GRANTHAM — Two Upper Valley towns supported petitioned warrant articles calling on legislators to stop any expansion of the state’s school voucher program in Town Meeting voting on Tuesday, while four more will decide before the end of the week.

In Sunapee and Grantham the item passed Tuesday, with Sunapee voters overwhelmingly in favor of the article, 685-288, and Grantham residents deciding by floor vote Tuesday night.

Voters in Croydon, Springfield and Plainfield will weigh in on the items Saturday. Results of New London’s Wednesday night Town Meeting were unavailable by deadline.

The petitioned warrant articles reject “any expansion of taxpayer funding for private education until we have full accountability, transparency and a sustainable funding plan that ensures no further strain on public schools or local property taxpayers.”

The articles refer to New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account program, which gives eligible families money to help pay for private education or home schooling. The state Legislature is currently discussing removing the program’s income requirement, which restricts participation to families with an income below 350% of the poverty level. (House Bill 115 and Senate Bill 295 were introduced in January.)

For supporters, the vouchers offer “high quality, flexible and specialized” education, according to the website of the Education Freedom Coalition, a group of state organizations and nonprofits. “It is imperative that we empower individual families by giving them the support they need to create stable and continuous learning.”

Last year, participants received an average of $5,204 per student and about $27.7 million total, according to a November news release from the New Hampshire Department of Education.

Ultimately, the articles “call on our state elected officials” and contain a provision to deliver the articles to Gov. Kelly Ayotte and “members of the State Legislature,” if they pass.

The warrant article initiative was started by Sullivan County Democrats — though chairwoman and Grantham resident Ellis Robinson said it is “absolutely a non-partisan issue.”

“This is not an anti-voucher effort, it is more an information effort and an opportunity for people to realize that the voucher program is further draining the education dollars away without any of the requirements that public schools have,” Robinson said.

Robinson and other opponents of expanding the voucher system say that it is problematic that there is no limit on how many people can enroll, that there is insufficient evaluation of how the program is working and that it is especially problematic to talk about expanding eligibility when the state is facing budget constraints.

Sullivan County Democrats aimed to create a campaign that would emphasize that “most of the property taxes are high in large part because the state has not embraced covering their portion of what most states do for contributions to schools,” Robinson said.

State funding of public education has long been at issue in New Hampshire. New Hampshire ranked last in percentage of funding for public education that is distributed by the state in fiscal year 2022, according to an analysis from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. Also, multiple lawsuits filed against the state alleging that it does not adequately pay for public education have been making their way through the courts for several years.

The vouchers also have been the subject of much debate at the state level, with Democrats opposed, since the Legislature created the program in 2021. Republican state legislators introduced the voucher program as a way to support families who cannot otherwise pay for private education or homeschooling, and the funding comes from the state’s Education Trust Fund which is derived from business taxes, state lottery earnings and other sources.

In Grantham, Robinson said the item passed unanimously on the floor.

In Croydon, resident and parent Amy Campbell helped to facilitate the petition locally and get residents’ signatures.

State legislators “need to be accountable for all this money that they’re spending on private and religious education, and then at the same time our public education is severely underfunded and it’s disgusting, I’m sick of it,” Campbell said.

A December analysis by the Concord Monitor found that 90% of tuition money paid through the program was spent on religious education.

In addition, the program “grants families extraordinarily wide latitude over how to spend” the money, the Monitor reported in a February article. Many homeschooling families used it for activities like skiing, martial arts, music lessons and other sports.

One of Campbell’s biggest goals with the initiative is to raise awarene ss of what the school voucher program is and how it works.

“It’s just one of those things that if you’re not involved in education and you don’t have school-aged kids you don’t know what’s going on,” Campbell, who has a 12-year-old daughter who attends Sunapee Middle-High School, said.

Clare Shanahan can be reached at cshanahan@ vne ws.com or 603-727- 3216.