Senate Bill 101 would strengthen New Hampshire’s cross-district open enrollment program

A version of the following public comment was submitted to the New Hampshire House Committee on Education Policy and Administration on March 25, 2026.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony on Senate Bill (SB) 101, An Act Authorizing Parents to Enroll Their Children in Any Public School in the State.

Strong open enrollment laws can benefit students and school districts. They ensure students can attend public schools that are the right fit for their goals and needs, with many using these programs to enroll in A- or B-rated school districts, escape bullying, pursue college-level courses and specialized learning models, access smaller class sizes, or shorten their commute to school.

A report from the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst's Office and a 2023 Reason Foundation study both found that the competitive effects of open enrollment also encourage public school districts to improve. In fact, when interviewed for a 2023 EdChoice report, public school district administrators in Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana, and Florida stated that open enrollment encouraged them to innovate by creating new programs and improving existing programs to better attract and retain students.

Research also shows that K-12 open enrollment is widely used and supported. Reason Foundation's analysis in Harvard University's Education Next found 1.8 million students across 27 states and Washington, D.C., used within- and cross-district policies. Furthermore, according to a 2025 national poll by EdChoice, 75% of school parents across party lines-80% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats, and 74% of independents-favor open enrollment policies that allow families to attend public schools outside their assigned district's boundaries. This bipartisan support led, in part, to open enrollment legislation being enacted in Idaho, Montana, and West Virginia (2023) and Nevada (2025).

Moreover, state data shows that open enrollment participation increases gradually over time. For example, Wisconsin's data showed that program participation increased from 2% in 2005 to 8% of students as of the 2024-2025 school year. As such, school districts-including those that initially lose more students than they take in-have time to respond to fluctuations in enrollment.

Yet, as explained in Public Schools Without Boundaries 2025, New Hampshire's current open enrollment policies are not adequately serving students, scoring merely a 45 out of Reason's 100-point best practices criteria (an "F" letter grade), leaving substantial room for policy improvements across most of the key metrics that the study evaluates.

SB 101 would significantly strengthen the state's discretionary cross-district open enrollment program, which allows students to transfer to public schools in other districts accepting applicants.

In particular, the bill would require all of New Hampshire's school districts to participate in the cross-district program and accept transfer applicants-regardless of their abilities-so long as the receiving district has extra seats available at the student's grade level. If codified, the legislation would make New Hampshire the 17^th state to adopt universal cross-district open enrollment, empowering families to match their children with schools that best fit their needs.

SB 101-like most open enrollment policies-would allow districts to determine their own capacity for accepting transfer students and to decline applications when demand exceeds available seats, sparing them from needing to hire more teachers or construct new facilities. Accordingly, the bill's funding provision-which is extraordinarily generous compared to other states-would more than cover the marginal cost of educating transfer students within existing capacity. SB 101, therefore, would provide a tool for districts to recoup funding lost to declining local enrollment.

The bill also includes excellent transparency provisions at the state and local levels. Districts would be required to post their available capacity by school and grade level on their websites, informing parents where seats are open. Likewise, the New Hampshire Department of Education would be required to annually publish district-level student transfer data, including the number of transfer applications received, accepted, and rejected (disaggregated by the reasons for denial).

Overall, SB 101 is a strong bill that would improve New Hampshire's open enrollment policies by 37 points, boosting the state to an 82 out of 100 possible points on best practices (a "B-"), surpassing New England states like Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut. This would make it the 12^th best public school transfer law in the nation-and the best in the Northeast.

Even still, SB 101 leaves room for future improvement. School districts should be required to post their open enrollment policies on their websites, so families know when, where, and how to apply. They should also be required to inform rejected applicants of the reasons for their denial-in writing-and those applicants should be permitted to appeal the denial to the New Hampshire Department of Education. Lastly, the department's annual reports should include the number of transfers (not just applications) each district receives.