The fight over Louisiana’s public schools isn’t just playing out in classrooms—it’s playing out in boardrooms, campaign finance reports, and legislative backrooms. With the state preparing to launch the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise (LA GATOR) Scholarship Program in the 2025–2026 school year, the future of public education in Louisiana is being reshaped by powerful national forces and influential local reformers.
The LA GATOR program, signed into law by Governor Jeff Landry in 2024, will allow taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition, books, uniforms, and other educational expenses for students statewide. Its supporters, including Landry and national school choice advocates, argue that the program expands opportunity and empowers parents. But critics say LA GATOR is part of a larger effort to hollow out public education—one led not by Louisiana families, but by billionaire donors and long-standing reform strategists with deep political connections.
The state has earmarked $93.5 million for LA GATOR’s first year. Yet projections from the Legislative Fiscal Office place annual costs at $260 million as the program scales, and other estimates range as high as $520 million. This kind of unchecked growth has precedent. In states like Arizona and Florida, similar programs have ballooned far beyond budget forecasts, prompting backlash from local school districts, watchdogs, and education advocates. Now, Louisiana finds itself on a similar path, shepherded not only by national donors but by reform architects who have been laying the foundation for decades.
Among them is Betsy DeVos, the former U.S. Secretary of Education and perhaps the most prominent national face of the school voucher movement. Her organization, the American Federation for Children, has funneled millions into state-level races and policy campaigns to promote education privatization, including in Louisiana. DeVos, who once described Louisiana’s original voucher model as “not well conceived,” has continued supporting its expansion through legislation like LA GATOR and the lawmakers behind it.
Also in the mix is Michael Bloomberg, who in 2015 contributed $1.4 million to Empower Louisiana Inc., a political action committee formed to elect pro-voucher candidates to the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Bloomberg has since pledged $750 million nationally to support charter school growth and privatization initiatives, placing Louisiana in a broader web of high-dollar education reform efforts.
But the strategy hasn’t only come from outside. Leslie Rosenthal Jacobs, a New Orleans native and business executive, has been one of the most influential local figures in Louisiana’s school reform movement. As a member of BESE and later as the founder of the nonprofit Educate Now!, Jacobs was a key architect of the post-Katrina charter school overhaul in New Orleans. Her efforts helped pave the way for Louisiana’s shift toward decentralized school governance and market-style education reform.
Though Jacobs has not made a public statement on the LA GATOR program itself, her policy vision, which favors school autonomy, competition, and performance-driven oversight, has deeply shaped the ideological terrain that allowed for LA GATOR’s emergence. In many ways, she helped build the political infrastructure that made statewide privatization viable. Her alignment with national donors like Bloomberg and policy networks promoting choice-first solutions illustrates how local leadership has worked hand-in-hand with national forces to redefine Louisiana’s education system over the last two decades.
That transformation was most visible in New Orleans, where the traditional public school system was dismantled and replaced with a network of independently managed charter schools. As detailed in previous reporting on the New Orleans charter school overhaul, this shift transferred control of public education to unelected nonprofit boards, disconnected from neighborhood input or democratic accountability. What began as an emergency response became a long-term governance model. Now, the LA GATOR program and its companion policies seek to scale that model statewide—not just by privatizing governance, but by privatizing funding altogether.
This ideological convergence is now reflected in pending legislation, including Senate Bill 27, which would expand tax credits for donors who give to school tuition organizations—nonprofits that distribute scholarships subsidized by the state. These credits effectively divert public money to private education through indirect subsidies, with far less oversight than direct expenditures. The bill would increase the cap on these donations, allow concurrent use of multiple scholarships, and loosen testing requirements. As of mid-May, SB 27 had advanced to third reading in the Senate.
In contrast, House Bill 243, authored by Democratic Representative Mandie Landry, represents a notable departure from the broader privatization push. Rather than expanding or deregulating the voucher system, Landry’s bill aims to increase accountability for private schools receiving public dollars. HB 243 would require the Louisiana Department of Education to administer standardized assessments for LA GATOR students attending nonpublic schools and to develop a scholarship cohort performance index. While LA GATOR itself was a Republican-led initiative, Landry’s bill is a Democratic response, an attempt to hold participating schools to the same academic standards expected of traditional public institutions. It reflects a growing sentiment among some lawmakers that if the state is going to redirect public money, it must also enforce public oversight.
Superintendent Cade Brumley has publicly supported the state’s broader school choice efforts and has walked a careful line. In a 2024 interview, Brumley said, “First and foremost, I think ESA is public education because you are allowing the public dollars to follow the child at the family’s discretion.” He later defended potential reductions in federal oversight, stating that less bureaucracy would empower local leaders to act in the best interest of children. But others warn that removing federal protections, especially for students with disabilities or marginalized backgrounds, risks widening gaps that voucher programs already fail to address.
The Southern Education Foundation, which tracks school privatization in the South, notes that most private schools participating in voucher programs are not bound by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. A 2022 SEF report stated: “Unlike public schools, private schools do not have to follow laws protecting vulnerable students on the basis of disability, religious belief, and sexual orientation.” In practical terms, that means families who opt into the LA GATOR program may find themselves with fewer legal protections and fewer school options than they expected.
What’s unfolding in Louisiana is not simply a policy shift. It’s a transformation of public education’s meaning. Over the past 20 years, leaders like Jacobs institutionalized charter-based reform in New Orleans. Today, state lawmakers and national donors are expanding that model into something even more sweeping: a full-scale redefinition of education as a publicly funded, privately operated service.
As the money follows the child, the question remains: who’s still accountable to the public? And once the public system is dismantled, what’s left to rebuild?
