Topeka ? The Kansas Supreme Court has given the plaintiffs in an ongoing school finance lawsuit until 5 p.m. Tuesday to file a motion stating how it wants to move forward in the case.

That order, issued late Monday, was the latest development in a case that has become tangled up in competing procedural motions.

The lawsuit, Gannon vs. Kansas, challenges whether cuts in state funding that have been enacted since the start of the Great Recession violate the Kansas Constitution, which requires the Legislature to “make suitable provision for finance” of public schools.

Last March, the court sided with the plaintiffs on one part of the case, holding that the state’s failure to fully fund so-called “equalization aid” that targets poor districts was unconstitutional. But it remanded back to a three-judge district court panel the larger question of whether overall state funding is adequate.

K-12 education funding is the largest single item in the state budget, accounting for about half of the state’s $6 billion general fund spending.

That lower court had ruled earlier that overall funding was inadequate, and it ordered the Legislature to increase base school funding by about $442 million.

After another hearing, the lower court issued another opinion Dec. 30, reaffirming its earlier decision, saying overall funding was unconstitutionally inadequate.

A month later, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt asked the panel to amend and clarify that order, arguing that the wording of the opinion was vague and ambiguous, and that it did not seem to answer the question that the Supreme Court had told the lower court to answer.

A hearing on that motion, as well as another motion by the plaintiffs, is scheduled for Thursday in Shawnee County District Court.

But a few weeks later, Schmidt filed an appeal of the panel’s latest decision with the Supreme Court. Then, on Feb. 27, Schmidt filed another motion arguing that because of his appeal, the district court no longer has jurisdiction over the case.

The Supreme Court is now asking the plaintiffs to say by 5 p.m. which court they think should have jurisdiction.