BATON ROUGE — Opponents of a school voucher program gathered at the Louisiana state capitol Thursday, bashing Governor Bobby Jindal and protesting a program that funnels state money to private and parochial schools.

Louisiana teachers, unions and top public school executives braved the heat on the Capitol steps to send lawmakers a message.

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Louisiana taxpayers could be paying for vouchers for private schools in New Orleans.

“We would like the public dollars that geared to public education to stay with public education,” Louisiana School Board Association member Morton Senegal said.

The bill’s sponsor — New Orleans state Rep. Austin Badon — said the it would create a $10 million taxpayer-funded scholarship program in Orleans Parish. That could send up to 1,500 children to private and parochial schools.

Only students in low-performing public schools and from low-income families would qualify for the program under Badon’s bill.

“Every opponent I hear is always talking about monitoring the status quo,” said Badon-D, New Orleans East’s representative. “They always talk about the money. They never say anything about the children and families.”

Badon said the program is all about giving parents the choice to send their children to a quality school.

“What it will do is it will breed competition and competition is good,” Badon said.

Opponents, though, said there already is enough competition in Orleans Parish schools.

“You have charter schools,” said Joe Potts, a member of the Jefferson Federation of Teachers. “You have for-profit charter schools. You have a regular public school system with Orleans Parish. You have Algiers charter schools. You have private schools. And you have parochial schools.”

Opponents of the scholarship bill said it doesn’t put the children first. They said it puts narrow special interest — like the Catholic schools — above public education.

“This bill is an elitist effort to siphon public money to support private systems that are not accountable,” Christian Roselund said.

The NAACP said it may file a discrimination lawsuit if the scholarship bill passes and the governor signs it.

“At a time when the superintendent of the recovery school district is acknowledging that more financial resources are needed to provide an adequate public education to our children, SB795 will result in less financial resources being available to our children,” the NAACP’s Danatus King said.

Responded Badon, “These are scare tactics. They're trying to scare the general public. I hope they're about educating our children and that's the first and paramount goal. That's mine is to educate children.”

The bill — backed by Jindal — is now scheduled to face its final legislative hurdle in the state senate on Monday.  A similar bill setting up a statewide school voucher program appears dead for the session.