NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – With the spring legislative session underway, thousands of families are anxiously awaiting how much state lawmakers will allocate for the LA Gator Scholarship Program.
The Louisiana Department of Education says it has received 39,189 applications for the program, with nearly 35,000 deemed eligible so far. An additional 1,300 applications are still pending, meaning that number could grow.
Erin Bendily, Ph.D., a senior vice president at the Pelican Institute, said the response from families has been strong.
“Louisiana families have spoken loud and clear with nearly 40,000 applications being submitted for the LA Gator program. That’s a clear indication, in my opinion, that families want more educational options for their kids,” Bendily said.
The program provides eligible families with education scholarship accounts. The funds can be used for school tuition and fees, tutoring, textbooks, dual enrollment courses and more.
DeJon Muwwakkil, a parent who homeschools her six-year-old daughter, said she hadn’t heard of the LA Gator program until now.
“I homeschool my daughter because I have some experience in teaching, coaching and in daycare as well, so I’ve taught from early six months to approximately kindergarten and then I had a small little teaching gab where I taught 6th graders through 12th graders,” said Muwwakkil.
She said she currently does not receive public funds to homeschool her child.
“I think anytime finances are being allocated to education is a good thing. Now the balance in which the finances are going to be utilized in the school setting or outside the school setting can always be of question,” Muwwakkil said. “However, if students are going to be coming out of the public school system there’s definitely going to have to be a way to make certain that those funds are used properly as they’re intended to and to just monitor just like you would monitor it in the school setting.”
According to the Education Department, Governor Jeff Landry has requested just over $93 million in his executive budget for the program, an amount the department estimates could cover about 12,000 students.
“We now see that there’s an overwhelming demand from families for this program. I don’t believe that the funding that is in the executive budget right now is enough to cover all of those applications. At a bare minimum, we need to keep that amount of money in the budget. But I think the question for lawmakers is how much of the demand are they going to be able to prioritize?” Bendily said.
The department says of all the student applications received, an estimated 10,859 students currently attend public schools.
“As I’m familiar with when a child attends a school there are a certain amount of funds that go along with that child in that school setting and I would hope that the funds, if they’re extracted for each child that does not attend in the public school setting, that those funds would be used to do what they’re specifically intended to do which is to educate the child,” said Muwwakkil.
Some public school advocates have voiced concerns that the program could divert funds from public schools if enrollment declines.
Bendily disagrees.
“No evidence that this is in any way going to hurt funding for public school systems. They continue to get funded through the state’s public school funding formula,” she said.
The Education Department notes that eligibility for the program does not guarantee that a student’s account will be funded or that they will be accepted into a non-public school.
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