MADISON, Wis. – Data just released by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reveals that Wisconsin’s statewide school choice program is more popular than some lawmakers may have thought it would be. The program, capped by the legislature at no more than 1,000 openings for the upcoming school year, had 3,407 applicants.

As the MacIver Institute has noted, there are no pending public plans to expand the program right now.

That 3,407 applications were received for 1,000 programs shows that the school choice debate isn’t likely to go away anytime soon in Wisconsin. Lawmakers only capped the program at 1,000 students after GOP state senators expressed their objection to a broader, more sweeping proposal.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

One of the Republican senators who regularly opposed expanding school choice was Sen. Mike Ellis. When Ellis announced he was not going to seek re-election this year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted that part of his legacy in the Senate includes his willingness to fight against expanding educational opportunities for students and families across the state.

“He frustrated many of his fellow Republicans with his partially successful fight last year to scale back Walker’s plans for a statewide expansion of voucher schools,” the paper noted.

Another opponent of school choice, GOP Sen. Dale Schultz, is also retiring this cycle. Schultz told a liberal radio talk show host in 2013 that more competition in the educational marketplace wasn’t a conservative idea.

Right Wisconsin reported at the time that Schultz told the host: “I thought conservatives were interested in having people be less dependent on government. And here what we’re doing is talking about making more that 100,000 kids dependent on state government by giving them vouchers, when we’re giving them phenomenally more money than we are offering our K-12 educational system.”

But while Schultz and Ellis are leaving the Senate, and are likely going to be replaced by Republicans more friendly to school choice, one GOP school choice skeptic is seeking to get back into the Senate. Van Wanggaard raised more money than his Democrat opponent in 2012, but managed to lose his recall election anyway. Wanggaard is now campaigning against conservative businessman Jonathan Steitz for the GOP nomination in Senate District 21.

State Rep. Howard Marklein, who is running to replace Schultz, faces a vigorous but, GOP prognosticators say, winnable battle in Senate District 17. He is a supporter of school choice and expanded educational opportunities, much to the ire of some Madison area liberals.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

Former state Rep. Roger Roth, who will get the GOP nod to fight for Sen. Mike Ellis’s seat, is also likely to support school choice.

If Wanggaard were to win his primary race, and then win a seat in the Senate, he’d be the odd man out among incoming GOP senators when it comes to school choice. Wanggaard fought to limit the number of students allowed into the Racine school choice program when he was a senator.

Steitz, on the other hand, has repeatedly voiced his unequivocal support for school choice. “It is time to expand school choice in Wisconsin!,” Steitz wrote in a statement posted to his Facebook page on Tuesday. “More than 3,400 students applied for 500 new slots – a cap that is in place because moderate Republicans in the State Senate insisted on it. Just like my opponent insisted on previous caps in Racine. Parents and students across our state want more choice!”

If Steitz, Roth and Marklein make it to the Senate, it means that in future sessions of the legislature if the Assembly decides to push for an expansion of school choice, opponents in the Senate will no longer have the upper hand to shut such a plan down.

Authored by Brian Sikma