Fully funded ESA program to give LA boost

Real world experience may have mooted the argument against Louisiana implementing fully its GATOR program on cost considerations.

This program provides an education savings account for public schoolchildren of school age (5-21) who have an income at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty limit. It may be spent on tuition or a number of other services or items related to education. Eventually, it will expand first to incorporate families up to the 400 percent level, then finally open to all families regardless of income level.

However, this depends upon legislative appropriation to fund it for all eligible families, which could cost in the $100 million range just to fulfill all requests from the first cohort. It could double that to fulfill the others. Instead, for the past couple of years the Legislature allocated basically enough only to cover participating families in the prior version of the program predicated on allowing escape from failing schools, around $43 million.

Opponents of increasing its funding say that’s too much to spend given the state budget’s health. Its big backer Republican Gov. Jeff Landry even has taken heat for his requests to boost spending on it from his own floor leader GOP state Sen. Cameron Henry, who has suggested junking the entire thing.

Yet that may be penny wise but pound foolish. Education, which saw a drop of around 100,000 enrolled in both public and private schools during Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ terms, is being challenged by a fertility rate that keeps on falling, that also compounds Louisiana’s struggles to gain in population, which only since Landry took office has seen reversal from the six-figure total population loss endured under his predecessor.

But evidence from Florida, which in recent years implemented a system like Louisiana’s except funding all families, shows that widespread ESA use can help to buck such trends. Not only does initial data show increased in-migration of younger families but also its total number of births higher proportionally than any other state’s since 2020 with the ESA program likely a driving factor in this. In other words, not only do families with children disproportionately move to Florida, but then they also continue to have children at a higher rate than otherwise, with the ESA program both attracting families because of better and lower-cost education and their having more children because quality education cost is lower once they live in the state.

This means full implementation of the GATOR program can help to accelerate the comeback from the losses under Edwards. It will cost more to taxpayers up front, but be ameliorated in part by simultaneously reducing state expenditures through the Minimum Foundation Program and increasing tax collections through the extra income and commerce stimulated by the newcomers. And the new revenue effect should multiply as the years go on, with the relative cost of adding new children into ESAs (incoming students actually wouldn’t be eligible until they had spent one school year in Louisiana had passed) becoming smaller compared to the tax revenue benefits their families spawned.

The cost argument against LA GATOR loses a lot of its potency when understanding the real-world evidence of widespread ESA policy impact. There’s no reason Louisiana shouldn’t take the hit on initial start-up costs for full-blown implementation, and the sooner the better to enjoy the ultimate greater positive returns as quickly as possible.