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LDOE reports 22,459 applications for LA Gator; 63–64% of scholarship students marked eligible
Summary
The Louisiana Department of Education told BESE members that the LA Gator student-family application has drawn more than 22,000 submissions, that service-provider registration remains open, and that schools will receive weekly rosters to track family registrations as the program moves toward funding in July, subject to legislative appropriation.
Caleb Moore, deputy chief of staff for the Office of School Choice at the Louisiana Department of Education, told members of the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on March 10 that 22,459 student applications have been submitted for the LA Gator program and that 19,629 of those applications are currently marked eligible.
Moore said the department received about 6,000 applications on the program’s first day and that, as of his update, roughly 63 to 64 percent of Louisiana Scholarship Program students had applied and been marked eligible. "About 63 or 64% of the scholarship program students have, applied and been marked eligible for LA Gator," Moore said.
The department is providing weekly, secure rosters to participating schools so school staff can see which families have and have not completed LA Gator registration and target outreach. Moore said the student-family application opened March 1 and will close April 15; schools will confirm enrollment and set tuition through June. If the Legislature funds the program, the department expects accounts to be funded and the LA Gator marketplace to open in early July.
Why it matters: The LA Gator portal is the payment and account system for families using ESA-style scholarship funds. School officials and diocesan administrators at the BESE meeting said they need clarity on timing and mechanics for tuition and accounting because many nonpublic schools begin making payments in July and pay staff on fixed schedules.
Key details from the department presentation and Q&A: - Applications and eligibility: 22,459 total student applications; 19,629 marked eligible. - Scholarship-program participation: about 3,600 scholarship students (described by the presenter as roughly 64% of that cohort) were registered and eligible for LA Gator at the time of the presentation. - Providers and schools: 257 nonpublic schools are participating in the program and 143 service providers are registered; Moore said the service-provider application remains open and will be reviewed on an ongoing basis. - Outreach: Weekly mass email outreach (roughly 4,000 emails per week) and boosted social-media posts; department reported open rates around 60–80 percent for those messages. - Timelines: Student-family application opens March 1; closes April 15; verification between schools and families continues through June; funding and marketplace activation expected in early July, contingent on legislative appropriation. Moore said the governor’s budget request included about $93,000,000 for the program, but the department cannot guarantee final funding.
Questions from school and diocesan representatives focused on service-provider mechanics and allowable purchases. One school leader said the program materials list uniforms as an allowable item but that the vendor-registration process initially blocked uniform vendors; she said her school was told it could sell uniforms directly at the school but not register the uniform seller as a marketplace provider. Moore said the office is still reviewing the allowability and the marketplace mechanics for uniform vendors and that schools could continue local arrangements in the interim.
Moore said the department has recorded webinars and posted family-facing guidance and a service/help system at laguator.la.gov; support channels include phone, email, chat and support tickets. He also said the department will share the complete set of vendor and family FAQs and make rosters available to schools to support one-on-one outreach.
Ending: Moore invited questions and suggested further follow-up with diocesan financial officers and school leaders to work through payment- and accounting-related details for July disbursements. The board received the presentation by motion and second; no roll-call vote on adoption of policy was recorded in the transcript for this agenda item.
