Local superintendents and school board members aren’t certain what impact Gov. Tom Corbett’s latest proposal for tuition vouchers will have on their districts.

The Republican governor on Tuesday laid out his four-point plan to reform education, which includes “opportunity scholarships” — tuition vouchers for low-income students attending the 5 percent of schools with the worst performance on standardized tests.

Corbett spokeswoman Janet Kelley on Wednesday said a list of those estimated 140 schools was not yet available.

State officials last spring indicated the worst schools would be drawn from those that had the fewest students performing at or above state benchmarks on the reading and math portions of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests.

A review of the 2011 PSSA scores did not reveal any Alle-Kiski Valley schools that would come close to falling in the bottom 5 percent statewide.

Corbett apparently dropped his previous plan to expand access to vouchers to all low-income students statewide after a few years, as he proposed earlier this year.

“I was surprised he focused only on the lowest-performing schools,” Leechburg Area Superintendent Jim Budzilek said. “I thought he meant to include every school.”

With that component shelved, Budzilek wasn’t certain whether the vouchers would affect Leechburg Area much.

He said he’s assumed parents with vouchers would be seeking entry to private or Catholic schools, but he said it’s possible parents would direct their vouchers to public schools like Leechburg.

“A lot of people like Leechburg because we are very small,” Budzilek said. “Our student-teacher ratio is low. Everybody knows everybody.

“If someone wanted to attend Leechburg on a voucher, we’d have to look at our policies,” he said. “If this does pass, a lot of schools are going to be in a reactionary mode.”

Burrell Superintendent Shannon Wagner said her district has begun looking into ways it can market itself to families within and outside the district, partly in anticipation of a school-choice program.

“We need to be ready to take on those kids and react to the changing environment of education,” Wagner said. “This is why we’re doing the innovative things we’re doing.”

She especially pointed to the cyber options Burrell is developing to allow students a blended experience of in-classroom and online classes.

“We need to be more flexible, more nimble,” Wagner said of public schools.

New Kensington-Arnold Superintendent George Batterson said Corbett’s plan to take public money and offer it to private schools is difficult to swallow on the heels of the governor’s cuts to the education budget earlier this year.

“It’s been devastating,” Batterson said of the cuts. “It’s been difficult to maintain a good educational program.”

Batterson said none of the district’s schools should fall into the bottom 5 percent, but he worries the district will be impacted if Corbett expands the program to low-income students at all districts. A large portion of New Kensington-Arnold’s population meets federal low-income guidelines.

Under the current version of Corbett’s plan, vouchers would be available to students from families who earn 130 percent of the federal poverty level or less — about $29,000 per year for a family of four.

Greg Primm, school board president at Apollo-Ridge School District, questioned how the voucher system can be equitable if only poor students can choose a new school.

“If I’m in one of those districts and I’m not low income, I don’t get to send my child to another district without paying for it. So my child isn’t having an equal opportunity,” he said. “It’s inequitable.”

Primm said Apollo-Ridge likely would have room to accept a limited number of students with vouchers, but the influx could strain the school system already dealing with state cuts.

“We’ve just had the message sent to use to have a bare bones staff and budget,” Primm said.

Primm said he can support some of the governor’s plans — namely better accountability for charter schools.

But the initiative to tie teacher evaluations to student performance will be difficult to implement, Primm said.

Ultimately, Primm said he can’t see how removing students and tuition money from struggling schools is going to help them improve.

“They’ll have less funding with the same challenges. They’re certainly not going to get better,” Primm said. “It’s like a death sentence. They’re almost saying the weakest shall die.

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