We're still months away from the start of the next legislative session in January, but public school supporters aren't wasting any time. The state PTA, Education Association, School Boards Association and superintendents have organized a campaign to fight Gov. Mark Sanford's "Put Parents in Charge" act.

They announced the campaign Thursday in Columbia. They're calling it "The Right Choice:Our South Carolina Public Schools."

The governor's plan would offer tax credits to parents who want to home school their children or send them to a private school. The money could also be used to send students to another public school.

But organizers of the campaign say the tax credits, which they call vouchers, would drain $234 million in state money from public schools.

Jim Ray, superintendent of Spartanburg District 3, says, "I certainly have no problem with private schooling, with home schooling. I have a problem with taking public dollars from an already underfunded system, to the tune of $234 million, and putting it in private schooling."

He says parents already have choices, since every district he knows of offers parents the option of transferring their children to another school within the district. 

Cynthia Prince home schools her children, 9-year-old Jeremiah and 7-year-old Ariel, and would love the tax credits.

"It's just so much better if I was able to have those extra funds in order to give them a better home school experience, with more supplies, you know, being able to put them in more extracurricular activities that we have to pay for because we're not able to let them go to public school to take, like, say for instance a band course or music course," she says.

While organizers of the anti-tax credit campaign say the plan would stop or reverse the progress state schools have made,  Prince says, "I don't see any improvements that we've made. I've seen slight fluctuations but no major improvements, and I've been in Columbia for going on 20 years. And I don't know what improvements you're talking about. I mean, if anything, I think things have gotten worse." 

The public school support group says there are many improvements. The nation's second-best math improvement for fourth-graders between 1992 and 2003. The nation's seventh-best math improvement for eighth-graders between 1990 and 2003. The nation's tenth-best improvement in reading for fourth-graders between 1992 and 2003. And the largest gain in SAT scores, 32 points in the last five years.

But another group, which is fighting FOR the governor's plan, disagrees. South Carolinians for Responsible Government president Tom Swatzel says, "South Carolina taxpayers spent $6.4 billion on public education last year. When the relatively  low incomes in our state are taken into account, we are spending at a rate faster than all but a handful of states in the nation. And yet, we continue to remain at the very bottom in most gauges of achievement and performance."

He says the public school groups' opposition is just an attempt to hold on to power and control.

This debate will continue for months to come leading up to the legislative session, and then once it starts and lawmakers actually take up the idea.