How parents in the Gulf South feel about expanding school vouchers

More than 17,000 families in Louisiana are in the same position.

They’re cleared to receive state money for private and homeschool expenses through the Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise Scholarship (LA GATOR). Still, most won’t receive any due to limited funding.

That hasn’t stopped Hoyt, a single mom, from dreaming.

“Just the basic quality of greatness that she could get, and I wouldn’t have to worry about which credit card I was gonna use to purchase it,” she said.

Hoyt’s been homeschooling her 12-year-old, Rozie, since October when she pulled her out of public school. She uses free resources and relies on scholarships and credit cards to purchase online courses and teaching materials.

State programs like Louisiana’s promise to help families by giving them anywhere from hundreds of dollars to more than $15,000 a year, making them expensive and controversial.

While Hoyt is considered low-income and Rozie has a learning disability — both give them priority status — Louisiana’s program is technically universal, meaning funds could eventually go to any parent regardless of how much money they make.

That includes people who never planned to send their kids to public schools, creating a new expense for states. Awards often don’t fully cover private school tuition, making programs more accessible to wealthier families.

Most Republican-led states have passed expanded programs similar to LA GATOR since the pandemic, fueled in part by some parents’ dissatisfaction with public schools.

Public education advocates warn that any program that reduces state funding for schools, directly or indirectly, could have negative consequences for the kids left behind. They stress that public schools are the schools of last resort, required to serve all children, and are the only option in some communities.

Programs like ESAs mean new dollars go to private or homeschools. At the same time, existing funding is pulled from public schools when students leave, either for other schools or if they leave the state altogether.

At a certain point, that funding dries up, leaving schools unable to pay for teachers and programming, or even shuttering some schools altogether.

Hoyt said she pulled Rozie out because her progress had stalled, and she felt like teachers were just passing her along.

“We called it babysitting, for childcare, and her actual schoolwork was being done at home,” she said.

Hoyt also feels like public schools failed her. She never graduated from high school and only recently got her GED, which she said gave her the confidence to homeschool Rozie.

She worries the same thing will happen to her daughter if she doesn’t intervene.

“Nobody cared about me,” she said. “She has somebody that really, genuinely cares about her so much.”

While Louisiana lawmakers fought hard to create the state’s ESAs and finally succeeded in 2024, funding has stalled. Gov. Jeff Landry tried to double funding to almost $90 million this year, his second attempt. Both times, leaders in his party rejected increases, largely due to budget concerns, but also because they wanted proof that education savings accounts lead to better outcomes for kids.

So far, the research — and there isn’t a lot of it — has been mixed. But that hasn’t stopped other states from rapidly expanding access.

Texas will spend about $1 billion over the next two years on its ESA program, the largest in the country. Lawmakers in Alabama recently approved more than $174 million to fund accounts for nearly 34,000 children.

While other states ramp up ESA activity, Mississippi is the only state in the region that hasn’t passed a universal ESA program.

This past legislative session, state Republican Speaker of the House Jason White made increasing what he calls “education freedom” a legislative priority.

His signature piece of legislation included a slew of educational policies, including making it easier to open charter schools and for students to transfer between public schools.

Its main function, though, was to overhaul how Mississippi funds education, including giving parents money to spend on private and homeschool expenses.

White’s plan faced opposition, even in his own district, from local officials — and parents.

Several parents spoke with the Gulf States Newsroom at a Boys and Girls Club in Kosciusko, Mississippi.

Voters in the small, largely rural Attala County town lean Republican, and the average household income is about $40,000 annually. It also has a highly rated public school system.

The parents who spoke with GSN either attended Kosciusko or Attala County public schools themselves and, like many people in Kosciusko, are very proud of those schools.

Initiatives like voucher programs would take away from the resources their schools need to serve their kids, particularly in an area that doesn’t have many private schools to begin with.

The public schools may not meet the needs of all their kids, but directing state funds away from public schools raises further concerns about those schools’ ability to help kids – especially if those dollars end up at private schools that may not need that money.

And, with a history of segregated schools, there’s hesitation around who those dollars might actually serve.

