BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)-- Hundreds of New Orleans school children will have a chance to go to private schools at taxpayer expense this fall under a bill given final passage in the state House on Wednesday with a 62-34 vote that marked a major victory for Gov. Bobby Jindal.
The bill is limited in scope. It applies only to New Orleans students entering kindergarten through the third-grade. It would apply to a maximum of 1,500 this coming school year and it is unclear whether there will be that many private school slots available.
But passage gives proponents of school vouchers a new foothold in a state where legislators, heeding the public school establishment and teacher unions, have turned back most such efforts before. Until now, vouchers in Louisiana were available only in a limited pre-kindergarten program that lawmakers have refused to expand.
Jindal, a conservative Republican being touted as a possible vice presidential candidate, had lobbied hard for the new program and its passage meant a victory dear to many conservatives at a time when Jindal is under harsh criticism across the political spectrum in Louisiana. Talk radio hosts and their listeners, as well as a nonpartisan government watchdog group, have complained about his refusal to veto a recent legislative pay raise.
Jindal placed $10 million for the voucher program in the proposed state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The program and the price tag are expected to grow as the first-year participants progress in school and others join the program.
Backers say the bill will help at least some New Orleans children escape a school system that was already struggling with poor student performance, mismanagement and corruption when Hurricane Katrina shut it down in August 2005.
Opponents note that since Katrina, most schools in New Orleans are being run by the state or various charter organizations and student test scores have improved. The $10 million should be spent on further improvements, they said.
The House had already approved the measure once. Wednesday's vote approved Senate language changes _ including one that removed a requirement that any private school receiving public funds must have been in existence for at least three years.
Supporters of that requirement tried to convince the full House to reject the Senate language and send the bill to a conference committee which would have had to work out a compromise acceptable in both chambers before the legislative session ends Monday night.
The three-year requirement would ensure that the schools getting the taxpayer money are well-established, said House Speaker Pro Tempore Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans.
"When we are spending public dollars, we should be able to direct those dollars in a way that we can protect our product and the only way to do that is to make sure we're sending them to a better place," Peterson said.
The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, said the state's interest is protected by a Senate provision that any school in existence less than two years can have no more than 20 percent of its enrollment made up of the government-funded students. Backers of that language said it would ensure that nobody starts a "fly-by-night" school simply to try to draw public money.
Rep. Walter Leger, D-New Orleans, moved to send the bill to conference, but lost on a 39-54 vote. Then came the 62-34 vote to send the bill to Jindal.
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On the Net:
HB1347 can be viewed at http://www.legis.state.la.us
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