Jeremy Thiesfeldt (left), chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, convened a hearing Wednesday on an amendment offered by Speaker Robin Vos (right) altering how the state funds private schools in the statewide voucher program. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

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The Assembly's Education Committee on Wednesday passed a controversial amendment that would alter the way the state funds voucher schools serving students outside of Milwaukee, a proposal that the Legislative Fiscal Bureau says could cost public schools at least $14 million in 2016-'17.

The amendment, which passed on a 9-5 vote, was filed Tuesday by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) — a tweak of an earlier Vos amendment that critics said would have cost districts $22 million. Rep. Joel Kitchens of Sturgeon Bay was the lone Republican to oppose the amendment.

The reduced impact did not placate Democratic lawmakers and public school advocates.

"Any of the districts that have voucher students will be forced to reduce educational opportunities for the children that remain in their schools," said John Forester, lobbyist for the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance.

David Bennett of the Wisconsin Retired Educators Association called it "another harpoon to the heart of public education — on top of everything else that has been done."

Rep. Eric Genrich (D-Green Bay) said the measure would cost his school district close to $1 million. "This is going to be really harmful to the 800,000-plus kids in public schools in Wisconsin," he said.

Vos has said his proposal was aimed at preventing large property tax increases as the number of schools participating in state-funded voucher programs increase. And Republican lawmakers in the Wednesday meeting called it revenue-neutral.

Under current law, public schools that lose students to voucher schools in the Racine and Statewide Parental Choice programs lose the value of those vouchers, but they can recoup that money through their revenue cap authority — essentially the amount of money that it can raise through state aid and property taxes. Both Vos amendments eliminated that authority.

But the new version appears to cushion the blow for districts with declining enrollments — about two-thirds of those around the state — by limiting the amount of money they can lose over three years.

According to a memo prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, had the new amendment been law in the current school year, districts would have lost $14.2 million the first year, and then recouped those losses over the next two. The amendment does not affect Milwaukee Public Schools, which operates on a separate system from the Racine and statewide voucher programs.

Kitchens proposed a verbal amendment that he said would chart a middle ground — enabling districts to raise property taxes to make up shortfalls created by the calculation. But it did not get a vote Wednesday.

Rep. Sondy Pope (D-Cross Plains) also withdrew a number of amendments intended to hold voucher schools to many of the same standards as their public school counterparts after her colleagues shot down the first of them.

The committee's ranking Democratic member, Pope criticized the Vos amendment as a raid on public schools.

"Sen. (Luther) Olsen has said this a thousand times," Pope said, invoking the Ripon Republican who heads the Senate Education Committee. "This state cannot afford two systems of education."

Vos had slid his original amendment into AB751, a bill on the special needs voucher program last week and put it on a fast track. But committee Chairman Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt (R-Fond du Lac) pulled the bill at the last minute after lawmakers were inundated with complaints from school districts.

The committee passed the special needs voucher bill on a 10-4 vote. That bill made several changes to a scholarship program created in the 2015-'17 budget that provides state funding for special needs students to attend certain private schools.

"Any of the districts that have voucher students will be forced to reduce educational opportunities for the children that remain in their schools," said John Forester, lobbyist for the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance.

Democratic lawmakers and public school advocates criticized Vos for inserting the amendment into an unrelated bill at the eleventh hour, without a public hearing.

Many voucher proponents argue that state and local funding for education should follow the students, whether that is in public or private schools. And public school advocates question how that can be done without effectively gutting public schools, particularly as the number of voucher schools grow across the state.

The number of schools taking part in the statewide program alone rose 67% to 135 for the coming school year. And choice advocates have said they expect that number to rise in the coming years.