Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, plans to push legislation allowing parents of autistic children to choose the best school setting for their child.

"They have a very difficult time in a regular setting in a classroom," said Shapiro, who long has supported voucher systems. "I would like to see a choice program. ... It's what I think we should do for children with autism."

A voucher program would allow eligible parents to spend a certain amount of tax dollars allocated for their child's public school education for any school ¡ª public or private. The public school could be in a different district from the child's home district.

Even some lawmakers who have opposed vouchers say they are willing to listen to parents who support this proposal.

The number of Texas children diagnosed with various degrees of autism nearly has doubled over the past five years ¡ª increasing from 8,972 students to 17,282 in the 2005-06 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.

While some parents hail the voucher idea, education groups will oppose it.

"Educating children with autism is a very daunting task. It's difficult. It's expensive. Anything that parents can do to minimize the already enormous difficulty they have with autism will be fantastic," said Shannon Dunn, whose 5-year-old son, Lennon, attends Treehouse Pediatric Center, a private school that educates autistic children in San Antonio.

Former public school teacher Krista Bulger's 5-year-old son, Kyle, also attends Treehouse, a nonprofit school that charges $1,630 a month for tuition. Others charge up to $4,000 a month.

"It's not cheap, but it's the best place for my child," Bulger said. "Many autistic children are bright. Kyle reads. He does simple addition and subtraction. He spells. But his speech and articulation are poor, so he's hard to understand. Expressing himself is difficult. They don't deserve to be secluded from their classmates."

Getting a voucher option from the state would send Bulger on a scouting mission to "find the perfect classroom for my child. I would be intensely doing a lot of research to find the best placement for him."

There is no known cure for autism.

"The most that ... parents can hope for is appropriate placement for their children as they are developing," Bulger said.

She loves Shapiro's proposal, she said, adding, "I won't hold my breath, but it would be wonderful if something like that did happen."

Education groups vigorously oppose school voucher programs in Texas. Proposals typically have offered ways for low-income parents to remove children from low performing, inner-city schools and send them to private schools or better public schools elsewhere.

Voucher supporters and opponents both agree that any move to allow vouchers for one disability or disease could open the door to other groups to push for similar options.

"Public tax dollars should go to fund public schools, not private schools," said Richard Kouri, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association. "Our belief is that once you start moving public tax dollars to private schools, whatever the initial reason, future arguments become arguments around expanding that existing program."

State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, opposes school vouchers but agonizes with parents who doubt that an assigned public school maximizes their autistic child's learning potential.

Van de Putte, a member of the Senate Education Committee, said those parents don't want to open the floodgates for a full-blown voucher system but seek a limited-purpose program in special cases where a school district agrees it can't provide necessary services for autistic children.

Emphasizing that she opposes "diverting money and passion away from our public school system," Van de Putte said she would keep an open mind and listen "to these parents who want to see their children reach their potential."

But there simply is no appetite in the Legislature for a full-blown voucher program, Van de Putte said.

Lawmakers have fought over school vouchers during most of the past decade.

San Antonio physician-turned-businessman James Leininger spent nearly $5 million this year tying to elect voucher-friendly candidates. But his effort largely failed, and now he is pushing a compromise idea that would allow school districts to keep a portion of the tax money when one of their students takes a voucher to enroll in another school.

"Leaving a percentage of the funds devoted to the student with the public school creates a win-win situation by both allowing parents the choice of the best school for their child and by increasing the per pupil funding available to the public school," Leininger spokesman Ken Hoagland said.

San Antonio's Treehouse for autistic children caps enrollment at 21 students and provides ample individual teaching with nine teachers and four assistants.

"Autistic kids need to be engaged, and when they're not, they are not doing productive things like listening and learning," said Marci Taylor, founder and executive director of the school. "It's difficult to treat their behaviors in the school system because they don't have enough hands to do it."

Early and intensive intervention increases an autistic child's chances of entering a regular classroom later, she said.

Public schools might welcome vouchers that allow autistic children to attend schools that specifically focus on autism, Taylor said.

"If a family is given an option, it probably would take away a lot of the stress from the schools," she said. "It's a bad relationship between a parent of an autistic child and the schools because the parents feel like they have to fight for everything."

More than 600 autistic children are enrolled in the Northside Independent School District, San Antonio's largest.

"With autistic students, it is challenging. It requires specialized techniques and strategies to work with the kids. It requires a lot of staff training," said DeNette Krawczynski, who is in charge of Northside's special education elementary programs.

It takes about two years of intensive interaction at a young age before an autistic child can transition to a general education classroom, said Domonique Randall, founder of the Houston-area Shape of Behavior schools.

"Our goal is to teach them to learn within a group and to teach them to participate in a group setting," Randall said. "It's a battle. Parents are spending their college savings. They are spending everything they have to give their child a chance. That's the part that's really sad."