MONTGOMERY —  Republican supermajorities in the Alabama Legislature expanded a routine education bill to include tax credits for parents who move their children from failing public schools to private schools, prompting the state school superintendent to withdraw his support and a teachers' group to assail it as “totally anti-public education.”

The revised version cleared the House and Senate, with Republicans voting for it and Democrats opposing it in an unusually heated debate. State Superintendent of Education Tommy Bice dropped his support after learning of the revised bill, which jumped in length from 9 to 27 pages only minutes before it was passed over the shouted protests of Senate Democrats.

Republican Gov. Robert Bentley said he would sign it into law.

“This is historic education reform that will benefit students and families across the state,” Bentley said Friday in a statement. “Local school systems will have the flexibility to make more decisions on behalf of their students. Families will have new options if their children are stuck in failing schools. All children, regardless of their family's income or where they live, will have the opportunity to receive a quality education.”

Conversely, House Minority Leader Craig Ford, D-Gadsden, was livid Friday morning.

“This is a bait and switch,” Ford said. “The bill that came out of the conference committee was more than three times longer than the bill we passed. There is no way that happened in the thirty minutes that the conference committee met today. This bill has been sitting in someone's desk drawer for months.”

Initially, the bill was to allow city and county school systems to get approval from the state's school superintendent and school board to have flexibility in complying with state education laws. It was backed by the GOP leadership, the governor and Bice.

After the House and Senate passed different versions of the bill, a legislative conference committee dominated by Republicans put out a new version Thursday afternoon that expanded the bill to nearly 30 pages. Those extra pages added tax credits for parents who move their children from a failing public school to a non-failing public school, private school or parochial school. It also creates a scholarship program for parents who can't afford a move. Business and individuals would get tax credits for contributing scholarship money.

Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said the bill gives hope to parents whose children are stuck in failing schools and will force school boards to address poorly performing schools. “We took flexibility and turned it into accountability,” he said.

Ford decried what he saw as the GOP’s duplicitousness.

“It was their strategy all along to pass one version of the bill, and then come back and push this version through conference committee,” Ford said. “The Republican leadership operated unethically, and in bad faith. But it is our children who are going to suffer because of this, and my heart breaks for them today.”

Bentley admitted the surprise move had been in the works for a few days, but supporters like Bice weren't included because Republicans knew they would oppose the tax credits. Marsh said Republicans didn't want to delay a vote because that would have allowed opponents to inundate legislators with calls.

The new version also allows flexibility from teacher tenure laws in failing schools, but not in other schools. They could have a tenure program for teachers who wanted it and a non-tenure track for those who don't.

The four Republicans on the conference committee voted for the new version, and the two Democrats voted against it. Sen. Quinton Ross, D-Montgomery, a former public school principal on the committee, said the new version was designed by four white Republicans on the panel without any input from the committee's two black Democrats. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.