COLUMBUS: A proposal to expand the tax-funded school voucher program could steer millions of dollars from public schools to private ones, public school officials say.A bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Matt Huffman of Lima would provide vouchers for private-school tuition for low- and middle-class parents regardless of school performance and for qualifying families of nearly 200,000 current private school students, the Columbus Dispatch reported.Vouchers now are offered for students only at schools that perform poorly.“I think the system should be based on need, not geography,” Huffman told the Dispatch. “I’m trying to fill a gap for people who don’t have a real option for a brick-and-mortar school and equalize the inequities in the current program.”The bill would provide scholarships worth several thousand dollars for families that make up to $95,000 annually on a sliding scale, and the scholarship amount would be subtracted from the local district’s state aid.Some schools believe a scholarship would exceed the per-student aid they receive and they’d have to make up thousands of lost tax dollars with money generated from local levies, the newspaper reported.Public school officials who oppose the measure say it amounts to privatization — not school choice — and would wrongly redirect money away from their schools and from public accountability. The Ohio Association of School Boards asked its members to pass resolutions opposing the bill, and at least two — the Worthington district near Columbus and Winton Woods in suburban Cincinnati — did so last week.“The issue is the diversion of local property-tax dollars to a cause other than what it was intended to do,” Worthington board president Marc Schare told the newspaper. “It would be as if the legislature took dollars from a local library levy and used those dollars to fund gift certificates for Barnes & Noble.”In the 3,600-student Winton Woods district, which cut 38 staff this year to adjust to budget reductions, at least half the students come from families living below the poverty level and nearly all would fall below the income threshold in the scholarship proposal, board president John Pennycuff told the Associated Press. About 600 students attend parochial schools and private schools and might be eligible for scholarship money under the proposed program, he said, meaning the public schools could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.“That’s an incredible move of money that we have gone out and rung doorbells for to raise money at the local level just to keep our school system afloat,” he said.Huffman, the bill’s sponsor, acknowledged changes to the measure may be needed before it could pass the House.Other states offer vouchers based on income, and Ohio is alone in awarding vouchers on school performance, Chad Aldis, executive director of School Choice Ohio, told the Dispatch.“This bill puts the focus on the needs of the individual students,” Aldis said.Carolyn Jerkowitz of the Catholic Conference of Ohio told the newspaper her board supports the idea of financial assistance for parents who send students to private schools but noted that schools might not have room for all interested students.