RACINE - The exodus of students from the Racine Unified School District through the state's open enrollment program is greater than in any other district in the state except Milwaukee, according to state and local data.

The number of students participating in the program has grown steadily over the past decade from 11 during the 1998-99 school year, the first year of the program, to nearly 500 this past school year, according to school district data.

Unified officials expect the district will have to pay more than $3 million in tuition to other school districts for the estimated 553 students who are expected to leave the district in the 2008-09 school year.

The number of Racine Unified students participating in the program has more than doubled in the past five years.

During the 2003-04 school year, 166 students left the district through open enrollment. The most recent numbers show that 489 students left for other districts during the 2007-08 school year, a 66 percent increase.

"There has been a lot of turmoil in Racine Unified over the past few years. That could definitely play a role in that, with all of that going on," said Dale Knapp, research director for the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

Knapp's organization recently completed a study for the village of Caledonia detailing what it might cost to secede from Racine Unified and create a separate district. That report comes out today.

Wisconsin's open enrollment program, which allows families to apply to attend any school district in the state, was designed as a way to give parents more choice, experts say.

According to Unified data, 295 students, roughly 60 percent of the total students leaving the district through the open enrollment program, never attended a Racine Unified school. The other 40 percent, 194 students, had previously attended a Unified school.

Almost half of the students, 232, or 47 percent, leave to attend another Racine County school district.

Wisconsin expanded school choice in 1997 when the state changed the law to allow public school students statewide to attend any public school of their choice.

Although there are restrictions, the program has grown significantly in recent years, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, which has studied the program.

"One of the things that we know drives open enrollment is convenience," Knapp said. "It's people that live toward the borders of the school district and drive to work in another direction to another school district."

The state's open enrollment can be the only alternative for parents in districts that don't have choice options like Milwaukee, said John Bohte, an associate professor in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Milwaukee created the nation's first voucher program that allows low-income students to attend private schools with public dollars.

The city also implemented the state's first open enrollment program, the Chapter 220 program, a desegregation program that allowed some Milwaukee and suburban students to attend school in each other's districts.

Minnesota established the nation's first comprehensive statewide inter-district public school choice program

in 1988.

"(Open enrollment) is a form of choice, but as far as the education reform movement is concerned, it is not a very consequential form of choice," said Bohte, who studies school choice and educational reform.

At one time, open enrollment and school choice were synonymous because other forms of school choice did not exist, according to the Education Committee of the States.

Several types of school choice programs throughout the country, such as magnet schools, charter schools and vouchers, have expanded the definition of school choice beyond open enrollment.

While districts like Racine have seemingly high numbers of open enrollment students, the program is dominated by students from smaller districts, Knapp said.

"In these small districts, they're not able to offer some of the advanced courses," Knapp said. "Students sometimes tend to transfer out to larger districts that can offer these programs."

Virtual schools have become a "big thing" in recent years and many students who are open enrolling to virtual schools might have participated in the state program earlier, Knapp said.

While only 13 students chose to attend Racine Unified schools through open enrollment, district's like Waukesha and Appleton, both of which operate virtual schools, had more than 800 students each open enroll in to the district.

During the 2007-08 school year, 65 would-be Racine Unified students enrolled in virtual schools.

Districts can deny a family's open enrollment request, said Patrick Gasper, a spokesman for the Department of Public Instruction, which monitors the state's open enrollment program.

Parents whose applications are denied may appeal to the district and then to the DPI.

While on the surface the open enrollment program was created as a way to give parents a choice, it has added even more work to the already full plates of school leaders, according to Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District

Administrators.

"It is a huge bureaucratic, paper nightmare for school districts. It's been a paperwork-intensive mandate from the state that districts have to comply with," Turner said.

2007-08 Open Enrollment numbers by district

In; Out

APPLETON 827; 139

KENOSHA 34; 121

GREEN BAY AREA 119; 426

MADISON 154; 310

MILWAUKEE 323; 3,804

RACINE 13; 468

WAUKESHA 863; 352

Source:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Numbers may vary from school district data.