Topeka ? Attorney General Derek Schmidt asked a three-judge panel Friday to give a better explanation about why it thinks current funding for public schools is unconstitutionally low.

In a motion filed with the Shawnee County District Court, Schmidt said the panel did not follow the state Supreme Court’s instructions earlier in the year to engage in a fact-finding process to decide whether school funding was adequate under a different legal standard.

The panel first ruled in 2013 that funding was inadequate because it did not meet the actual cost of providing students with a suitable education, a legal standard that was established in an earlier school finance case. But in March of last year, the Supreme Court sent that question back to the panel, directing it to reconsider that verdict and to conduct a new fact-finding process based on a different standard that focuses on student outcomes.

In December, the panel issued its second opinion, saying it had not changed its mind and that it considers current school funding to be inadequate regardless of what standard is used.

Schmidt was expected to appeal that ruling to the Supreme Court again. But instead, on Friday he filed a motion asking the panel to clarify which facts it relied on to make that decision.

He said both the state and the plaintiff school districts submitted proposed findings of fact when the case was reheard. But instead of identifying which proposed facts it accepted and which ones it rejected, the panel merely said it was rejecting all facts that were inconsistent with its original ruling “implicitedly.”

Schmidt’s spokeswoman Jennifer Rapp noted that “implicitedly” is not a word.

Schmidt’s motion will likely delay any review of that decision by the Kansas Supreme Court, which in turn will give Kansas lawmakers more time to write a new school finance formula as Gov. Sam Brownback has suggested.

Many Republicans believe writing a new formula would render the school finance case moot. But plaintiffs in the case have said it would make no difference because the case centers on how much money is being spent overall, not on the formula used to distribute the money.