COLUMBUS — As Gov. Bob Taft touted his $808 million education spending plan in a Zanesville school construction zone Thursday, legislative leaders in Columbus were busy building their own agendas.

        Less than a day after Mr. Taft used his State of the State address to outline his funding ideas, Senate President Richard Finan, R-Evendale, and a group of fellow Republican senators endorsed a strikingly different, $1.3 billion proposal.

        “We're going to fund this plan,” Mr. Finan said when asked where he will get the money. “We're not going to increase taxes.”

        Mr. Taft's plan also isn't likely to appear in a bill House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, plans to introduce next week. Mr. Householder said the bill will emerge as a rough outline lawmakers can fill out over the next five months.

        “We want to make sure the bill we bring forward has the flexibility to look at all plans, take the best pieces of everything and put it all together,” Mr. Householder said.

        Though neither leader would call the governor's plan dead on arrival, no one in the General Assembly has stepped forward to champion it. Now it also is obvious that none of Ohio's top three Republican leaders agree what should be done.

        “Usually the legislature has worked off the governor's proposals,” said Bill Phillis, leader of a coalition of schools that has twice successfully sued the state over school funding.

        “There appears to be quite a bit of (difference) between the governor and the legislature on this particular issue.”

        Mr. Finan said the House, Senate and governor's office are “on the same page” when it comes to finding a way to reform school funding.

        The General Assembly faces a June 15 deadline to fix funding inequities between the state's rich and poor school districts. The Ohio Supreme Court imposed that deadline in May after it ruled 4-3 that schools rely too much on property taxes as their main source of revenues.

        The Senate's plan would address those concerns by raising the minimum amount of money schools can spend on an adequate education for each student. School spending would rise from $4,294 per student this year to $4,583 in the 2001-02 school year. That would increase to $4,873 in 2002-03.

        The plan would spend another $300 million over the next two years to help poor school districts close spending gaps with wealthier districts. School officials in poor districts would get larger shares and would be able to spend the money as they see fit.

        The total cost for the plan, said bill sponsor Sen. Jeff Jacobson, R-Brookville, will be $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion over the next two years.

        Mr. Taft's plan would spend $808 million over the next two years to boost schools' per-student spending from $4,294 to $4,670 by 2002-03. It also would provide more money for all-day kindergarten classes, special education, transportation and teacher training.

        The governor still hopes to per suade lawmakers to support his plan, said Kevin Kellems, Mr. Taft's spokesman.

        “This is a normal legislative process. There will be many voices,” Mr. Kellems said. “The fact is the governor has introduced a comprehensive plan. I think over time more and more people will see the wisdom of that plan.”

        Mr. Jacobson said the Senate plan would do more than the governor's plan to ease schools' reliance on property taxes and satisfy the court's school funding objections.

        Meanwhile, Mr. Householder's position remains unclear. He did not dismiss the notion he's trying to position himself as a potential mediator or dealmaker between the Mr. Taft and Mr. Finan.

        “We're friends to both,” he said.

        The speaker said he plans to introduce a House bill sometime after the governor unveils his budget plan Monday.

        While education funding is likely to remain a sore point for some time, support appears strong for another plan that would revamp the state's system for testing students.

        Another bill Senate Republicans produced Thursday would eliminate the fourth- and sixth-grade proficiency tests, replacing them with a series of less intensive tests spread through grades three through five, and grades seven and eight.

        It also would erase a controversial provision that threatened to hold back fourth-graders who failed the reading portions of their tests.

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