The devil once again is in the details when it comes to the governor’s budget recommendation for K-12 education.

The governor has claimed that his K-12 funding recommendation for next year is almost equal to the current year’s funding, but a new analysis by the Kansas Department of Education explains how that claim is somewhat deceiving. Even though the governor has expressed the desire to use block grants to get more school funding “into the classroom,” his budget recommendation actually calls for a 4 percent reduction in four key classroom funding categories: general state aid, supplemental state aid, capital outlay aid and the school district finance fund. K-12 schools will get $127 million less in those categories next year, according to the governor’s budget, according to the education department analysis.

Schools will get an additional $8 million next year under the current law to fund bond and interest on capital improvements and another $6.5 million to maintain the state’s match on federal aid for special education, but they also will be expected to pay $90 million more into the Kansas Public Retirement System to fund their employees’ retirement.

Including KPERS contributions was the way Gov. Brownback justified his campaign claim that his administration had spent a record amount on K-12 education even though per-pupil base aid declined. Retirement payments are a necessary expense for the school district, but they don’t serve the governor’s supposed goal of putting more money into classrooms.

The other major “detail” that remains unclear about the governor’s funding plans is the block grant proposal. His plan is to remove some of the strings attached to state school funding by distributing funds as block grants next year. The governor has called for the state to throw out its current school finance formula so no one knows for sure how the overall pool of block grant funds will be divided among state school districts.

Senate President Susan Wagle told the Republican caucus Tuesday that the block grants would be based on current funding levels, and the governor’s office was working on a bill that would spell out some of the details.

Those details no doubt will be of interest to the courts, which have been keeping a watchful eye on both the sufficiency and the equity of K-12 funding in Kansas. It will be tricky, at best, to come up with a block-grant program that will satisfy those criteria.

It’s early in the legislative session, and many issues and proposals still are taking shape. Once more details are known, the real debate on the K-12 funding can begin.