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

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

However, full implementation 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 has allocated basically only enough 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 biggest backer, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, has even 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 students 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, which also compounds Louisiana’s struggle to gain population. Only since Landry took office has the state seen a reversal of the six-figure total population loss endured under his predecessor.

But evidence from Florida, which in recent years has implemented a system like Louisiana’s except that it funds all families, shows that widespread ESA use can help to buck such trends. Not only do initial data show increased in-migration of younger families, but Florida’s total number of births also has risen proportionally more than any other state’s since 2020, with the ESA program likely a driving factor in that trend. In other words, not only do families with children disproportionately move to Florida, but they also continue having children at a higher rate than otherwise, with the ESA program both attracting families because of better and lower-cost education and encouraging larger families because the cost of quality education 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 taxpayers more up front, but that will 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) becoming smaller compared to the tax revenue benefits their families generate.

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

Thank you for reading The Hayride!