Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.
The House Appropriations Committee has approved a proposal that would provide thousands of dollars to a family to pay for private school tuition or other education expenses. Once the program gets fully implemented it will cost the state an estimated 500-million dollars annually. Stonewall Representative Larry Bagley is hearing concerns about taking money away from public schools…
“The money part is what scares me. My phone rang off the wall yesterday from superintendents not teachers but superintendents. People who running the schools that are all oppose to this bill.”
The measure passed on a 13 to 8 vote, Bagley was one of two Republicans to vote against it.
There’s also a concern the Louisiana Gator Scholarship Program will result in students leaving high performing schools so they can attend a private school, further lowering the amount of money public schools receive. The bill author’s Julie Emerson pushes back against that idea…
“I don’t believe it’s going to cause a mass exodus of grade schools but you have to remember that if a student does leave that is one less student that the school is paying to educate.”
Fourteen other states have implemented education savings account programs like the one her bill proposes to create. Louisiana Federation of Teachers president Larry Carter says the E-S-A program in Arizona has turned out to be more costly than projected and there’s fraud too…
“Auditors found that more than $700 thousand in public funds that parents were suppose to spend on their kids education went to clothing, and beauty supplies.”
Emerson says they’ve learned from other states’ mistakes and there are provisions in the proposed legislation that makes sure the dollars made available through the Gator Scholarship Program goes to education…
“We do have a lot of guardrails in here that I believe we’ve learned best and worst practices from other states that have implemented this.”
The Educational saving account would award families from higher incomes with 51-hundred dollars a year, 75-hundred dollars for lower income families and 15-thousand dollars for students with special needs.
Comments