In a Monday night special meeting, the St. Landry Parish School Board voted to oppose state lawmaker's efforts to provide public dollars for private education, following suit with several districts across the state.
The board voted 11 to 1 to oppose HB 745, similar to SB 313. The bills would create publicly funded education savings accounts or ESAs. Backed by Gov. Jeff Landry, parents would be provided stipends, funded by tax dollars, to use on tuition for private schooling, tutoring and homeschooling.
Landry said the parent-choice bills give parents more control over their children's education.
St. Landry Parish School Board President Mary Donatto said her parish and other districts across the state have not been provided adequate funding for the past two decades. That money will now go to private institutions that are not subject to the same standards and accountability as public schools, leaving little oversight over public spending, she said.
As the ESA bills stand today, private schools are not required to administer the same standardized tests as public schools.
"If they'd like to compare the success of our public school children to the success of a child who attends nonpublic schools; it isn't fair. It's comparing apples to oranges because we have accountability tests and they don't," Donatto said.
Dannie Garrett, executive counsel for the Louisiana School Board Association, said statewide scores for public schools in 2023 were nearly a B average. Private schools that accepted vouchers and received ratings averaged just above an F grade, Garrett said.
Donatto said that the discretion private institutions have to accept and deny students might lead to scheming to harvest public money. For example, she said, private schools might accept students and hold them until state money is released in October but can expel those students for behavioral problems or an inability to accommodate students with special needs.
Those students will end up back in public schools that have to accept them, Donatto said.
"That money does not follow them," Donatto said. "We are going to inherit students, but that money is going to remain in [private schools]."
Board member Joyce Haynes said that her parish relies heavily on state dollars for teacher salaries and repairs to campus.
She said stretching that money even further might lead to drastic changes in the parish's rural areas and smaller schools if the board cannot predict future budgets.
"We don't want to say the ugly word of consolidate. But every dollar is needed for our schools and yes, we won't have enough money to make sure they have everything they need," Haynes said.
Board member Tiffany Nolan chose to not vote alongside the board. Nolan said she believes the ESA bills will pass . She also believes its impact will force public schools to innovate and the board may need to become more flexible and accommodating to new ideas.
"Because of who we have in office right now as governor and with the majority of the House being Republican, it's something that is going to happen no matter what. I think we need to get behind it and support it so we can move forward," Nolan said.
Nolan said the board should instead focus on ways to retain its students by providing things that charter schools and private institutions do not have. She cited surrounding school districts like Lafayette and its creation of academies for specific fields and its ties with South Louisiana Community College and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette as a way to entice parents to keep their children in public schools.
"I think it's going to have us make changes a little bit faster than we would otherwise. If you never have anything there to make you do better, then sometimes you just coast along," Nolan said.
Haynes, a former president of the Louisiana Association of Educators, said the state has long tried to take money away from public education and move it to the private sectors. Former governor John Bel Edwards vetoed previous attempts to implement ESA bills, previous reporting said.
The board followed suit with several districts across the state in adopting resolutions to oppose ESAs, previous reporting said. Groups like the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents have also vocalized opposition to the bills.
State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said at a rally put together by Americans for Prosperity that ESAs provided "educational freedom," previous reporting said.
"They ignored what we've been saying for years. You're going to hurt our public schools that they haven't put enough money into anyway. They are basically deteriorating something that was built so that everyone could have an education," Haynes said.
Previous reporting by Patrick Wall contributed to this article