TALLAHASSEE — Florida got into the voucher business seven years ago to offer an escape to children in failing public schools. With the conclusion of the recent legislative session, that mission has all but been abandoned.

Lawmakers began the session with plans to reverse a Supreme Court decision that threw out the nation’s first statewide voucher plan. The Opportunity Scholarship program allowed students in a failing public school to take state money and attend a private school.

“Opportunity Scholarships are dead in 30 days from now, or less,” said Sen. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, who led the effort to save them. “If they didn’t like it, probably they never should have created it in the first place.”

The court invalidated Opportunity Scholarships as of the end of the school year. Without action by the Legislature, that program quietly will sunset.

Legislators haggled until the very end to find the votes for a plan backed by Gov. Jeb Bush to ask voters to protect this program and write broad allowances for private school vouchers into the state Constitution.

They ended one vote short, leaving Florida’s two larger voucher programs, untouched by the court ruling, vulnerable to a separate legal challenge.

Florida gives vouchers to about 30,000 students through programs for disabled students and students from low-income families. Nearly half qualify through a program for low-income families. The state teachers union, which championed the fight against Opportunity Scholarships, is going to look closely at that program.

“We think it’s a mistake to put resources into private schools when they should be going into public schools,” attorney Ron Meyer said. This other voucher program is “just duplicating what public schools can do.”

The Opportunity Scholarships program was the smallest of the state’s three voucher programs. Lawmakers decided to allow most of its 733 students to transfer to a separate voucher program, the one available to low-income families. Students in failing schools cannot use vouchers to leave, but they will still be able to move to better public schools.

“It’s good protection,” Bush said of allowing the students to receive a different type of voucher. “I think the (constitutional amendment) combined with that would have been a better deal.”

After his first election, Bush made Opportunity Scholarships the cornerstone of his 1999 “A-Plus Plan,” whose high-stakes testing and school grades transformed public schools. One day after Bush signed it into law, the legal battle began.

The Florida Supreme Court threw out the program in January, as Bush entered his final year in office. The court ruled that the program diverted state money from public schools in violation of the state Constitution.

In an earlier decision, an appellate court ruled that the voucher program violated a constitutional provision that prohibits the state from spending money that “directly or indirectly” aids religious institutions. Some of the private schools that have accepted students with voucher money are religious schools.

The Senate tried to preserve Opportunity Scholarships by retooling the method of providing them with money. But the House brushed off this limited remedy on the final day of the session as too little, too late.

“It’s a nice color of paint, but it doesn’t fix the foundation,” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, chairman of the House Education Council.

He preferred Bush’s constitutional amendment. But GOP leaders couldn’t muster the three-fifths vote needed in the Senate, where four Republicans helped seal its defeat.

Now advocates say all the voucher programs remain vulnerable.

“These choice ideas are getting picked off,” Baxley said. “We are in a protracted debate about how to deal with that.”

Lawmakers tried to address at least one legal concern. The state’s high court found that Opportunity Scholarships violated constitutional requirements for a uniform public school system.

In response, the Legislature increased accountability for voucher programs. When Bush signs the bill into law, criminal background checks will be required for the school’s employees, along with greater scrutiny of finances.

Will it be enough? The sponsor of the accountability plan, Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, did not dare make predictions.

“Maybe the Supreme Court will look favorably at what we did with voucher accountability,” he said. “There’s space and a place in this state for vouchers.”

Letitia Stein can be reached at [email protected] or (850) 224-7263.