All week long, it was a tale told by e-mails and press releases, full of sound and fury. And, by Saturday morning, Georgia Senate Bill 458 had come to signify nothing.

That, anyway, was the explanation put forth by State Senate Ronnie Chance (R-16th District), who called a town hall meeting in Fayetteville Saturday morning to address the furor surrounding SB458.

Some feared the bill would force Fayette County public county schools to accept Clayton County students if that troubled system, just across the county line, loses its accreditation Sept. 1.

Chance told about 150 residents at the town hall that it was highly unlikely SB458 would be voted on in the final four days of the legislature.

Even if did come up for a vote and somehow passed, "there is absolutely no chance Fayette will be forced to accept Clayton students," because a single word in the bill that had triggered the uproar already had been fixed, he said.

Chance, who is Gov. Sonny Perdue's floor leader in the Senate, said he and the governor have been besieged with e-mails and phone calls since the Fayette County school system alerted parents about SB458 last Monday.

"We have literally gotten hundreds of thousands of e-mails," Chance told the gathering. "Since Tuesday, Gov. Perdue has received 17,334 phone calls from Fayette County -- and that's good. It shows the system works."

The bill started as a Republican-authored effort to pass voucher legislation that would effectively give tax breaks to parents who send their children to private schools.

But Chance said it took on another dimension when Sen. Valencia Seay (D-Riverdale), who represents part of Fayette County, amended the bill. Before, the measure said a school district "may" accept students from one that had lost its accreditation. With Seay's changes, the bill said a district "shall" accept such students.

That nuance struck fear in the Forsyth school board that their system could end up in court, lose, and have to enroll Clayton students if their system loses its accreditation.

So dozens of concerned constituents turned out for Chance's town hall -- only to learn that state Rep. Matt Ramsey (R-Peachtreee City), who attended the meeting, already had changed the problematical word in the amendment back to "may."

Fayette school board member Janet Smola, who sent out the alert that galvanized the community, said the county has aggressively sought to keep students from outside from enrolling in its schools.

It has removed from the rolls about 200 young people who were there illegally in the last two years, Smola said.

Saturday's meeting seemed to diffuse the furor.

Ernie Kearns, a 53-year-old insurance agent with two children in public school, said he attended because, "I just wanted to get clarification. We've worked the last 20 years to make this a superior school system, and I didn't want to see that compromised."