Jim Beam column:School choice has its critics

Published 6:31 am Saturday, January 31, 2026

Louisiana’s school choice program, which is called LA GATOR, is expected to be one of the more controversial issues at the legislative session beginning March 9. Some legislative leaders and others are concerned about the program’s cost doubling every year.

Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, has been one of the main critics of the  program. At a meeting last week of the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, Henry said he is concerned about the extras that are financed with LA GATOR funds.

Lawmakers should take a “good look” at how money flows through the system, Henry said.

The Senate president is unhappy that families can use the grants to pay for ancillary school expenses such as uniforms, laptops and tutoring for private school students —and not just tuition.

“I think LA GATOR as a whole just needs to be scrapped and you need to come up with a different system to help these kids out,” Henry told The Center Square.

Landry’s budget recommendation for the upcoming fiscal year includes $44.2 million for LA GATOR in addition to the program’s existing $43.5 million, bringing the total to nearly $88 million.

Commissioner of Administration Taylor Barras, the governor’s budget architect, said the allocation would expand the program to include another 4,000 to 5,000 students.

Henry said he would favor narrowing the program to focus on students leaving failing schools for higher performing schools and eliminating funding for what he described as supplemental services.

Approximately three-quarters of the 39,189 students who applied for LA GATOR last year were already attending private schools, according to information Henry and other legislators provided.

“Giving them the ability to buy school supplies online is not a priority right now,” Henry said. “It’s very convoluted how the money flows, and no one really seems to be able to answer the question.”

School choice advocates welcomed Landry’s proposed increase, saying it could help address long waitlists and unmet demand.

Erin Bendily, senior vice president of the conservative Pelican Institute for Public Policy, said the additional funding would nearly double the size of the program.

“Families have made it clear that they want these options for their children, and we certainly hope the Legislature will retain this amount of funding in the budget,” Bendily said.

The Louisiana Illuminator in its report of last week’s meeting said Landry is asking lawmakers to double state funding for vouchers that pay for students’ private education expenses. The news agency said the request had put him at odds with legislative leaders who said state education officials still won’t answer basic questions about the program’s structure.

Henry said, “If you want to take a kid from a failing school and put them in a good school, I don’t think many people would object to that. It’s all the other stuff that’s involved in [LA GATOR] that has muddied the water, that no one likes to discuss, that people have a difficult time justifying.”

Louisiana has had a small statewide voucher program for over a decade that uses taxpayer funds to pay for around 5,600 low-income students to attend private schools, most of them are affiliated with the Catholic Church.

Landry and conservative lawmakers overhauled the school voucher guidelines in 2024 to be far more permissive. Landry’s intent is to greatly expand the voucher program to cover more children and allow families of all income levels, including the wealthy, to access state funds to pay for private education expenses.

Under Henry’s leadership, legislators agreed last year to continue $44 million in funding for 5,600 school voucher slots mostly for low-income students who participated in the older, more restrictive voucher program.

With the limited allocation, the state could only add 680 seats statewide in the 2025-26 school year for new students who qualified under the more lenient LA GATOR regulations.

Legislators who are skeptical of the program have raised questions about whether extending vouchers to more families would actually help children escape inadequate public education or simply subsidize families who already send their children to private schools.

State Rep. Jack McFarland, R-Jonesboro, who chairs the budget writing committee in the Louisiana House, said he shares Henry’s worries about LA GATOR. He is concerned that voucher funding can be used on expenses other than tuition, when families with public school students don’t have those same opportunities.

“The devil is in the details, and we need to see what the devil is doing,” McFarland said in an interview.

Jim Beam, the retired editor of the American Press, has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at jim.beam.press@gmail.com.