The number of applicants for Ohio's new tuition voucher program jumped about 40 percent to 3,601 students after the second application period last week.

About 200 of the latest applicants are from Cincinnati, including 137 Cincinnati Public Schools students, district spokeswoman Janet Walsh said. The rest are charter school students or incoming kindergartners. The second application period ended Friday. State officials are calling the scholarship program a success, even though they received applications for only about 25 percent of the 14,000 tuition vouchers that were available. The vouchers will pay for private school education this fall for students in low-performing public schools.

"The Ohio Department of Education is very pleased with the number of applications received for the EdChoice program," spokesman J.C. Benton said. "We received more applications in the first year of implementation than any other voucher program in the country."

More than 7,000 Cincinnati Public Schools students - or about 20 percent of the district's enrollment - were eligible for the private school scholarships that are worth as much as $5,000 each for the school year.

Statewide, more than 46,000 students were eligible because their public schools were rated in "academic emergency" or "academic watch" - the state's lowest categories for student achievement - for three years.

During the first application period that ended June 9, 2,565 students applied statewide and 2,272 vouchers are being awarded, Benton said. In the second round, 1,036 students applied. Those applications will be verified this week.

In the first round, 432 of the applicants came from Cincinnati Public Schools and 60 attended Cincinnati charter schools, which are independently run public schools, Walsh said last month. An additional 182 students were incoming kindergartners.

The district has until Aug. 22 to verify the validity of the latest applications, Walsh said.

"A preliminary review indicates we will be challenging 90 or so of the second round of applications," she said.

District Treasurer Michael Geoghegan last month said the loss of students would cost the school system about $1.9 million. Cincinnati Public Schools last year had 35,316 students in preschool through 12th grade and a budget of $428.6 million.

Walsh said officials are still assessing the additional financial impact from the second application period, but the district doesn't expect it to be much greater.