Bedford Senator: Concord Wants To Control Our Schools

Some folks in Concord want to control zoning and school curricula for Bedford and other towns. Housing developers want the state to set up a board that could override local zoning laws and decisions (HB104). The Department of Education (DOE) wants the power to approve alternative credits toward a public-school diploma.

HB104, if passed, would let the State reject local planning and zoning decisions, as well as growth controls. The State could also overrule decisions by historic, heritage and conservation commissions.

The school-control bills are more complicated. HB435 last year mandated that public schools accept alternative credits for graduation. Legislators tell me they expected credits to be approved locally. However, rules written later, by DOE, say the state will accredit applicants, statewide.

This bill was publicized as a means to let groupss such as the Boys’ and Girls’ Club submit proposals for programs that substitute for public school credits. However, national for-profit schools, a restaurant “teaching job skills” to unpaid workers, or a church-based program in creationist “science”, could also apply. Texas, which approves curricula at the State level, mandates that creationism be taught alongside evolution in every science text. For New Hampshire, trying to build a reputation in regenerative medicine and other biomedical industries, what kind of message would that send? How would it affect the way colleges score credits from New Hampshire high schools?

These alternative programs, like other charter schools, do not require most teachers to be credentialed. Yet the Chair of the DOE Board told the Joint Committees on Education that current standards for teacher certification are too specific. DOE wants to generalize them, so that the handful of certified teachers needed, can qualify more easily.

Once an organization qualifies at the State level, districts would have no choice but to accept their credits toward graduation.

These are not policies for the “Live Free or Die” state. I will be fighting them.