The state's financially struggling charter schools may get another lifeline from the state, after the House yesterday gave overwhelming preliminary approval to $1.5 million in additional state aid for next year.

The extra money would mean that the state's seven "orphan" charter schools - those that lack support from local school districts - would get a total of $6,500 per pupil in state support for the 2008-2009 school year.

Rep. Emma Rous, who chairs the House Education Committee, said that apart from other questions about funding charter schools, there's a basic policy question about the ones approved at the state level under a 2003 law.

"If the state has approved certain charter schools . . . do they then have some financial responsibility for those schools to be sustainable once there are families and children in those schools?" said Rous, a Durham Democrat.

The bill, which passed 198-91, also contains a moratorium on such charter school approvals until 2010.

Some proponents cited philosophical agreement with the concept of charter schools. Rep. Kimberley Casey, an East Kingston Democrat whose son attends the locally supported Great Bay E-Learning Charter School. "These schools are doing a wonderful job for their kids," Casey said. "People just like choice."

However, she said, legislators should at some point decide how long and how much it should support the so-called "orphan schools."

"There is a long-term and short-term solution for this problem," she said. "And one could be that we decide in perpetuity to support these schools because we started them as a state."

The additional money may come too late for the Franklin Career Academy, which this week appealed to the governor in search of urgent aid to help them stay open past next month. Gov. John Lynch has told school leaders that he would reply within a week, a spokesman said.

"Racing as they are against the deadlines that they are, I don't know that that's going to be the remedy that they sought," Rep. Jim Ryan, a Franklin Democrat, said of the funding.

The founder of the Franklin Career Academy, Bill Grimm, could not be reached for comment last night. He has previously said that the school budgeted expecting per-pupil state grants for 50 students, but the school started the year with 41 students and is now down to 30. He's said the school will need $55,000 to get through the school year.

Under previous law, the state is sending all charter schools $3,800 per student next year. The new bill would direct additional per-pupil money on top of that: $2,700 to so-called orphan schools, $500 to those affiliated with a school district and $250 to the Virtual Learning Academy.

Under an education funding plan now proposed for regular public schools, legislators have defined an "adequate" education as costing $3,450 per student.

The charter school funding bill now heads to the House Finance Committee.