(May 4 print edition) The huge demand for the new LA GATOR Scholarship Program should teach lawmakers two things. First, they should come as close as possible to fully funding the program. Second, parents want, and deserve, the largest say in their children’s education — and in their children’s upbringing in general.
Families submitted more than 39,000 applications for LA GATOR between March 1 and April 15, with all but about 5,000 of them deemed eligible. If each one of the eligible applicants actually were awarded scholarships — an impossibility due to budget constraints — then it would more than sextuple the current Louisiana Scholarship Program.
Gov. Jeff Landry wants legislators to appropriate $93 million for some 12,000 recipients, but legislative leaders are balking at anything above $50 million.
The program provides what the Louisiana Department of Education describes as “state-funded accounts for school tuition and fees, tutoring, educational therapies, textbooks and curricula, dual enrollment courses, and uniforms.” Priority is given to families with lower incomes.
Let’s not get into the weeds of the state budget or how many schools will open scholarship spots. The larger point here isn’t to parse the details, but to see the big picture. The level of parental interest in LA GATOR is phenomenal. This interest in nonpublic-school scholarships comes even as Louisiana public schools are significantly improving — a credit to the current leadership’s “back to basics” approach — and even as about 150 public charter schools also operate in Louisiana, with many of them thriving.
What matters to individual parents, therefore, isn’t so much the aggregate statistics as it is the perception of what is best for the individual needs of their children.
Except at the margins or in extreme cases, this primary authority regarding children absolutely should be the parents’ prerogative. Even if you think “it takes a village to raise a child,” what that saying should mean is that thriving communities provide backup assistance and webs of extended family, churches and other “intermediary institutions” to provide safety and opportunity for children. It should not mean that the village supersedes the parents, shoves them aside or dictates their choices…. [The full column is at this link.]
