BATON ROUGE mdash; After running into resistance from lawmakers last year, Gov. Jeff Landry is once again asking the Legislature to double the size of a program to let parents use state funding to send their children to private schools.Landry sought $93.5 million last year for the LA Gator voucher program but received only $43.5 million. He is asking the Legislature to add $44.2 million to that amount in this springrsquo;s session.But key lawmakers, including State Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, remain skeptical about committing additional funds. And teachersrsquo; unions oppose the plan out o fear that it will lead to cutbacks in public school funding around the state.With the budget expected to be tight in the upcoming session, LA GATOR will serve as an important measure of Landryrsquo;s influence over the Legislature, where his fellow Republicans hold more than two-thirds of the seats.The Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) voucher program uses state funds to give eligible students educational savings accounts to spend on private school tuition or homeschool materials.The idea of funding private school tuition has gained a lot of support in the Republican Party in other states. Landry has made the LA GATOR program a centerpiece of his legislative agenda, supported by a major push by the Pelican Institute, a conservative think tank in New Orleans.ldquo;Families know best,rdquo; Erin Bendily, senior vice president at the institute, said, adding that the program would ldquo;empower parents to make the best decisions.rdquo;Bendily said the Pelican Institute remains hopeful that the program will expand. ldquo;Look at this as an opportunity to serve more families in a different way,rdquo; she said. ldquo;It increases the marketplace of options available for education.rdquo;But funding for LA GATOR was heavily contested last year by public school teachers across the state who showed up at the Legislature to protest.Teachersrsquo; unions strongly opposed allocating state funding to private schools, arguing that the funds should be directed to public schools instead.Ashley Willis, the principal of Westgate High School in New Iberia, Louisiana, believes LA GATOR is a ldquo;detriment to public schools.rdquo; Last year, Westgate lost 100 students to private school voucher recipients.Willis said she understands both sides. As a parent, she applied to the LAGATOR program to get her children into private school but landed on the waitlist.The increase of students leaving the public school system may have negative impacts, Willis said.ldquo;Wersquo;re not adequately able to educate students at the level of rigor that the state expects us to because wersquo;re expected to do more with less funding,rdquo; she said.LA GATOR funding comes from the state general fund, not the education budget. However, as children leave public schools, the education budget will decrease.The original bill was introduced by state Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, who introduced the concept of having educational savings accounts funded by the state. The LA GATOR programs replaces the Louisiana Scholarship Program, a voucher program that has paid for 5,600 low-income students to attend private schools.State Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, noted the original LA GATOR bill was hard to pass in the Legislature. ldquo;Senators wanted more transparency in regards to where the money was going and had issues with the contract for the company overseeing the program,rdquo; he said in an email.Talbot handled the governor's amendment on the Senate floor last spring and noted he had to rewrite it ldquo;almost in its entirety.rdquo; The bill with the amendment passed in the Louisiana Legislature in May 2025 with a budget the $43.5 million budget.Most of that money went to the lower-income students who were already in the forerunner program.The Pelican Institute reported that nearly 40,000 families applied and that there are currently 28,000 students on the waitlist hoping to gain a spot in the program.Lawmakers have said that roughly three-fourths of the families that applied last year were already sending their children to private schools.So while similar voucher programs have been partly marketed in other states as a way to help low-income families, critics say, they predominantly help middle-class families afford private school tuition that they would be paying anyway. And the grant money alone would often not be enough to cover the cost of private school for low-income families.Permalink| Comments ...read more read less