Topeka ? Education advocates and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius were keeping up the pressure for raising taxes to provide more money for public schools as the Legislature prepared to start its wrap-up session.

Legislators returned to Topeka on Wednesday from a spring recess to finish the year’s business. Sebelius said Tuesday that she was holding talks with legislators.

“I’m a little unclear what the strategy is,” Sebelius said in an interview. “I’m just hopeful they’re coming ready to go to work.”

Before starting the recess April 2, the House approved two school finance plans while the Senate rejected six and approved none.

One of the House-passed bills would provide districts an additional $28 million — from existing revenues — for bilingual education and other targeted programs. The bill would also allow 16 districts with high costs of living to raise property taxes by a total $23.5 million.

The other House measure would raise the state’s sales and income taxes to give districts an additional $155 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1. In addition, the bill would allow all districts to increase local property taxes by a total $120 million.

Any money appropriated in the wrap-up session would be in addition to the $2.77 billion worth of state aid to districts contained in a new budget that Sebelius has already signed.

At a news conference Tuesday, representatives of education groups and large school districts expressed support for the $155 million plan, saying it would spare districts from having to cut jobs and programs in the face of rising costs.

“It’s the best package, the best funding package, that’s still alive, for the schools of Kansas,” said Jim Menze, executive director of the United School Administrators of Kansas. “The costs of doing business as a school keep going up.”

Meanwhile, a group of state senators continued working on a plan worth $60 million to $90 million, said Sen. Dwayne Umbarger, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

“It’s still jelling,” said Umbarger, R-Thayer.

Sebelius, whose own $304 million school finance package has been largely rejected, said she thought legislators were beginning to hear from constituents about helping schools.

“I think there is a sense of a couple of things that need to get passed, then get out of here. School finance is certainly one of them,” she said. “There’s not a lot of contentious issues.”

The other main issues awaiting legislators’ decisions are bills that would expand gambling, rewrite Kansas liquor laws, strengthen the Kansas Open Records Act, revise ethics and campaign finance laws and ask voters to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

Senate leaders spent recent days working on a school finance strategy. Senate President Dave Kerr, R-Hutchinson, suggested in a radio interview Monday that leaders could try a short cut.

Rather than having a plan reviewed first by Umbarger’s committee and then by the entire chamber, the Senate could open negotiations with the House and insert any compromise on school finance into a bill that has already passed both chambers.

However, Umbarger, who would participate in any negotiations, said some senators want any bill to go through the Education Committee first.

“I think it would give whatever proposal we come up with some buoyancy,” Umbarger said.