COLUMBIA, S.C. — Frustrated with the implementation of the state’s school voucher program, South Carolina state senators are requesting an investigation and may seek to pause the program’s growth until a review can be completed.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Greg Hembree, R-Horry, said during a Senate panel Tuesday that he planned to ask the state’s Legislative Audit Council to analyze the entire program, with a specific focus on the subset of students who are being educated at home.

“I’m real concerned about the lack of hard data and where the overall Education Scholarship Trust Fund is,” he said. “But, specifically, this unbundler program.”

The senator’s comments, which were echoed by his subcommittee colleagues, come amid fallout over the Department of Education’s decision to grant taxpayer-funded scholarships to home-educated students, whom it calls unbundlers.

Nearly 1,200 unbundlers are enrolled this year in the state’s voucher program, which subsidizes the tuition and other education-related expenses of qualified families that enroll their K-12 children outside zoned public schools. Another 4,000 have already applied to participate next year, according to the department.

Hembree and other senators said they did not intend for homeschoolers to participate in the program — the law explicitly prohibits students enrolled in any of the three state-sanctioned home school models — and have expressed dismay that the law’s implementation has made their prior public representations of the bill appear false.

“I have been made a liar through your interpretation and your implementation” of the program, Hembree told state Superintendent Ellen Weaver last month.

In a statement released Tuesday, responding to news of the requested audit and proposed pause on the program, the department defended its implementation of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund and said any plans to alter its rollout would “upend the educational plans of thousands of students and their families.”

Award notifications for next year had already gone out, it explained, and changing course now would hurt families that are counting on scholarships.

Weaver, who was hauled before the Senate panel last month to explain her department’s actions, said Tuesday that the department would continue to administer the law “faithfully and transparently” for the benefit of South Carolina students.

“Families have relied on this law as it was plainly written by the General Assembly,” she said in a statement. “When lawmakers give their word to families, that word should be ironclad.”

The schools chief has not committed to supporting legislation Hembree has proposed that aims to prevent home-educated students from receiving taxpayer-funded scholarships, but has promised to implement any changes the General Assembly may make to the voucher program.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, who last month told Weaver she’d lost his trust, has repeatedly questioned the department’s willingness to execute the Legislature’s plans.

The Edgefield Republican said Tuesday that while he supported Hembree’s efforts, he wasn’t sure what difference they would make if the department didn’t faithfully implement them.

“The whole thing is just disappointing to me,” Massey said. “That we are where we are, and that there are … 1,000 children who are caught in the middle of all this.”

The parents of students who stand to lose their scholarships if Hembree’s bill passes have written to the senator and turned out for hearings on the issue, but have had limited opportunities to speak publicly about their experiences because the panel has not taken public testimony at its last two hearings.

Amanda McTeer, a Beaufort mother who is using vouchers to home-educate her two youngest children this year, told The State previously that the money was making a material difference in the quality and diversity of the educational experiences she could now offer her kids.

What’s next for homeschoolers in SC voucher program?

It’s not clear at this point whether the House will support Hembree’s bill banning unbundlers.

Massey said last month he thought Weaver probably had enough strength in the lower chamber to kill any proposed changes to the voucher program.

If that ends up being the case, Hembree said he’s prepared to offer a proviso that would mirror his bill and, if approved, result in a temporary law prohibiting unbundlers from receiving vouchers.

A proviso, or one-year law, might have a better chance of succeeding, he said, because it would become part of the General Assembly’s larger state budget package.

“You still need the House,” the senator explained. “But it’s going to be in the budget, so you’re not just looking at one bill that you can kill pretty easily. You got to look at the whole budget.”

Another possibility, Hembree said, is to “tap the breaks” on the entire voucher program, which is slated to expand next school year from 10,000 to 15,000 — or possibly even 20,000 — students.

Pausing the program at 10,000 students, he said, would allow auditors to study it and report back to lawmakers, who would then have a better understanding of its shortcomings and what tweaks might be necessary to improve it.

The Horry County senator equated the process to how lawmakers used a legislative audit report on the Charter Institute at Erskine to inform charter school reform legislation the Senate passed in February.

“Whatever adjustments that they suggest, we can consider those, much like we did with charter schools this year,” he said. “That’s kind of my hope.”

In addition to the homeschool “mess,” as Hembree has called it, the department has taken heat from lawmakers this year over its delay in providing student assessment information to the Education Oversight Committee, its guarding of program spending and demographic data and the recent arrest of a voucher recipient accused of defrauding the program.

The senator said Tuesday that despite his frustration about the participation of unbundlers, he didn’t have “grave” concerns about other aspects of the program and hadn’t lost faith in South Carolina’s schools chief.

“I still have a lot of confidence in Ellen Weaver. I still have a lot of confidence in the department carrying out other initiatives,” Hembree said. “I’m hoping this is just sort of a one-off thing that got out of hand, and we can clean that mess up and move forward.”

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