The debate over Gov. Mark Sanford’s tax-credit proposal continued this week, as the South Carolina School Boards Association released a study showing the plan would leave school districts in worse financial shape as students opted to attend private schools.

The study is the association’s response to a March 2004 report generated for the South Carolina Policy Council.

But the dueling nature of the reports shows that more debate and analysis are needed, said Harry Miley, president of his own economic consulting firm, which conducted the School Boards Association study.

While the Policy Council study found districts would save money when students took advantage of the tax credit, the study released Tuesday showed the opposite to be true.

Both studies are based on the 2004 version of the Put Parents in Charge Act.

“One of the claims of the proponents of the bill was that the Policy Council’s report answered all these questions, and we don’t think they quite answer all these questions,” Miley said.

Under Put Parents in Charge, tax credits could go to parents who home-school their children or send them to private schools or to public schools in another district.

The South Carolina School Boards Association opposes the tax-credit plan. The Policy Council supports the plan.

The Policy Council study estimated schools, on average, could save $600 more per student than they would lose in per-pupil payment. (Schools would lose funds on the basis of the number of students who use the proposed choice plan.)

But that report didn’t pass the “common sense test,” Miley said.

The School Boards Association report found schools could experience a net loss of between $570 and $2,040 per student.

Unless enough students leave a single school to eliminate a class or program, the school would not save money, the Miley study states.

The study states that administrative and teacher salaries, and transportation, building and land maintenance costs do not decline as a student or a few students leave.

“How is a school going to reduce its expenditures when a classroom goes from 25 kids to 23 kids or 24 kids or 22 kids?” Miley said. “We don’t see cost savings when a few students leave a public school classroom. They can’t get rid of the teacher, the building, the electricity.”

Cotton Lindsay, a professor of economics at Clemson University who did the initial Policy Council study, said the students pulling out of public schools likely would be concentrated at schools performing poorly.

In that case, classes potentially could be eliminated.

“Parents are going to be more willing to pull their kids out of public school if the school has been unable to move the student along,” Lindsay said.

The Policy Council expects to release a district-by-district study of the issue in a few weeks.

Reach Roko (803) 771-8409 or eroko@thestate.com.