The commission to study the cost of special education heard testimony that New Hampshire’s Expanded Educational Freedom Accounts program now recognizes two pathways for a student to get differentiated aid for a disabling condition: school-district evaluation/IEP documentation or a medical certification of disability (MCD) submitted by a medical professional.

Matt Southerton, director of policy and compliance for the Children’s Scholarship Fund, told the commission that CSF administers the EFA program under a state contract and reviews either district evaluations or signed MCDs to determine eligibility. Southerton said the MCD (identified in CSF materials as STU19) lists disability categories and requires the medical signer's credential and diagnosis; he said CSF accepts evaluations from public districts or a licensed medical professional’s MCD submitted under penalty of perjury.

Commission members pressed how the MCD pathway aligns with administrative rules that list qualified examiners and assessment batteries. Southerton said the qualified-examiner language in the posted rules applies in the context of school-district assessments and that CSF’s MCD attestation is the operating mechanism for EFA applicants.

Several members, including Dr. Jennifer Dolliff, raised concerns about the relative rigor of the two pathways. Dolliff said the department may not be able to distinguish which students were identified through a district IEP process — which requires multiple assessments and district oversight — and which were identified by a private clinician’s MCD. “There is really very little process for identifying kids in EFAs,” she said, adding that the result may be inflated counts of students identified with disabling conditions.

Commission discussion cited numbers from committee handouts and prior meetings: about 894–890 students currently receiving differentiated aid, roughly 240 with school-district documentation and over 600 identified through MCDs. Southerton confirmed those figures as his understanding for applications CSF processes.

Members also questioned ongoing verification. Southerton said families must requalify for differentiated aid each year; MCDs are redocumented annually and CSF requests updated documentation for expired IEPs. He said CSF’s parent agreement requires families to use private insurance before claiming EFA dollars when applicable and that CSF reviews submitted invoices and documentation to adjudicate allowable EFA expenses.

On allowable spending, Southerton said differentiated-aid disbursements to families are not restricted to narrowly defined disability-specific purchases at the family level; tuition and a range of education-related services and materials deemed EFA-allowable can be paid from those funds. He added that CSF operates as a nonprofit, retains a statutory administrative fee (statutory maximum 10%), currently runs at about 7.9% and returns remaining reconciled funds to families at year-end.

The commission asked the Department of Education to clarify rule cross-references (the handout references Ed rules and lists in the packet) and to supply more granular counts showing which pathway (district IEP vs. MCD) produced each differentiated-aid eligibility. Members said that breakdown is essential before drawing conclusions about overidentification or program misuse.

The panel asked CSF and DOE to provide supporting documentation and encouraged the department to examine how MCD attestation, IEP validation and annual requalification are recorded so the commission can assess whether changes in documentation or oversight are warranted.

Next steps: DOE staff agreed to provide further detail on the STU forms referenced, counts by identification pathway, and the documentation CSF receives in adjudication. The commission flagged this topic for follow-up at a subsequent meeting.