Topeka ? Gov. Kathleen Sebelius isn’t ruling out calling legislators into special session later this year to respond to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling on education funding or fix the state’s death penalty law.

“All options are on the table,” Sebelius said Tuesday during a Statehouse news conference. “I haven’t booked any long-term trips — let me put it that way.”

Though common in other states, special sessions are infrequent in Kansas. Governors have called only 19 since statehood in 1861 and only five in the past 50 years.

However, court rulings against the state’s school funding system and capital punishment statute have lawmakers pondering the possibility of returning to the Statehouse. The Legislature wrapped up its business for the year Sunday and plans only a brief adjournment ceremony May 20.

“I would say the prospects of a special session on the death penalty are better than one on school finance,” said House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka.

In December, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the 1994 death penalty law over a provision saying if the evidence for and against imposing a death sentence is about equal, a jury must recommend death. The court said a tie should go to the defendant.

Seven men convicted of capital murder can no longer face death if the decision stands, nor can the state seek death for other defendants until the law is rewritten. Atty. Gen. Phill Kline has appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mays said if the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take the case, the Legislature probably could fix the flaw in a day.

While Sebelius acknowledged the possibility of a special session, she wouldn’t commit to calling one in the face of an adverse U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

“I really haven’t even focused on that timetable yet,” she told reporters Tuesday. “I can’t speculate on what’s going to happen.”

Sebelius also wouldn’t speculate on how the Kansas Supreme Court would respond to the Legislature’s plan to increase annual spending on aid to public schools by $142 million. She has criticized the plan as inadequate, partly because it relies on existing revenues and tapping the state’s cash reserves.

The justices are reviewing a lawsuit filed in 1999 by parents and administrators in the Dodge City and Salina school districts. In January, the court said legislators hadn’t lived up to a constitutional duty to provide for continual improvement in education.

The case is on appeal from Shawnee County, where a district judge ruled twice against the state and ordered schools closed after July 1, 2004, until legislators rewrote the school finance law. The Supreme Court intervened quickly to block that order.