HARRISBURG -- Supporters call school vouchers a matter of choice, a lifeline for children stuck in broken schools. Opponents deride them as unconstitutional and unworkable and warn that they will erode conditions in some of Pennsylvania's most troubled schools.

The debate over taxpayer-paid tuition vouchers to help poor children find alternatives to attending the state's weakest-performing public schools will come to the fore soon in the General Assembly. On Feb. 16, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee will lead a hearing on his bill to establish the Opportunity Scholarship and Educational Improvement Tax Credit Act.

Although aspects of the proposal would be phased in, by its third year the bill would allow public school students whose families make no more than 130 percent of federal poverty guidelines -- about $29,000 for a family of four -- to take the per-pupil subsidy that state government sends to their school district and use it to attend a different private, public or religious school.

It would increase funding from $75 million to $100 million for an existing program that gives tax breaks to businesses that finance tuition scholarships for children from lower-income families.

"This is a freedom issue, an issue that parents find themselves trapped in a district that isn't serving the needs of their child," said the prime sponsor, Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin. He said precise cost figures are being worked out.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and a prominent Democratic state senator, Anthony Hardy Williams of Philadelphia, supported vouchers when they were candidates in last year's campaign.

The proposal faces opposition from the state school boards association and teacher unions.

Sen. Daylin Leach, a Montgomery County Democrat who serves on the Education Committee that Piccola chairs, said a voucher law that subsidizes private school tuition would drain resources from some of the most troubled school districts. When a student leaves, the school still has to pay teachers, the electric bill and other fixed costs, he said.

"When you talk about 'leaving children behind,' there's no more stark example," Leach said.

Leach said state money for private school tuition would have to come with greater accountability, something the schools themselves might not want. He has doubts about how many schools will accept the vouchers.

"One of the things that high-performing, affluent schools sell is class size is lower," he said. "Are they going to want to take a bunch of kids at half the (tuition) price, or less• It's not going to happen."

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association argues that vouchers would violate the state constitution and exacerbate the problems of the state's worst public schools. The association says parents may choose different schools for many reasons, not simply because their child's current school is academically weak, and they challenge the contention that vouchers in other states have improved student performance.

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