“That takes away from the public education and the resources that we need here in public schools for our children to thrive,” said Amber Jones, one of the parents at the Kosciusko Boys and Girls Club.

Jones’ oldest child attended Kosciusko’s public schools through high school, but she also understands firsthand why, for some parents, private schools might be a necessity.

“My son now, he has autism, social anxiety disorder, math disability,” Jones said. “Due to problems with special education, he's now being homeschooled through junior high — but I do plan to put him back in Kosciusko next year for ninth grade.”

Mississippi has a small ESA program already, specifically for children with disabilities. About 520 kids received state funding through it this year.

Down the table from Jones is Latrenna Fleming. She put her son in private school so he wouldn’t be held back in third grade, and did the same for her daughter, who was struggling with bullying.

“Do I love the public school? Yes,” said Fleming. “But — honestly — if the private school went to 12th grade, I'd keep them there.”

The other parents at the table feel the same: no one wants public schools to lose money, but those schools haven’t met all their kids’ needs.

At the same time, they recognize there’s no guarantee private schools will do a better job.

“If you put your child into a private school and they have special needs… they're not even required to cater to your child,” said Jones. “If they're not required to make those accommodations, your child could still be struggling just as badly or worse.”

Some of the strongest proponents — and opponents — of ESAs are the parents of children with special needs. While private schools aren’t required to provide special education services, public schools also regularly fail to provide necessary support.

Mississippi doesn’t have transportation requirements for private schools — another concern of parents, especially somewhere like Kosciusko, where few private schools are nearby. And, with accreditation optional for private schools in Mississippi, there’s a lot of leeway in how they run and which students they accept.

Fleming isn’t opposed to the government helping parents, like her, for whom tuition is a big expense. But she isn’t sure the fight for a universal program — where any family can access funding, regardless of how much money they make — is what lawmakers should be focused on.

“Put that time and effort to find out why, what's wrong in these public schools?” Fleming said. “Wha we need to do to fix it? How we can make things better?”

White’s bill barely made it past the Mississippi House but eventually died in a Senate committee, where Democrats and Republicans unanimously rejected it without any discussion.

Even in the Gulf South, Mississippi’s existing programs stand in stark contrast to its neighbors. Louisiana passed a universal program in 2024, though funding has stalled since, so in practice, it isn’t universal. In Alabama, income limits are set to expire in 2027.

Nancy Loome, with the Parents Campaign, a Mississippi group that advocates for keeping taxpayer dollars for public schools, said the bill failed because lawmakers were overwhelmed with calls from voters against it – like Mississippi senator Dean Kirby, who told Mississippi Today about an avalanche of calls he and his colleagues received.

“Clearly, this is something that Mississippians feel passionate about,” said Loome. “We also saw it in the response from municipal boards; these city boards of aldermen were passing resolutions opposing school choice.”

“These are not Democrat strongholds; these are Republican stronghold communities that understand the value that strong public schools bring to their communities.”

For Loome, one of the issues is a double standard, where private schools, unlike public schools, don’t have to provide certain special education services or participate in state testing.

“Why aren't they willing to participate in true accountability measures that show taxpayers how well they're doing at moving these children toward the very same standards that public schools are moving children toward?” said Loome.

Grant Callen, founder of conservative advocacy group Empower Mississippi, supports the state giving parents money — and letting them implement their own kind of accountability.

“Under a choice system, you make all the education providers more accountable to the students and the families that are paying the bills in the first place,” said Callen, because they can choose to leave.

Still, he said, if Mississippi passes a universal ESA program, it should implement it gradually to give public schools time to respond.

“We've got to recognize there are a lot of places where kids are thriving today and communities are strengthened because they have good public schools,” said Callen. “We don't want to hurt those.”

While the ideological lines have been pretty clear with lawmakers, it’s more complicated when it comes to parents.

Since universal programs have absorbed those that were only for low-income families and children with disabilities, they’ve tied their fates to those who have more resources.

Renne Hoyt, the mom in Louisiana, said she doesn’t care if higher-income families also get funding; who is she to judge what they need?

“If everyone could get it, that would be great,” she said.

This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.