For one side, it's about students from families with modest means who got a chance to move to private schools and flourished.
For the other, it's about public schools that can't even buy textbooks and certainly can't afford to lose more revenue.
Two years after it first caused a political uproar, the Alabama Accountability Act remains divisive.
Sen. Del Marsh, who sprung the Accountability Act on the education establishment and outnumbered Democrats in 2013, wants to fine-tune and expand the law that helps students attend private schools with tax credit programs.
The Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee held a public hearing Wednesday, allowing six proponents and six opponents to speak.
Even opponents support some changes Marsh proposes, like more narrowly targeting scholarships for low-income families.
But they still don't like the law and urged legislators not to support Marsh's plan to expand the scholarship program and divert $10 million more from public schools.
Daniel Boyd, superintendent of Lowndes County schools, said students there have to share textbooks. Reduced state funding since 2008 has left the small Black Belt district strapped for books, buses, library enhancements, technology upgrades and professional development, he said.
Boyd, a plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the Accountability Act, said school systems in poor, rural areas like his are already underfunded and would be crippled by the loss of more revenue.
Marsh said he was listening to the concerns raised Wednesday. The committee took no vote on the bill, at his request.
His bill would raise from $25 million to $35 million the annual cap on total tax credits for donors to tax-exempt scholarship granting organizations created under the Accountability Act.
The law says SGOs can give scholarships to students in families earning up to about $65,000, 150 percent of the state's median household income.
Marsh proposes changing that to twice the federal poverty limit, which would be about $48,000 for a family of four.
Under current law, scholarships can go only to students zoned for failing public schools until Sept. 15 each year. Marsh proposes moving that date to May 15.
His bill would require SGOs to file quarterly reports with the Department of Revenue that would be posted on the department's website.
Allison Perkins of Montgomery told the committee that her two children had benefited from Accountability Act scholarships.
She said her son has thrived at Churchill Academy because it has accommodated his unique needs.
Churchill Academy Director Lisa Schroeder said it caters to children with special learning needs.
Schroeder told lawmakers that meeting parents who want to enroll their children but can't afford it has been one of her frustrations since founding the school in 1996.
Bry Shields, president of McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile, said 76 students there received Accountability Act scholarships.
Shields told the committee that more could do so if the date to allow scholarships to go to students not zoned for failing schools was moved from Sept. 15 to May 15, as Marsh has proposed.
Chris Caldwell, a junior at Ellwood Christian Academy in Selma, told the committee that he was a C student at Selma High School but makes straight A's at Ellwood.
He said he benefits from smaller class sizes and attention to his individual needs.
Kimble Forrister, executive director of Alabama Arise, a coalition of congregations and other groups that advocates for low-income families, opposed adding $10 million to the scholarship program.
Forrister suggested lowering the income eligibility for scholarship recipients even more than Marsh proposed, to 185 percent of the federal poverty limit.
He said the law should require private schools that accept scholarships to give the same standardized tests as public schools. And he said the law should require independent audits of the scholarship groups.
Susan Kennedy of the Alabama Education Association, which has opposed the Accountability Act from the outset, told the committee that the law essentially prohibits the state from auditing SGOs because it says the state must have evidence before an audit.
Kennedy said AEA would support changing the law to require a certain share, perhaps 80 or 90 percent, of all scholarships to go to students zoned for failing schools.
Larry Lee, a Montgomery retiree who writes opinion articles about education and frequently criticizes the Accountability Act, spoke to the committee and noted that Marsh's bill "would clarify" that the intent of the law is "educational choice."
Lee contrasted that with the original stated intent of the bill, which was to help children stuck in failing public schools.
"Two years later, we're trying to unring the bell and publicly acknowledge what some of us have known all along," Lee said.
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