Topeka ? A task force set up by the Legislature to study ways schools can operate more efficiently had a hard time reaching agreement Monday on bills to recommend to the 2015 Legislature.

Of the six bills that had been drafted for consideration, the panel agreed on only one, which would set up another task force to study the so-called “Rose capacities.” Those are the educational outcomes that the Kansas Supreme Court said earlier this year should be used to determine whether the state is providing adequate funding for public schools.

But there was not majority support on the nine-member panel for other, more controversial measures, including bills that would limit the scope of collective bargaining for teachers, to force districts to spend down some of their cash reserves and to prod some districts into consolidating certain administrative services.

The K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Committee met Monday to begin finalizing its recommendations for the Legislature. It will meet once more, on Jan. 6, to vote on the final draft of its report.

In 2013, a three-judge panel in Topeka ruled that the state was underfunding public schools and ordered the Legislature to increase base funding by about $450 million. That figure was based on an earlier Supreme Court ruling that said school funding must be based on the actual cost of providing a suitable education.

But after that decision was appealed, the Supreme Court in March established a new standard for measuring adequacy, and it sent the case back to the three-judge panel to be decided again. The new standard calls for looking at various educational outcomes to determine whether funding has been adequate.

Those standards say that students who graduate should have certain knowledge and skills needed to gain employment or enter higher education. They include communications skills, knowledge of civics and economics, knowledge about physical and mental health, a grounding in fine arts and other skills needed to enter college or the workforce.

But the court gave no instructions about how to determine whether those standards are being achieved, or how to measure them.

“You’ve got to flesh out what the Rose standards are so that schools know what the target is, what they’re expected to do,” said commission member Mike O’Neal, a former Kansas House Speaker who now heads the Kansas Chamber.

The bill would set up a nine-member study commission representing business and industry and post-secondary institutions to look at the “desired end product” of the state public school system and recommend methods for measuring whether schools are achieving those outcomes. The panel later agreed to have representatives from the Kansas State Department of Education serve on the study commission as well.

Interim Education Commissioner Brad Neuenswander, a non-voting member of the panel, said the Kansas State Board of Education is already planning to do much the same thing early next year.

“The plan is to get out across the state this spring and have a dialog with higher ed, business, the Legislature and do exactly that, to define those measures,” Neuenswander said.

He added that the state board is currently revising its method of accrediting school districts to move away from the current focus on test scores, to focus more on college and career readiness.

Commission member John Vratil, a former Republican state senator from Leawood, said the state board was probably more qualified to lead that process. But Dave Trabert, president of the conservative think tank Kansas Policy Institute, said the Legislature should take the lead in defining how the Rose capacities will be measured in Kansas.

“Since the implementation of the Rose capacities is part and parcel to determining (funding) adequacy, and the Legislature alone is charged with funding adequacy, the Legislature needs to have a role in determining how those standards are defined,” he said.

When the panel holds its final meeting next month, it may consider recommending a bill to reduce the number of issues school districts are required to negotiate with teachers unions to include only salaries, wages and hours and amounts of work. Under that bill, other issues could be negotiated only if both sides agreed to negotiate them.

But the panel rejected proposed legislation Monday that would have specifically prohibited districts and unions from negotiating items outside the areas of those limited areas.