We ask you to contact your New Hampshire State Representatives and urge him or her to vote against H.B. 738. We also ask you to come to Concord on Wednesday afternoon to speak against this bill. HSLDA Senior Counsel Tj Schmidt, who was born in New Hampshire, and is a homeschool grad and homeschool dad, will be present in Concord to testify against this dangerous piece of legislation.

ACTION REQUESTED

Please call your New Hampshire State Representative and ask him or her to oppose H.B. 738. Your message can be as simple as the following:

“As a homeschool parent, I respectfully ask that you oppose H.B. 738, which will place criminal background checks on many homeschool parents. This bill will increase costs, regulations, and red tape for homeschool families and homeschool co-ops, and is not needed. New Hampshire already has strong laws to protect children, and punish those who harm children, including lengthy prison sentences. H.B. 738 will instead put more costs, regulations, and red tape on homeschool families and loving parents simply because they choose to homeschool and participate in a co-op or other group of homeschoolers. This bill is a solution in search of a problem.”

In addition, for your convenience, you can send a one-click email to your New Hampshire State Representative through our HSLDA advocacy site. 

BACKGROUND

H.B. 738 is a dangerous bill that will increase unnecessary regulation on home education families, with no evidence that there is any need for it. Last year, a similar bill to H.B. 738 was defeated thanks to the swift work of a coalition of New Hampshire homeschool organizations including HSLDA, Granite State Home Educators, and Catholics United for Home Education–New Hampshire.

If passed into law, H.B. 738 will mandate that parent volunteers undergo government criminal background checks simply because they are part of a co-op or other group of homeschool families “that accepts students benefiting from scholarships, grants, or tax credits[.]” H.B. 738 will require every single volunteer in such a co-op to undergo criminal background checks, even if only one child in the co-op is a recipient of New Hampshire’s education tax credit program, an Education Freedom Account, or some other program. This will add additional expenses, bureaucracy, and government red tape on homeschooling moms and dads. 

We thank our friends at Catholics United for Home Education–New Hampshire and Granite State Home Educators for their strong stance against H.B. 738. You can read CUHE-NH’s excellent letter to legislators here, and GSHE’s excellent blog post here.