Protecting and Improving Public Education

I, Ben Colbath, your Conway candidate for NH State House Representative, grew up in the Mount Washington Valley and attended public schools as my children do today. Like the vast majority of parents who send their children to public schools, I believe in those schools and the public school mission to ensure all children can work to their highest potential.

Unfortunately, I see the Republican majority on the state and national level trying to dismantle the public school system.

When I get to the NH State House, I will work with other legislators to strengthen those public schools.

First, I will ensure that we no longer provide taxpayer money to our state's richest families so they can send their children to private schools like Brewster Academy. It has a $45,000 annual tuition that none of the rest of us can afford. But we have to subsidize these super wealthy families with our hard-earned tax dollars.

Conway children and their parents depend upon our public schools, but the Republican majority in the NH State House has turned all their attention to the 12,500 children receiving Education Freedom Account (EFA) vouchers, while neglecting our public schools, and actively passing policies that undermine our public schools. They are doing so all the way from Kindergarten to the state university system.

We need to concentrate our attention on the more than 160,000 public school children, not on the 12,500 who are getting vouchers that were first sold as a way to help low-income students, but now are provided to the richest among us. It has caused a new $50 million tax that we now have to pay.

When we have a Democratic majority in the House, we will also demand an audit of how well or poorly that EFA money is being spent. Now a New York state-based nonprofit, which has been given $11 million of our taxpayer money to administer the funds, has stonewalled attempts to do any deep audits to determine how our millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent.

Public schools are overseen by elected school boards and parents. Private schools have little public oversight, which is fine as long as they are not taking my and my Conway neighbors' tax dollars to pay for those private schools — schools that can reject any student for any reason, including wrong religion, not enough money, poor test scores, etc. Public schools welcome all children and in doing so build social bonds that last a lifetime.

The Republicans have also downshifted costs that the state once paid to the local taxpayers. That's a prime reason why our local property taxes are so high. They blame it on a state revenue shortfall. They forget to say that shortfall has come because they continue to cut taxes for the rich on things like stock dividends. Not only are they not paying their fair share, but the super wealthy are now getting these voucher handouts. So unlike the rest of us, they pay less in taxes and get more money given to them via the EFA vouchers.

The same holds true for the major multinational corporations like Walmart. They use our town services and they depend on educated employees, but work with Republicans and lobbyists to get their taxes cut on the state level, causing you to make up the difference. It is time for a change that I, along with David Paige and Ellin Leonard, my fellow Conway Democratic candidates for the NH State House, will bring when elected on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.