When it comes to teacher performance pay, it's out with the old and in with the new.

Lawmakers passed a new $300,000 performance pay pilot program Thursday for elementary schools, shortly after scrapping what was left of a $20 million performance pay program passed last year.

Lawmakers eliminated the $20 million program to save money for other programs in this tight budget year. Money for the new program came from one passed last year that pays some math and science teachers extra money. Lawmakers took less than 10 percent of that funding to finance the new performance pay program, meaning math and science teachers will likely get slightly less extra pay.

Senators passed the new program, HB328, by a vote of 18-10 on Thursday; the House approved the program 65-7 last month.

Bill sponsor Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, urged senators to pass the bill, saying the State Board of Education supported it in hopes of keeping the "momentum going on performance pay."

But many lawmakers objected, saying it's not fair to ask districts to participate in a new program after scrapping the old one, in which school districts and charter schools devised different plans that were approved by the State Board of Education this past year.

"This really is a conflict for me," said Sen. Gregory Bell, R-Fruit Heights. "To see the effort that my district and others put into that, in terms of making a proposal and then getting teachers engaged and excited ... and then having to kick the skids out from under them, is very difficult."

Others said they were uncomfortable taking money from the math and science teacher pay program. The Utah Education Association (UEA) has also expressed concern with the bill, saying lawmakers shouldn't implement new programs in this tight budget year.

However, the State Board of Education gave its support to the bill after a board group spent the past year studying the issue. The new program would award competitive grants to elementary schools to pay teachers and other classroom-related staff for performance. Schools would spend one year measuring performance of staff and then reward them with the extra pay the next year. Forty percent of the pay would be based on student learning gains, 40 percent on instructional quality, and the rest on parent, student or community satisfaction.