BATON ROUGE, La. — State lawmakers are weighing a program that would use taxpayer money to help families pay for alternatives to public school. The idea has been controversial from the beginning, though it has staunch supporters, including Governor Jeff Landry himself.
Thursday the governor held town hall meetings in Metairie and Mandeville to try and drum up support for HB 745 and SB 313, bills which would lay the groundwork for Education Savings Accounts in Louisiana. “It's not the panacea to fixing our educational system,” he said, “but it is a first step.”
ESAs would set aside state funds to help families pay for private or another alternative school, including virtual school and homeschooling. “You're making the choice that hey, listen, I don't believe that the system is living up to my expectation,” said Landry Thursday. “The money should follow the child.”
SB 313 would authorize the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to create ESAs, while HB 745 would create them itself. They name the proposal the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise Scholarship program, or LA GATOR. In its official summary, HB 745 states that it would go into effect “when an Act of the legislature containing a specific appropriation of monies for program implementation becomes effective,” in other words, when lawmakers set aside money for it.
Many advocacy groups have expressed concern that the money could be diverted from funding that would otherwise go to public schools. Jan Moller, Executive Director of Baton Rouge-based think tank Invest in Louisiana, said he worries that public funds would be used for private schools that do not have the same transparency or testing requirements as public schools. “The public needs to know how their dollars are being spent, what results we're getting for those dollars,” he said.
He also noted that with a significant sales tax ending in 2025, the state is heading for a “fiscal cliff,” and to fund LA GATOR “you either have to raise that much money in taxes, and I don't think any politician wants to raise taxes, or you have to cut it from somewhere else in the budget,” like public schools.
Governor Landry said Thursday that the program would cost about $1.8 million to create, then at least tens of millions more to fully implement depending on how many families opted in. The bills provide for the program to be rolled out slowly, starting with students with special needs and low-income families and eventually becoming available to all families in the state.
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