Erika Lara
Erika is a single mother of two boys. Her older son is on the autism spectrum. When he entered sixth grade, he started to struggle. The public school he had attended was much bigger, he was being bullied every day, and his needs were not being met in that setting.
Halfway through sixth grade, Erika received an Education Freedom Account and began using it to send her son to St. Theresa Catholic School in Little Rock. Since that time, he’s thrived academically and socially.
In June 2024, she teamed up with the Partnership for Educational Choice—a joint project of the Institute for Justice (IJ) and EdChoice—to defend the Education Freedom Account program against a lawsuit.
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In 2023, Arkansas’ education reform bill, known as the LEARNS Act, went into effect. The LEARNS Act created the state’s Education Freedom Accounts program, which provides eligible families with thousands of dollars to cover certain…