2024 was a major year for NH’s home ed community. Here’s a brief look back.
Revamped Website
Our long-time goal to revamp the GSHE website was finally achieved this summer when we launched a new-and-improved website, www.gshenh.org. Not only does it have several how-to guides to step readers through all the ins and outs of home education in NH, we have over 700 resources in a searchable database that includes over 150 money-saving programs, and 10 forum communities that reduce our reliance on Facebook!
It has updated versions of our content that you rely on, including a dozen videos, FAQs, and over a hundred pages of information and resources – all organized in how-to guides — to help you provide a great learning experience for your children without needing a big budget or spending a small fortune.
If you haven’t already done so, create a free account so you have everything at your fingertips!
Legislation
Our primary legislative focus was on defeating a bill that would have forced all school-aged children to take the same statewide assessment that is administered to public-school students, HB 1610 (2024). If passed, this bill would have made NH the worst state in the country for home education.
GSHE led the charge and rallied over 500 people to testify at the public hearing in early March. For over four hours, home ed supporters testified that the bill was an egregious overreach of government authority and inappropriate to impose on families that do not receive taxpayer funding.
Two days later, the House Education Committee unanimously killed the bill, and the entire NH House concurred about a week later.
This kind of vigilance and involvement is how we preserve and protect home education freedom!
Unfortunately, there are national concerns that warrant monitoring and we urge supporters to keep an eye open for these issues in the coming year.
Outreach
Once again, GSHE leaders hosted over a dozen outreach events all over the state and online to help prospective and new(er) homeschoolers start with confidence, answer all their questions, and connect them with others in their own communities.
Contact your local library or us at info@GraniteStateHomeEducators.org if you’d like us to attend a meet-up or host an info session near you sometime in 2025.
Even as we reduce our reliance on Facebook and archived most of our groups (in favor of hosting them on our website forums), it remains our top outreach tool. As an example, we had almost 1.5M organic reaches in late November, which is absolutely amazing!
We also launched an Instagram account to have a presence on that platform, too. Now you can find us on all the big social media outlets and we hope you’ll like and share our posts with others so they can find great resources, encouragement, support, and community.
This is certainly not comprehensive of everything GSHE did throughout 2024, so we encourage you to browse our blog and newsletters for even more information and news about what happened and what GSHE does to serve NH’s home ed community.
As we close out the year, we want to wish everyone a happy holiday season and all good things in 2025!
