Amy Agostino

This bill is absolute nonsense. I do NOT want my property taxes paying for thousands of dollars to be paid out to private schools or homeschoolers. We pay enough property taxes to have good schools; this bill would be taking money away from those schools, giving them less to work with. I homeschooled my own children through most of elementary school (saving the town thousands of dollars a year), and let me tell you that you do NOT need ten thousand dollars to homeschool a child. It can be done almost for free if you’re low income (as we were in those days), or parents can choose to spend more. But there are enough allegations of abuse with the state vouchers – why would anyone think that NH taxpayers want to give their property tax money to people’s kids for skiing passes, ballet lessons, or other luxuries? Insane. Hell, for ten thousand dollars in their pocket, I would be surprised if there weren’t hundreds of families signing up to homeschool their kids just for the money. Get paid $30K a year to stay home with your kids? Nice work if you can get it. Meanwhile, up to 10% of this taxpayer money would go to a private scholarship organization based in NYC that would administer the program TOTALLY free of public oversight, transparency or accountability. Please oppose this bill. It is a flagrant waste of taxpayer money.