In Rick Ladd’s 16 years in the State House, he’d never seen so many education bills.

That is, until 2022, when they skyrocketed – so much so that Ladd, a Haverhill Republican and chair of the House Education Committee, said lawmakers can no longer effectively deal with the sheer volume of it all.

“The bigger issues, which we’ve been chipping away at the sides for years and years and years here, we have not had the time to really dig down,” Ladd said.

So he proposed splitting the committee into two separate entities – one to tackle education funding, the other to handle matters of policy and administration. The House approved that measure, formally filed by Deputy House Speaker Steven Smith, at Organization Day on Dec. 4.

The policy and administration committee will regulate local K-12 schools, including things like support services and learning, according to the resolution. The funding committee will consider money for schools and educational programs as well as special education aid costs and adequacy formulas and the administration of higher education and career technical education.

Ladd said the change is “absolutely needed.” From 2008 to 2021, the Education Committee saw an average of 47 bills per year. Now, that average is 122. In recent sessions, he said, the committee has had to meet three to four days a week, on top of session days, to get through everything.

“We were burning out people on the committee,” Ladd said. “People have other things going on in their lives as well – medical appointments or family or job – and so that really restricted us.”

It’s not clear exactly how bills will get triaged between the two committees. Several contentious education topics straddle both policy and funding. For example, a bill request has been filed to remove the income eligibility requirement for Education Freedom Account vouchers. Making the program universally available would be a policy decision, but that expansion could also have a sizable fiscal impact.

Rep. Glenn Cordelli, a Tuftonboro Republican who signed onto the bill request, said he expects EFA matters would go to the policy committee, which is also the one he hopes to be on. He was the Education Committee’s vice chair last session. In some cases, however, he said some pieces of legislation could warrant a joint meeting between the two committees.

Ladd said the funding committee would typically look at financial factors associated with policy decisions: the cost of staffing, facilities and contracts needed to implement a policy, as well as consider effectiveness and accountability.

Which committee a bill goes to is up to Speaker of the House Sherman Packard. His office did not provide specifics on how he’ll assign bills between the two.

Smith, who argued for the resolution before its approval, said the split could help cut out the noise and streamline discussions on funding.

“It is also a hope that by separating those two issues – the policy and administration can be far more contentious than the funding – that maybe we’ll actually beat the courts to getting to a solution and save face for the House,” Smith said.

Zack Sheehan, the executive director of the N.H. School Funding Fairness Project, hopes that’s the case.

“That would be awesome,” he said.

However, Sheehan speculated that the subject divide could also end up controlling the conversation.

“My guess is that they will go to the committee that the majority party wants a specific outcome from,” Sheehan said, something he’d expect no matter which party held control.

He used special education as another example of where policies and funding might intertwine.

If House leaders want to avoid talking about the financial impacts of education funding on local property taxpayers, he said, they may send it to the policy committee.

“It gives you the ability to stifle any conversation about the fiscal impact of that bill,” Sheehan said. “On the other hand, if you want to have a conversation about funding and avoid conversations about policy, then you’re able to send it that way … I think with a lot of education bills, that’s a false dichotomy, and they could go to either one.”

So far, the number of House bills on education is on track to meet the heightened average. The session will convene on Jan. 8.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.