BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Louisiana’s expanded school voucher program is now accepting applications, and in its first three days, over 10,000 people have applied.
The program is called Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise program (LA GATOR). It’s a $50 million expansion of the existing state school voucher system.
State Senator Rick Edmonds wrote the bill and chairs the education committee.
”We don’t know yet if we can fund them all but obviously, it’s going to be a very popular program with our parents,” Edmonds said.
Those who get the Gator scholarship can take that money and use it at a private school.
”Ultimately, we hope this is a universal program which would mean all students would become eligible,” Edmonds said. “Now we would have to find the funding as we move forward in that.”
That money is not being siphoned away from public schools. It’s a dedication from the state’s general fund. However, as PAR President Steven Procopio points out, when you start taking kids out of those public schools, funding is impacted.
”Then the state money, the per-pupil money that the state puts into a local school will go down because they get funding from the state based on a per pupil basis for the most part,” Procopio said.
However, it could mean lower costs for those schools, and Senator Edmonds said the public will just have to wait and see.
”We don’t know those figures yet,” Edmonds said. “We will and want to be transparent, but I don’t believe this is going to come at the expense of our public school parents and families. I do not believe that.”
This is just the first phase of La. Gator. The priority is for students with disabilities or from homes making less than roughly $80,000. But that’s not all that’s being accepted.
”This will make it easier for families who are lower poverty level to send their kids. but how much remains to be seen,” Procopio said.
The maximum a family can receive is just above $15,000 per school year for a student with a disability. Applications close on April 15.
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