ALBANY – The Republican-controlled Senate proposed a state budget yesterday that rejected Governor Pataki’s marquee plans to expand school choice in New York.

The Senate wants to strip away from Mr. Pataki’s executive budget his proposal to lift the cap on charter schools in the state to 250 from 100 and to turn the governor’s tuition tax credit plan into a more generally applied credit offered to parents with schoolchildren.

With the Senate and the Assembly showing resistance to both tuition tax credits and to an increase in the number of charter schools, the prospect that either one of these plans will be revived during negotiations and make it into the final 2006-07 fiscal year spending plan will depend on the governor’s ability and desire to extract concessions.

Mr. Pataki has indicated that charter schools and tuition tax credits are high priorities for him, and a spokesman for the governor yesterday expressed disappointment with the Senate’s plan. Mr. Pataki is expected to hammer out a deal with the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and the Republican majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, in the next two weeks. The budget is due March 31.

“The Governor’s budget recognizes that to make real progress on education you need to improve options for our kids and get parents more involved. That means you need to shake things up a little. The Senate’s budget shows that it’s hard to break with the status quo, especially in an election year,” a spokesman for the governor, David Catalfamo, said in an e-mail.

On the issue of charter schools, Senate Republicans have showed interest in expanding the numbers in New York City, but lawmakers representing smaller school districts, where charter school students comprise a larger percentage of total public school enrollment, have faced greater pressure from the teachers unions and have sought to block the governor’s plan.

The Senate’s rejection of lifting the cap on the number of charter schools is an attempt to postpone a debate on the issue until after the budget is resolved, a Senate source said.

A Republican senator of Brooklyn, Martin Golden, who has called for lifting the charter school cap, yesterday said the Senate’s proposal was “pretty sad.”

Proponents of the governor’s tax credit plan, which would give low- to middle-income parents of public and private schoolchildren a $500 credit to be spent on tuition or tutoring, say Mr. Pataki’s proposal isn’t dead. Now that the Senate and Assembly have agreed to dedicate more than $400 million for a tax credit plan, negotiations have become a question of differences in language.

Both the Assembly and the Senate are proposing in their budgets tax credit plans that would not impose restrictions on how parents are allowed to spend the credits, essentially making them automatic tax reductions.

Under the Assembly’s plan, families with incomes between $24,000 and $110,000 would receive a $300 credit for each child under age 17. The Senate version is slightly higher than the Assembly’s and would limit the credits to families with children who are enrolled in school. Both plans cost $420 million, $20 million more than the governor’s.

The debate over education tax credits in Albany comes as advocates of school choice across the nation are increasingly pushing the credits as a more politically realistic alternative to tuition vouchers, which have been struck down by state courts.

The main advocacy group pushing for the governor’s plan, Teach NYS, has promoted tuition tax credits as tax relief for families with schoolchildren and has largely shied away from the stickier, ideological debate over school choice. The Senate and Assembly leaders, in turn, have described their changes to the governor’s plan as an effort to extend tax relief to more families. If the Senate’s tax credit proposal winds up in the final budget, “It’s been a total waste of time,” said Thomas Carroll, president of the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, a group based in Albany that advocates for school choice.

The Senate had indicated earlier this month that it was backing a $400 tax credit plan that would be linked to tuition spending. In recent days, the New York State United Teachers, the state teachers’ union, has aggressively lobbied against tuition tax credits, which they fear would drain money away from the public school system and eventually from teacher salaries.

New York City’s teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, also strongly opposed Mr. Pataki’s plan and said it supports a more general tax credit program like the ones backed by the Senate and the Assembly.

By proposing a more general tax credit but one that applied only to families with schoolchildren, Senate Republicans are yielding to the demands of the teachers unions. They hope they are doing so in such a way that doesn’t alienate constituencies, particularly Catholic and Orthodox Jewish communities, pushing for private school tuition support.

“We’re very encouraged that both the Senate and the Assembly have put aside substantial amounts of money … in recognition of the expenses that parents incur for their children’s education, and we urge both the Senate and the Assembly to work with the governor to ensure that those tax breaks are used to spur spending on education,” the director for education at the New York State Catholic Conference, James Cultrara, said. “Theoretically, the families could spend the money on iPods, sneakers, and who knows what else.” Cardinal Egan is expected to meet with Mr. Bruno and the governor today.