The proposal to allow the state to pay for private school vouchers was the last constitutional amendment -- one of seven -- the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission agreed to put on the November ballot.
If 60 percent of voters agree, the measure will undo a 2006 Supreme Court ruling that threw out the vouchers as unconstitutional. The vouchers were the brainchild of then-Gov. Jeb Bush, who wanted the state to pay to send students in low-performing public schools to private schools.
''The purpose of this amendment is to protect charter schools, to protect virtual education . . . and the alternatives that exist to the public school system,'' said Pat Levesque, who runs Bush's pro-voucher foundation and sponsored the amendment.
But opponents said it will establish a private school entitlement to public money and scolded the commission for introducing a nonbudget-related, ideological proposal into the agenda.
''You'd be the first state in the union to create a right, an obligation and mandate to have publicly financed private schools,'' said state Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat and nonvoting member of the commission, who called the amendment ``ideological pork.''
The voucher proposal will be rolled into one amendment with the so-called 65 percent solution, which would force school districts to spend at least that percentage of their budgets in the classroom.
Both ideas have been repeatedly rejected by the Legislature, blasted by critics as far removed from the panel's mission and rejected as recently as two weeks ago by the 25-member commission.
But when the commission gave final approval to its hallmark piece of tax reform on Thursday -- a plan to lower all property taxes by about 25 percent and force Tallahassee to make up the money with sales taxes and other revenue -- key opposition to the education schemes disappeared.
Three members switched their votes, including tax swap author John McKay, and the panel voted 19-6 for the voucher amendment. It takes a supermajority of 17 votes to put an amendment to voters.
The voucher amendment is the second proposal the commission has placed on the ballot designed to reverse the court ruling in Bush v. Holmes, the landmark voucher case. The other proposal would remove language from the Constitution that bans using tax dollars for religious-based schools and institutions.
The voucher amendment focuses on adding six words to Article IX of the state Constitution, spelling out that the state's fundamental duty to provide education to all children will be ``fulfilled at a minimum and not exclusively through adequate provision by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality system of free public schools.''
The words ''at a minimum and not exclusively,'' the commission believes, will invalidate the high court ruling, which rejected the vouchers as violating the constitutional mandate for uniform public schools.
The commission also agreed to roll the ''65 percent solution'' into the amendment by a 20-5 vote. Commission member and sponsor Greg Turbeville, a Tallahassee lobbyist and former Bush staffer, said it is needed to increase confidence, transparency and confidence in public education.
Opponents called it window dressing. School officials said it isn't needed and sends a wrong message that schools are bloated with administrative costs.
In the past five years, Miami-Dade County's school district has spent at least 80 percent of its budget on the classroom, district officials said.
''Our concern is how this would be legislated in terms of what qualifies as a true expenditure in support of children,'' said Alberto Carvalho, associate superintendent of intergovernmental affairs for Miami-Dade schools.
Broward Schools Superintendent Jim Notter said the district spends 73 percent of its $2.2 billion budget on classroom expenses, including teacher salaries, textbooks and supplies.
''I don't have any problem putting 65 percent into the classroom,'' he said. The issue is, what is defined as 'in the classroom?' ''
He is concerned that the Legislature could exclude counselors, social workers, psychologists and others from what is considered essential to the classroom.
Miami Herald staff writers Laura Figueroa, Katherine McGrory and Nirvi Shah contributed to this report.
