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The Senate voted Monday to increase state funding for charter schools by $40 million a year, despite concerns by some school districts that too much money will come out of their pockets to fund it.

"We've been underfunding the charter schools. That's why those districts would have to give up some money," Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, said in debate before the Senate approved SB38 on a 17-11 vote, and sent it to the House for consideration.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said he filed it on behalf of the Charter School Funding Task Force, which met through the summer and fall to review the funding formulas for the state's public-education system.

After a meeting Monday morning between lawmakers, public schools and charter schools, Sen. Ann Millner, R-Ogden, said they reached a consensus that charters — which are also public schools — are underfunded by about $580 per pupil a year in current formulas. So districts that get too much now could see a cut in funds.

Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, said the meeting Monday suggested three changes, which he hopes the House will put into the bill.

They include removing a recreation levy from formulas; listing on property tax notices how much money in a school district's levy is going to charters; and implementing the bill gradually so that public-school districts don't take too big of a hit too fast.

Senate Democratic leader Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, complained that such changes should have been made before Senate passage, and asked Stephenson why that was not done.

"When we send a bill to the House, especially a controversial bill like this, if we have already perfected it," Stephenson said, "we don't have anything to change in order [for the House] to have ownership in the outcome."

He added, "If we perfect the bill now, by the time it gets over there, who knows what they are going to send back to us."

Davis said the Senate should always try to perfect a bill before passing it, and it is dangerous to advance a bill that all sides say has flaws.