Data: Explore where every dollar of Education Freedom Account money went last year

Tuition at Christian-affiliated private schools and purchases from Amazon continue to drive spending through New Hampshire’s education freedom account program, according to new data released late last month.

Independent Christian and parochial schools collectively received nearly $10 million, or 86%, of the money spent on tuition, a Concord Monitor analysis found.

Amazon received $3.9 million, or 19%, of the $20.2 million families spent last school year.

The Children’s Scholarship Fund, the private organization that the Department of Education contracts to administer the program, released the data for the last two school years. The organization also reposted reports from earlier years that had previously been removed due to what its executive director, Kate Baker Demers, had said were her concerns about harassment of educational service providers.

The Department of Education’s administrative rules require the Children’s Scholarship Fund to publish the amount of money received and the number of students served by each educational service provider, but the organization failed to comply for the last two years.

This data provides important insight into how families are choosing to spend the $5,204 on average they received per child enrolled last year. The EFA law, passed in 2021, gives them wide latitude to spend their allotment as they see fit, including on private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, summer camp, and activities that are typically considered extracurricular in nature.

In total, $77.5 million has been allocated to the program since it began. Following a major expansion last year, at least $51.6 million is expected to be allocated this school year alone.

The data presented below is for the 2024-25 school year. To access other expenditure reports, click here.

Families spent 57% of their money on tuition across 130 different private schools.

They spent 23% of their money on instructional materials, with the top recipients — aside from Amazon — being the Christian instructional companies Abeka ($131,000), The Good and the Beautiful ($120,000), and Christianbook LLC ($89,000).

Families spent 9% of their money on summer and specialized education, with Epic Christian Academy ($79,000), the organization that manages Gunstock Mountain Resort ($63,000), and Concord Community Music School ($61,000) being the highest-grossing entities in this category.

Families also spent money on computer hardware, therapy, academic testing and public school courses, among other things.

Two entities — Amazon and Portsmouth Christian Academy — received more than $500,000, and 41 received more than $100,000.

Of the 41 entities receiving more than $100,000, 36 were Christian-affiliated organizations.

Because tuition was the largest category of spending, we took a particularly close look at where that money went.

Eighty-six percent of money spent on tuition went to independent Christian schools (43%) and parochial (43%) schools.

Thirty-five schools received more than $100,000. The only non-religiously-affiliated schools among them were High Mowing ($275,000), a Waldorf school in Wilton, and Sant Bani ($149,000), an independent private school in Sanbornton.

Non-religious private schools received $1.3 million, or 11% of tuition spending. Prep schools received $216,000, or 2%.

Some of the largest and wealthiest prep schools in the state, including St. Paul’s and Phillips Exeter, received hardly any money. A significant portion of students at these institutions are residents of other states. New Hampshire families who could afford the tuition likely would not have qualified for the income eligibility cap in place last school year. Families who would have qualified, meanwhile, likely received financial aid directly from the institutions.

Almost $600,000 was spent on out-of-state tuition. Most of that money went to schools in New England, including many just over the border from New Hampshire. However, it also went as far afield as California and Wisconsin.

The Monitor previously reported on the fact that families spent money on expenses including skiing, gymnastics, summer camp, and equestrian activities, none of which are typically not covered by public schools.

Spending on these activities is allowed under the rules of the program. Baker Demers said some of these activities fall under the “health” category of students’ curricula.

Calculating the total spending on a per-activity basis is challenging.

In skiing, for example, families spent a total of nearly $9,000 on the Epic season pass, which grants access to some of the country’s premier ski resorts, including Stowe, Wildcat and Sunapee. They also spent more than $1,000 at Gunstock, Bretton Woods, Pats Peak, McIntyre, Sunapee and several ski shops. (Families are not allowed to spend money on “recreational items,” so it’s unclear what they bought at the ski shops.)

Calculating average spending at each entity per child is not possible with the new data. The Department of Education’s administrative rules require the Children’s Scholarship Fund to publish the number of students served by each entity, but it did not do so.

Baker Demers did not respond to a request for comment on this missing information. Department spokesperson Kim Houghton also did not respond.

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