The Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday approved a $13 million school voucher plan for the District, as Republicans easily advanced President Bush's initiative with support from Democrats who said the time had come to experiment with taxpayer-financed alternatives to public schools.



By a vote of 16 to 12, the panel endorsed what would be the country's first federally funded voucher program and accepted changes sought by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who along with ranking Democrat Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.) crossed party lines to vote for the plan. Among Republicans, only Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) voted against it. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) abstained.



The five-year program would award private-school tuition grants of up to $7,500 to students in families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty level -- $34,000 for a family of four -- and would cover about 2,000 children. Priority for the "opportunity scholarships" would be given to students from failing public schools. The legislation, part of the District's $5.6 billion 2004 budget, could reach the Senate floor as early as next week, a committee official said, and sponsors said the full House is poised to pass a similar measure today.

During a contentious 90-minute session, the Senate committee -- a 29-member panel normally allocating trillions of tax dollars -- engaged in a debate on the state of public education in the District, discussing the intricacies of teacher licensing in the city, for example, and the merits of its charter school experiments.

In the end, voucher supporters' frustration at the chronic failures of District schools overwhelmed opponents' arguments against providing government subsidies to private religious and secular schools.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) called the city's regular public schools, which enroll about 66,800 students, "a broken-down, useless system."

"If there is anything we don't want to borrow from, it is the D.C. schools. It is the worst school system in America, and it is the most expensive," Domenici said. "Let us try something different in Washington, D.C."

Mirian Saez, a mayoral appointee to the D.C. school board who opposes vouchers, later said Domenici was "misinformed" about D.C. school costs and had ignored recent signs of improvement in the school system.

Democrats on the committee, who vowed to continue the fight on the Senate floor, where they hoped to amass the 41 votes needed to sustain a threatened filibuster, said the voucher plan was an irresponsible use of tax dollars to placate anti-government conservatives and religious groups. The Democrats also called the plan counterproductive while national public school reforms embraced by Bush and both parties are underfunded by $9 billion.

"Education reform in America or in the District will not be achieved by giving a few children a choice. It will be achieved by giving all children a chance," Landrieu said.

The committee rejected, 22 to 7, a proposal by Landrieu that would have required private schools to assess the performance of their voucher-funded students using the same tests that public schools administer to their pupils. Landrieu's proposal also would have specified that the $26 million in new money provided to D.C. public schools under the legislation is not contingent on the voucher money.



A proposal by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) to require that teachers at participating private schools have college degrees in core subject areas and that the schools meet city fire and safety codes failed, 15 to 14.

"We're being asked to adapt the first voucher program in America with federal funds," Durbin said. "What will we require of these schools that accept this money? What are the standards we will set?"

Among District officials, reaction to the vote was split. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), council member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) and school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz have championed the measure, while Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and a majority of D.C. Council and school board members have opposed it or expressed reservations.



Chavous called the vote "historic," saying, "This is the most federal dollars to go into education in the District's history."

Norton said the battle will continue on the floor. "Every state in the nation has districts just like D.C.," Norton said. "If you vote for vouchers here, you have to vote for vouchers in your own local low-performing district."

In one indication of how heated the debate has become, the District chapter of the pro-voucher Black Alliance for Educational Options bought a full-page ad in a New Orleans newspaper accusing Landrieu of turning her back on African Americans and noting that her two children attend the private Georgetown Day School.

And another pro-voucher group, D.C. Parents for School Choice, released the text of a television ad it is to air in the District and Massachusetts that accuses Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) of trying to stop a plan to help black schoolchildren and compares him to segregationist Bull Connor.

"Senator Kennedy, your brothers fought for us. Why do you fight against us? Are the unions really more important than these children?" the ad says.

Kennedy spokesman Jim Manley said the ad was "outrageous, and I'm not going to dignify it with a response."

After being informed of the ads, Williams last night called on the pro-voucher organizations to halt such attacks, saying, "These ads don't represent our position, they're not helping our cause and they should take them off the air."

Staff writer Justin Blum contributed to this report.