Senate Finance hears status of Louisiana Gator ESA program, vendor contract and funding gap

Department of Education officials told the Senate Finance Committee on April 7 that the Louisiana Gator education savings account program has drawn heavy early interest but will need a vendor contract and more state funding to serve all eligible families.

Dr. Cade Bromley, Louisiana Department of Education superintendent, said the state contracted a private vendor to operate the account-management platform and that the department has avoided hiring a large internal staff to administer the program. "There is not a state in the country that operates an ESA program that does not use a vendor for support," Dr. Bromley said during the committee hearing.

The department reported roughly 32,000 registered students as of April 7, including about 4,000 students who had been enrolled in an existing voucher program that sunsets this year. Deputy Superintendent Beth Cino told senators the department budgeted $1.8 million in FY 2025 to launch the program; the initial contract for platform services and technology was about $910,000 and the department set aside roughly $300,000 for two TO positions (one fiscal, one program) and for outreach and communications.

Bromley told the committee the governor proposed an additional $50 million for the program in the executive budget; the administration’s scenario projected that $93 million in total funding would cover roughly 11,000 students under the program’s phased prioritization rules. "We would apply the phases and the prioritization to the amount appropriated by the legislature, and then we would just run down that list until we were no longer able to fund additional students," he said, describing phase 1 priority for existing voucher students and subsequent priority groups such as special education and students from lower-income families.

The law establishing the program (Act 1 of 2024) sets program rules and prioritization. Bromley and Cino emphasized the program’s mechanics differ from the prior voucher program: an ESA lets families purchase a mix of services and goods — private tuition, tutoring, devices and other education services — and the vendor platform must support itemized transactions and fraud controls. "An ESA…is a much more sophisticated process than simply here's a tuition amount, send that," Bromley said.

Senators asked about the per-student costs of platform administration. The department said the vendor contract is an "up to" amount that scales with the number of accounts; Bromley said the administration’s calculation of a roughly $1.9 million contract for the next year was an upper bound tied to the governor’s $93 million funding scenario and would be reduced if appropriations are smaller. Cino said the vendor’s per-student fee model is intended to be cost-effective compared with staffing a larger in-house operation.

Committee members pressed on implementation details the department plans to finalize before funds are released. Bromley said the department has secured board approvals required by procurement and that the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget (JLCB) must still approve the multi-year vendor contract for the next fiscal year. He said the department will not launch accounts for the coming school year without vendor contract approval and legislative appropriation for ongoing administration.

Votes and formal committee actions were not taken on the Gator program at the hearing; senators asked for follow-up information on applications by parish and on the department’s contingency plan if appropriations fall short of demand.