For the first time in Arizona, a bill letting parents receive public dollars to send their children to private schools appears likely to win legislative approval.

The state Senate approved a plan to provide up to $4,500 per student for school vouchers by a 16-12 vote Monday, and the House is expected to back an identical bill sometime this week.

That would set up a showdown over school choice with Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who has consistently opposed vouchers. Napolitano would have five days to sign or veto the legislation after it got to her desk.

"Vouchers empower parents to make educational decisions for their children," Herrod said. "This is a significant, historic day for the state of Arizona. It's time to move school choice forward. Arizona has been a leader in school choice nationally. It's time to go to the next level."

Senate Bill 1506 would provide up to $3,500 for elementary and middle school students and up to $4,500 for high school students to attend any participating private school in the state. The program would be phased in from the 2006-07 school year through 2010-11.

Students would be eligible for the "Parental Educational Choice Grant Program" if they were 21 or younger, had not graduated from high school and were enrolled as a full-time student.

Vouchers are touted as the final frontier of the Arizona school choice movement, and supporters call the measure a significant step in giving parents more choices for their children's education. But the bill will probably get the veto stamp from Napolitano. She has said in recent months that voucher programs drain money from public schools. A veto override would require a two-thirds vote by both the House and Senate.

"I don't want to predict any action on this bill, but the governor has been pretty clear that her emphasis is on protecting and promoting public education," said Jeanine L'Ecuyer, Napolitano's press secretary. "From the (gubernatorial) campaign forward she has been opposed to vouchers."

Vouchers, however, will probably not be the only school choice bill that Napolitano is forced to weigh in on this year.

Buoyed by a more conservative Legislature, legislators are successfully pushing an array of school choice initiatives for 4- and 5-year-old pupils. Those ideas include kindergarten scholarships and letting corporations use tuition tax credits to let children from poor families transfer from public to private schools. The so-called corporation tuition tax credit looks like a safe bet to make it to the governor's desk.

The voucher plan would let parents use money in the form of a grant and apply it to the tuition of a private school of their choice.

Critics of vouchers, such as Napolitano, contend that they violate a state constitutional ban on funding private schools.

Napolitano has her own definition of school choice: She wants to make voluntary full-day kindergarten available to districts where 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Critics of voucher programs say all-day kindergarten has a more realistic shot at helping out low-income families.

"They tout vouchers as a way for low-income students to achieve a private school education, but we would help those kids a lot more if we funded programs like full-day kindergarten," said Rep. David Lujan, D-Phoenix.

Supporters of SB1506 say it would stand up to constitutional concerns because the grant money is given directly to a parent and not to a school.

Arizona has become a national leader in school choice with open enrollment and providing charter schools as an alternative to the public school system. The Legislature also has taken an aggressive approach to open enrollment, approving a measure in 1994 that allows students to move beyond neighborhood boundaries to attend the school of their choice.

Some Republicans hope to use the measure as a bargaining tool to extract concessions from Napolitano as she tries to expand all-day kindergarten, her top legislative priority. But Sen. Thayer Verschoor and Rep. Andy Biggs, two Gilbert conservatives pushing the voucher legislation, said they want their bills to stand on their own, away from the budget negotiations.

Kurt Davis, president of the Arizona State Board of Charter Schools, called vouchers "the missing piece" to the school choice puzzle.

"It's a major piece to the school choice movement that has been two decades in the making in Arizona," Davis said. "This, for many people, is the last leg in the school choice stool."