On the eve of the Senate Education Committee's hearing on a school voucher bill, newly formed groups in support and against the proposal are making themselves known and assigned themselves names that clearly delineate where they stand on this education reform.

The committee is planning a daylong hearing on Wednesday at the Capitol on a bill, sponsored by Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin County, that calls for making taxpayer-funded vouchers available to low-income parents to send their children to a school of their choice. The bill would target students currently attending in failing schools in the first year and expand it to any low-income student by the third year.

One of the newly formed groups called "Pennsylvanians Opposed to Vouchers" includes 18 groups, including many of the same ones against vouchers when this reform was last pushed in Pennsylvania a decade ago.

On the other side of this issue, along with groups that promote school choice or represent private or parochial schools, is a new organization called "Public School Board Members for School Choice." This group, organized by the Harrisburg conservative-leaning policy center Commonwealth Foundation, includes, at present, about a dozen board members spanning the state. From the midstate is Camp Hill School Board member Pete Regan.

Members signing on to be part of this group sign a statement that states, "public schools continue to perform poorly for the children of low-income families despite funding increases leaving students from low income families trapped and with no options for better educational opportunities."

The statement goes on to speak to the absence of school alternatives available to those parents and "now therefore, a different course of action is necessary to improve our public school system, particularly for low-income children."

Anti-voucher advocates, meanwhile, question the amount of choice that will be available since no school would be compelled to accept a voucher student.

They also see this plan as a drain on resources going to public schools, and estimate the cost of the voucher program could rise to more than $1 billion by the third year. They say that will increase the pressure for districts to raise property tax rates.

"We should not spend taxpayer dollars on an expensive voucher program that leaves too many children behind in underfunded public schools in this time of fiscal austerity,” said Joseph Bard, a spokesperson for the coalition and executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools.