Topeka ? The message to Shawnee County District Judge Terry Bullock that the state doesn’t spend enough money on education is coming through loud and clear in a lawsuit being argued in his court.

“I’m starting to feel like I’ve seen this movie before,” Bullock told attorneys challenging the legality of the state’s school finance system on Thursday.

Bullock said his statement shouldn’t be taken as an indication of his potential ruling or that he agreed with the plaintiffs.

“But I think I get it,” Bullock told Alan Rupe, an attorney for parents and administrators in the Dodge City and Salina school districts.

The lawsuit was filed in 1999, arguing the state’s 1992 school finance law is constitutionally flawed. They hope to convince Bullock the state neither spends enough money on schools, nor fairly distributes the $2.6 billion it does provide.

Testimony began Monday, when a parade of witnesses began illustrating how what they claim is unfair funding is hindering their abilities to close the achievement gap between whites and minorities and the haves and have-nots.

Officials from Dodge City described Thursday their challenges as a district with more Hispanic children than whites.

Alan Cunningham, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, said the district was seeing gains in student achievement on state reading tests.

One method has been to lower the ratio of students to teachers to increase individual learning time. Cunningham testified that studies show smaller class sizes can be one effective tool in raising achievement.

“I’ve got 350 teachers who’d love to have fewer kids in the classroom,” he said.

The challenges faced by mid-sized districts like Dodge City and Salina are magnified in larger districts, said Wichita Supt. Winston Brooks during his testimony. Wichita is the state’s largest district — 49,037 students as of Monday.

For example, Wichita has 8,000 students identified as requiring special education, Brooks said, more students than most districts have as an entire enrollment.

However, Brooks said, the state reimburses districts for 85 percent of the average excess cost to provide special education, forcing the district to transfer millions from its general fund to operate the programs.