This was something I pitched repeatedly.
I wanted Barbara to be injured, and while recovering, Alysia would be Batgirl, wearing her own version of the costume, and carrying an actual baseball bat for protection, and some friends as her back-up.
It was more complicated than that, I promise. :)
The reason I was told we couldn’t do it was, and I kinda understand why they thought it, that Barbara had only had the cowl back herself for a short period of time. It was felt that she would need to more fully establish herself before someone else took up the mantle.
I am sad it didn’t happen.
Also, the Movement partially came from this…after the idea was nixed for the final time, I took the central idea and created the Movement, but at that point, Alysia was too popular to be moved to another book.