could exceed lawmakers’ estimates of 7,500 students in the program next school year.

For newly eligible families, there was incentive to move quickly. While the law removes the income limits for the program, which previously sat at 350% of the federal poverty level, lawmakers included an annual cap on enrollees to mitigate some of the anticipated costs. That cap applied to families making more than 350%; the sooner those families submitted an application, the sooner they could guarantee themselves a spot.

Supporters of the program say the large surge in interest validates the Legislature’s push to make the program open to all income levels.

Democrat decries funding to wealthy

But Democrats, who have opposed the education freedom account program from the beginning, say the preliminary numbers show that the program is already likely to exceed its budget. Democrats vociferously opposed Sullivan’s bill during the session, arguing that people in higher income brackets should not receive state support for private schools.

“The voucher scam proponents really underestimated the impact on purpose, I think, deliberately to deceive legislators to vote for the bill and to deceive Granite Staters,” said Rep. David Luneau, a Hopkinton Democrat.

As part of making the program universal, lawmakers imposed a 10,000 student cap in the program’s first year, though a number of categories of students are not subject to that cap. It is unclear whether the state will hit that cap this year, though Baker Demers is dubious. She has predicted 8,500 voucher recipients in the coming school year once all applications are submitted and approved.

Supporters of the program say the large number of applications this summer are a reflection of the high number of families who wanted to use education freedom accounts but were just barely outside of the income limits.

Sullivan said many parents of children with disabilities, who have been dissatisfied with the individualized education plans at their public school, have expressed excitement at the opportunity to explore alternative options with some state funding.

“I knew there were a lot of families that were just outside of the income cap last time, but there have been a lot of families with kids in special education that are not having their needs met in the public school that have reached out to me about it,” she said. “So that part was surprising to me.”

And Sarah Scott, field director of Americans For Prosperity NH, said the removal of the income limit could also be a boon for single parents.

“Single parents often have rough lives and the kids have struggled,” she said. “…A lot of those families weren’t eligible because when you look at 350% of the federal poverty line for a family of two ($74,025), it’s very low.”

More outreach planned

While the outreach in the last month has been relatively successful, proponents say many eligible families still likely do not know about the program. Scott said the online ads, for which the organization has paid about $10,000 so far, are designed to reach families who may not follow state politics closely enough to know about the change.

“I think that prior to June 10, most of the families that were aware of the program were the people that are following what’s going on in their town in local politics,” she said. “Now I think we’re definitely seeing more and more of those families that are so wrapped up in, you know, driving their kids to afternoon sports, taking them to tutoring or you know Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts.”

Sullivan added that though she is a believer in the education freedom accounts, which her children have received, private school or homeschooling may not be the right choice for many families.

“I don’t think it’s a program for every family,” she said. “A lot of families are happy with their public schools, and I wouldn’t want to be pushing people into an education that wasn’t right for them.”

The total tally of education freedom account students in the 2025 to 2026 school year will not be known for months. Families are allowed to apply throughout the year, but the bulk of applications happen before mid July. The Department of Education releases a report based on those numbers in November.

Luneau says he and other Democrats will continue to campaign against the education freedom accounts to turn voters against the idea of giving state funds to wealthy families. How wealthy those families are will not be clear. The families who say they are above the 350% poverty level do not need to submit income verification, or state their income at all.

And Luneau says he would also like more accountability over where the money is going and how the program vendors are approved.

“This is a program that very quickly is going to be over $100 million a year, over a billion bucks — billion with a capital B — over a 10-year period,” Luneau said. “And that’s a billion dollars that isn’t going to be helping cities and towns or reducing property taxes. Essentially it’s a billion dollars that is going to be sitting on top of everyone’s property taxes.”

Baker Demers and Scott counter that demand for the program will likely level out, and they say the state will be able to sustain the funding levels.

“I think that in the first couple of weeks, there’s always a lot of talk about it,” she said. “…But over the course of the next year, I think a lot of the families that really want to take advantage of it will be aware of it and will already have taken the steps to do that.”

New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: [email protected].

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